The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 11 | Issue 40 | Number 2 | Article ID 4005 | Oct 01, 2013

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The Falsified War on Terror: How the US Has Protected Someof Its Enemies

Peter Dale Scott

G e r m a n t r a n s l a t i o n a v a i l a b l e(http://www.larsschall.com/2014/01/01/der-pseudo-krieg-gegen-den-terror-wie-die-usa-einige-ihrer-feinde-schuetzten-2/)

Before World War Two American government,for all of its glaring faults, also served as amodel for the world of limited government,having evolved a system of restraints onexecutive power through its constitutionalarrangement of checks and balances. All thatchanged with America’s emergence as adominant world power, and further after theVietnam War.

Since 9/11, above all, constitutional Americangovernment has been overshadowed by a seriesof emergency measures to fight terrorism. Thelatter have mushroomed in size and budget,while traditional government has been shrunk.As a result we have today what the journalistDana Priest has called

two governments: the one itscitizens were familiar with,operated more or less in the open:the other a parallel top secretgovernment whose parts hadmushroomed in less than a decadeinto a gigantic, sprawling universeof i ts own, v is ible to only acarefully vetted cadre – and itsentirety…visible only to God.1

More and more, it is becoming common to saythat America, like Turkey before it, now has

what Marc Ambinder and John Tirman havecalled a deep state behind the public one.2 Andthis parallel government is guided insurveillance matters by its own ForeignIntelligence Surveillance Court, known as theFISA court, which according to the New YorkTimes “has quietly become almost a parallelSupreme Court.”3 Thanks largely to EdwardSnowden, it is now clear that the FISA Courthas permitted this deep state to expandsurveillance beyond the tiny number of knownand suspected Islamic terrorists, to anyincipient protest movement that mightchallenge the policies of the American warmachine.

Most Americans have by and large notquestioned this parallel government, acceptingthat sacrifices of traditional rights andtraditional transparency are necessary to keepus safe from al-Qaeda attacks. However secretpower is unchecked power, and experience ofthe last century has only reinforced the truth ofLord Acton’s famous dictum that uncheckedpower always corrupts. It is time to considerthe extent to which American secret agencieshave developed a symbiotic relationship withthe forces they are supposed to be fighting –and have even on occasion intervened to let al-Qaeda terrorists proceed with their plots.

For indeed it is certain that on variousoccasions U.S. agencies have intervened,letting al-Qaeda terrorists proceed with theirplots. This alarming statement will bedismissed by some as “conspiracy theory.” Yet Iwill show that this claim does not arise fromtheory, but from facts, about incidents that aretrue even though they have been systematically

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suppressed or under-reported in the Americanmainstream media.

I am describing a phenomenon that occurrednot just once, but repeatedly, almostpredictably. We shall see that, among the al-Qaeda terrorists who were first protected andthen continued their activities were

1) Ali Mohamed, identified in the9/11 Commission Report (p. 68) asthe leader of the 1998 NairobiEmbassy bombing;

2) Mohammed Jamal Khalifa,Osama bin Laden’s close friendand f inanc ier wh i le in thePhilippines of Ramzi Yousef(principle architect of the firstWTC attack) and his uncle KhalidSheikh Mohammed

3) Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,identified in the 9/11 CommissionReport (p. 145) as “the principalarchitect of the 9/11 attacks.”

4) Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. two of the alleged 9/11hijackers, whose presence in theUnited States was concealed fromthe FBI by CIA officers for monthsbefore 9/11.4

It might sound from these citations that the9/11 Commission marked a new stage in theU.S. treatment of these terrorists, and that theReport now exposed those terrorists who in thepast had been protected. On the contrary, aprincipal purpose of my essay is to show that

1) one purpose of protecting theseindividuals had been to protect avalued intelligence connection (the“Al-Qaeda connection” if you will);

2) one major intention of the 9/11Commiss ion Report was toc o n t i n u e p r o t e c t i n g t h i sconnection;

3) those on the 9/11 Commissionstaff who were charged with thisprotection included at least onecommission member (JamieGorelick), one staff member(Dietrich Snell) and one importantwitness (Patrick Fitzgerald) whoearlier had figured among theterrorists’ protectors.

In the course of writing this essay, I came toanother disturbing conclusion I had notanticipated. This is that a central feature of theprotection has been to defend the 9/11Commission’s false picture of al-Qaeda as anexample of non-state terrorism, at odds withnot just the CIA but also the royal families ofSaudi Arabia and Qatar. In reality, as I shallshow, royal family protection from Qatar andSaudi Arabia (concealed by the 9/11Commission) was repeatedly given to keyfigures like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, thealleged “principal architect of the 9/11attacks.”

The establishment claims that the wars foughtby America in Asia since 9/11 have been part ofa global “war on terror.” But this “war,” orpseudo-war, has been fought in alliance withSaudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan – preciselythe principal political and financial backers ofthe jihadi terrorist networks the U.S. hassupposedly been fighting. Meanwhile the mostauthentic opponents in the region of theseSunni jihadi terrorists – the governments ofIraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran – have foundthemselves overthrown (in the case of Iraq andLibya) subverted with U.S. support (in the caseof Syria), or sanctioned and threatened as partof an “axis of evil” (in the case of Iran). Weshould not forget that, just one day after 9/11,“Rumsfeld was talking about broadening the

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objectives of our response and ‘getting Iraq.’”5

To understand US involvement in the area Ibelieve we must look at the complex ofnetworks behind the recent U.S. campaignagainst Osama bin Laden and his followers inal-Qaeda. In fact both British and U.S.intelligence have had a deep and complexinvolvement for decades with the emergingmovement of political Islam – a movementexempl i f ied above al l by the Musl imBrotherhood (MB) or Ikhwan, and its manyspinoffs, of which al-Qaeda is but one.

The MB itself should be regarded more as amovement than as a formal organization. Likethe civil rights movement in America, it hasbeen in continuous flux, and comprised of manytendencies, leading to some alliances that arenonviolent, others that are violent. Its complexrelationships with the royal families of SaudiArabia and Qatar have also been in flux.

In the 1950s, when the Soviet Union andNasserite nationalism were seen as enemies,MI-6 and the CIA developed mostly positivelinks with the MB and its allies. What follows inthis essay suggests that, even since the fall ofthe USSR, the U.S. has repeatedly chosen onoccasion to preserve its long-term relationshipwith violent elements of the MB.6

I conclude that the pseudo-war has been foughtfor other motives than the official one offighting terrorism – indeed few informedobservers would contest the obvious and often-voiced observation, from U.S. intelligenceanalysts among others, that U.S. wars overseas(as opposed to intelligence and police actions)have radically increased the dangers ofterrorism, not reduced them.7 Among thehidden motives, two stand out. One is theintention to establish a permanent U.S. militarypresence in the oil- and gas-rich regions ofCentral Asia. Another is to justify a permanentdomestic apparatus, in part to contain thethreat of opposition to militarist policies,opposition either by direct action or by the

publication (as in this essay) of suppressedtruths.8

The protection to terrorists described in thisessay, in other words, has been sustainedpartly in order to support the false ideologythat has underlain U.S. Asian wars, disguisedas a war on terror, for more than a decade. Andthe blame cannot be assigned all to the Saudis.Two months before 9/11, FBI counterterrorismexpert John O’Neill described to the Frenchjournalist Jean-Charles Brisard America’s“impotence” in getting help from Saudi Arabiaconcerning terrorist networks. The reason? InBrisard’s paraphrase, “Just one: the petroleuminterests.”9 Former CIA officer Robert Baervoiced a similar complaint about the lobbyinginfluence of “the Foreign Oil Companies Group,a cover for a cartel of major petroleumcompanies doing business in the Caspian. . . .The deeper I got, the more Caspian oil money Ifound sloshing around Washington.”10

The decade of protection for terroristsdemonstrates the power of this extra dimensionto the American deep state: the dark forces inour society responsible for protectingterrorists, over and above the parallelgovernment institutionalized on and after9/11.11 Although I cannot securely define thesedark forces, I hope to demonstrate that theyare related to the black hole at the heart of thecomplex U.S-Saudi connection, a complex thatinvolves the oil majors like Exxon, thePentagon’s domination of oi l and gasmovements from the Persian Gulf and CentralAsia, offsetting arms sales, Saudi investmentsin major U.S. corporations like Citibank and theCarlyle Group, and above all the ultimateUnited States dependency on Saudi Arabia,Qatar, and OPEC, for the defense of thepetrodollar.12 The apparatus of U.S. securityappears to have been hijacked by these deeperforces, in order to protect terrorists who shouldhave been reined in. And the governing mediahave been complicit in concealing thissituation.

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In other words, this profound dimension of thedeep s tate , behind i t s ins t i tut iona lmanifestation in our parallel government, is afar greater threat than foreign terrorism to thepreservation of U.S. democracy.

The FBI’s Intervention with the RCMP toRelease Ali Mohamed, 1993

Let me begin this essay with the FBI’sinstruction in 1993 to the Canadian RCMP torelease the al-Qaeda organizer Mohamed Ali,who then proceeded to Nairobi in the sameyear to begin planning the U.S. Embassybombing of 1998.

In early 1993 a wanted Egyptian terroristnamed Essam Hafez Marzouk, a close ally ofOsama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri,arrived at Canada’s Vancouver Airport and waspromptly detained by the Royal CanadianMounted Police (RCMP). A second terroristnamed Mohamed Ali, “the primary U.S.intelligence agent for Ayman al-Zawahiri andOsama bin Laden,” came from California to the

airport to meet him; and, not finding him, madethe mistake of asking about his friend at theVancouver airport customs office. As a resultthe RCMP interrogated Mohamed Ali for twodays, but finally released him, even though Alihad clearly come in order to smuggle a wantedterrorist into the United States.13

If the RCMP had detained Mohamed Ali, whowas much bigger game than the first terrorist,hundreds of lives might have been saved. Afterbeing released, Ali went on to Nairobi, Kenya.There in December 1993 he and his teamphotographed the U.S. Embassy, and thendelivered the photos to Osama bin Laden inKhartoum, leading to the Embassy bombing of1998.14 Ali later told an FBI agent that at somepoint he also trained al Qaeda terrorists in howto hijack airplanes using box cutters.15

The RCMP release of Ali Mohamed wasunjustified, clearly had historic consequences,and may have contributed to 9/11. Yet the FBIauthorized it: Ali Mohamed gave the RCMP thephone number of an FBI agent, John Zent, inthe San Francisco FBI office, and told them, “Ifthey called that number, the agent on the otherend of the line would vouch for him.” As Ali hadpredicted, Zent ordered his release.16

Ali Mohamed was an important double agent,of major interest to more important U.S.authorities than Zent. Although Mohamed wasat last arrested in September 1998 for his role

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in the Nairobi Embassy bombing, the USG stillhad not sentenced him in 2006; and he may stillnot have gone to jail.17

The story of his release in Vancouver and itsconsequences is another example of thedangers of working with double agents. Onecan never be sure if the agent is working for hismovement, for his agency, or – perhaps mostlikely – for increasing his own power andinfluence along with that of both his movementand his agency, by increasing violence in theworld.18

Ali Mohamed’s Release as a Deep EventIgnored by the U.S. Media

Mohamed’s release in Vancouver was a deepevent, by which I mean an event predictablysuppressed in the media and still not fullyunderstandable. A whole chapter in my bookThe Road to 9/11 was not enough to describeMohamed’s intricate relationships at varioustimes with the CIA, U.S. Special Forces at FortBragg, the murder of Jewish extremist MeirKahane, and finally the cover-up of 9/11perpetrated by the 9/11 Commission and theirwitness, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald(Mohamed’s former prosecutor).19

The deep event is also an example of deeppolitics, a mixture of intrigue and suppressioninvo lv ing not jus t a part o f the U.S .Government, but also the governing media. Tothis day (according to a 2013 search of LexisNexis) the Vancouver release incident, wellcovered in Canada’s leading newspaper TheToronto Globe and Mail (December 22, 2001),has never been mentioned in any majorAmerican newspaper.

More disturbingly, it is not even hinted at in theotherwise well-informed books and articlesabout Ali Mohamed by Steven Emerson, PeterBergen, and Lawrence Wright.20 Nor is thereany mention of it in the best insider’s bookabout the FBI and Ali Mohamed, The BlackBanners, by former FBI agent Ali Soufan (abook that was itself heavily and inexcusablycensored by the CIA, after being cleared forpublication by the FBI).21 Since first publishingthis paragraph, I have noticed that former CIAofficer Michael Scheuer also faults both SteveColl and Lawrence Wright for their “whole-hogacceptance of the Saudi narrative” thatminimizes U.S.-Saudi differences.22

There is no doubt about the FBI’s responsibilityfor Mohamed’s release. It (along with other FBIanomalies in handling Mohamed) is franklyacknowledged in a Pentagon Security bio onMohamed:

In early 1993, Mohamed wasdetained by the Royal CanadianMounted Police (RCMP) at theVancouver, Canada, airport. Hehad come to the airport to meet anEgyptian who had arrived fromDamascus but was found to becarry ing two forged Saudipassports. When Mohamed wasabout to be arrested as well, het o l d t h e R C M P h e w a scollaborating with the FBI andgave them a name and phone

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number to call to confirm this. TheRCMP made the call and Mohamedwas released immediately at therequest of the FBI. When the FBIsubsequently questioned Mohamedabout this incident, he offeredinformation about a r ing inCal i fornia that was sel l ingcounter fe i t documents tosmugglers of illegal aliens. This isthe earliest hard evidence that ispublicly available of Mohamedbeing an FBI informant.23

Contrast this official candor about the FBIresponsibility for Mohamed’s release with thesuppression of it in a much longer account ofMohamed (3200 words) by Benjamin Weinerand James Risen in the New York Times:

[In 1993] he was stopped by theborder authorities in Canada, whiletraveling in the company of asuspected associate of Mr. binLaden's who was trying to enterthe United States using falsedocuments.

Soon after, Mr. Mohamed wasquestioned by the F.B.I., which hadlearned of his ties to Mr. binLaden. Apparently in an attempt tofend off the investigators, Mr.Mohamed offered informationabout a ring in California that wasselling counterfeit documents tosmugglers of illegal aliens. 24

A long Wall Street Journal account massagesthe facts even more evasively:

At about the same time [1993], theelusive Mr. Mohamed popped upagain on the FBI radar screen with

information that underscored theemerging bin Laden threat. TheRoyal Canadian Mounted Policequestioned Mr. Mohamed in thes p r i n g o f 1 9 9 3 a f t e r h i sidentification was discovered onanother Arab man trying to enterthe U.S. from Vancouver -- a manMr. Mohamed ident i f ied assomeone who had helped himmove Mr. bin Laden to Sudan. TheFBI located Mr. Mohamed nearSan Francisco in 1993, where hevolunteered the earliest insiderdescription of al Qaeda that ispublicly known.25

In 1998, after the Embassy bombings,Mohamed was finally arrested. In the ensuingtrial an FBI Agent, Daniel Coleman, entered acourt affidavit (approved by prosecutor PatrickFitzgerald) which summarized the Vancouverincident as follows:

In 1993, MOHAMED advised theRoyal Canadian Mounted Police(“RCMP”) that he had providedin te l l igence and counter -intelligence training in Afghanistanto a particular individual….MOHAMED admitted that he hadtravelled to Vancouver, Canada, inthe spring of 1993 to facilitate theentry of that individual into theUnited States…. MOHAMEDfurther admitted that he and theindividual had transported Osamabin Laden from Afghanistan to theSudan in 1991…. MOHAMED toldthe RCMP that he was in theprocess of applying for a job as anFBI interpreter and did not wantthis incident to jeopardize theapplication. (In fact, MOHAMEDthen had such an applicationpending though he was never hired

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as a translator.)26

Like the American media, this FBI affidavitsuppressed the fact that Mohamed, an admittedally of Osama bin Laden caught red-handedwith another known terrorist, was released onorders from the FBI.

The Two Levels of American History:Official History and Deep History

The whole episode illustrates what has becomeall too common in recent American history, theway in which secret bureaucratic policies cantake priority over the public interest, even tothe point of leading to mass murder

(since it contributed at a minimum to the 1998Embassy bombings, if not also 9/11). It is alsoan example of what I mean by the two levels ofhistory in America, We can refer to them asthose historical facts officially acknowledged,and those facts officially suppressed; oralternatively as those facts fit to be mentionedin the governing media, and those suppressedby the same media. This leads in turn to twolevels of historical narrative: official or archivalhistory, which ignores or marginalizes deepevents, and a second level – called deep historyby its practitioners or “conspiracy theory” byits critics – which incorporates them. The taskof deep political research is to recover deepevents from this second level.

This activity sets deep political research atodds with the governing media, but not, Ibelieve with the national interest. Quite thecontrary. Speaking personally as an ex-diplomat, I should state clearly that thenational interest does occasionally requiresecrets, at least for a time. Kissinger’s trip toCh ina , f o r examp le , wh i ch l ed t o anormalization of U.S.-Chinese relations,probably required secrecy (at least at the time)in order to succeed.

When insiders and the governing media

collaborate in the keeping of a secret, as in thecase of the FBI-ordered release of Mohamed,they probably persuade themselves that theyare protecting, not just the FBI, but nationalsecurity, indeed, the national interest. Howevernational security in this case was conspicuouslynot served by the subsequent embassybombings, let alone by 9/11.

In the glaring gap between these two levels ofhistory is a third level -- that of the privilegedbooks about Mohamed – privileged in the sensethat they have access to sources denied toothers – that give important but selective partsof the truth. This selectivity is not necessarilyculpable; it may for example be due to pressurefrom lawyers representing Saudi millionaires (apressure I have yielded to myself).27 Butcumulatively it is misleading.

I owe a considerable debt in particular toLawrence Wright’s book, The Looming Tower,which helped expose many problems andlimitations in the official account of 9/11. But Isee now in retrospect that I, like many others,have been delayed by its selectivity on manymatters (including for example Mohamed’sRCMP release) from developing a less warpedunderstanding of the truth.

The Longer History of FBI and USGProtection for Ali Mohamed

Why did John Zent vouchsafe for Mohamed in1993, so that the RCMP released him? Theexplanation of Peter Lance, the best chroniclerof FBI culpability in both the first and secondWTC attacks, is that Zent did so becauseMohamed was already working as his personalinformant, “feeding Zent ‘intelligence’ onMexican smugglers who were moving illegalimmigrants into the United States from theSouth.”28 (FBI agent Cloonan confirms thatMohamed had been working as a local FBIinformant since 1992.29) Elsewhere Lancedescribes Zent as “trusting and distracted,” sothat he fa i led to rea l ize Mohamed’s

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importance. 3 0

But the FBI’s protection of Ali Mohamed didnot begin with Zent, nor was it limited to him.It dated back at least to 1989, when (accordingto the Pentagon Security bio)

While serving in the Army at FortBragg, he traveled on weekends toJersey City, NJ, and to Connecticutt o t r a i n o t h e r I s l a m i cfundamentalists in surveillance,weapons and explosives. …Telephone records show that whileat Fort Bragg and later, Mohamedmaintained a very close and activerelationship with the Office ofServices [Makhtab-al-Khidimat] ofthe Mujihadeen, in Brooklyn,which at that time was recruitingvolunteers and soliciting funds forthe jihad against the Soviets inAfghanistan. This was the mainrecruitment center for the networkthat , a f ter the Soviets le f tAfghanistan, became known as al-Qaida….

T h e F B I o b s e r v e d a n dphotographed Mohamed givingweapons training to a group ofNew York area residents during

four successive weekends in July1989. They drove from the FarouqMosque in Brooklyn to a shootingrange in Calverton, Long Island,and they fired AK-47 assault rifles,semiautomatic handguns andrevolvers during what appeared tobe training sessions. For reasonsthat are unknown, the FBI thenceased its surveillance of thegroup.31

(Similarly in 1993 an FBI supervisor wouldagain abruptly close down surveillance ofanother group from the al-Kifah Center at amilitant training camp in Pennsylvania.)32

In the subsequent trial of Mohamed’s traineesand others for bombing the World TradeCenter, the defense attorney, Roger Stavis,established that Mohamed was giving the al-Kifah trainees “courses on how to make bombs,how to use guns, how to make Molotovcocktails.” He showed the court that a trainingmanual seized in Nosair’s apartment “showedhow to make explosives and some kind ofimprovised weapons and explosives.”33

So why would the FBI, after having discoveredterrorist training, then cease its surveillance?Here the Wall Street Journal gives the correctanswer: the FBI ceased surveillance becausethey somehow determined that the men weretraining “to help the mujahedeen fighting theSoviet puppet government in Afghanistan.”34

(Note however that the mujahedeen were nolonger fighting the Soviet army itself, whichhad been withdrawn from Afghanistan as ofMarch 1989.)

Al-Kifah, Ali Mohamed, the Flow of Arabsto Afghanistan

Afghanistan is indeed a plausible explanationfor the FBI’s terminating its videotaping ofjihadists from the Brooklyn Al-Kifah RefugeeCenter. Incorporated officially in 1987 as

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“Afghan Refugee Services, Inc.,” the Al-KifahCenter “was the recruitment hub for U.S.-basedMuslims seeking to fight the Soviets. As manyas two hundred fighters were funneled throughthe center to Afghanistan.”35 More importantly,it was

a branch of the Office of Services[Makhtab-al-Khidimat], thePakistan-based organization thatOsama bin Laden helped financeand lead and would later becomeal Qaeda. In fact, it was MustafaShalabi, an Egyptian who foundedand ran the center, whom binLaden called in 1991 when heneeded help moving to Sudan.36

As we shall see, the Makhtab, created in 1984to organize Saudi financial support to theforeign “Arab Afghans” in the jihad, was part ofa project that had the fullest support of theSaudi, Egyptian, and U.S. Governments. AndAli Mohamed, who answered bin Laden’s call toShalabi, and who remained in the US ArmyReserves until August 1994, was clearly animportant trainer in that project, in Egypt, inAfghanistan, and finally in America.

A privileged account of Mohamed’s career byPeter Bergen, in Holy Wars, Inc., claims that

A l i M o h a m e d … w a s a nindispensable player in al-Qaeda….At some point in the early eightieshe proffered his services as aninformant to the CIA, the first ofhis several attempts to work forthe U.S. government. The Agencywas in contact with him for a fewweeks but broke off relations afterdetermining he was “unreliable.”That would turn out to be amasterful understatement, asMohamed was already a member

of Egypt’s terrorist Jihad group.After being discharged from theEgyptian Army in 1984, Mohamed[took] a job in the counterterrorismdepartment of Egyptair. Thefollowing year he moved to theUnited States,37

Bergen’s most serious omission here is thatMohamed, though he was on the StateDepartment’s visa watch list, had beenadmitted to the U.S. in 1984 “on a visa-waiverprogram that was sponsored by the agency [i.e.CIA] itself, one designed to shield valuableassets or those who have performed valuableservices for the country.”38 This should beenough to question the CIA’s account that itfound Mohamed “unreliable.” (Later, one ofMohamed’s officers at Fort Bragg was alsoconvinced that Mohamed was "sponsored" by aU.S. intelligence service, "I assumed theCIA.")39 In addition Bergen omits that, beforeMohamed’s brief stint as a formal CIA agent, hehad been selected out of the Egyptian army in1981 for leadership training at Fort Bragg – animportant point to which we shall return.40

The FBI’s Cover-Up of Ali Mohamed’sConnection to the Kahane Murder

The CIA may have wanted to think that the Al-Kifah training was only for Afghanistan. But theblind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the mentorof the Center whom the CIA brought toAmerica in 1990, was preaching for the killingof Jews and also for the destruction of theWest.41 His preachings guided Mohamed’sMakhtab trainees: as a first step, in November1990, three of them conspired to kill MeirKahane, the founder of the Jewish DefenseLeague.

Kahane’s actual killer, El Sayyid Nosair, wasdetained by accident almost immediately, andby luck the pol ice soon found his twococonspirators, Mahmoud Abouhalima andMohammed Salameh, waiting at Nosair’s

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house. Also at the house, according to JohnMiller (formerly of the FBI),

were training manuals from theArmy Special Warfare School atFort Bragg [where Ali Mohamed atthe time was a training officer].There were copies of teletypes thathad been routed to the Secretaryof the Army and the Joint Chiefs ofStaff.42

And the Pentagon bio, with yet another gentledig at the FBI, identifies the documents asMohamed’s:

In a search of Nosair’s home, thepolice found U.S. Army trainingmanuals, videotaped talks thatMohamed delivered at the JFKSpecial Warfare Center at FortBragg, operational plans for jointcoalition exercises conducted inEgypt, and other materials markedClassified or Top Secret. Thesedocuments belonged to Mohamed,who often stayed in New Jerseywith Nosair. The documents didnot surface during Nosair’s 1991trial for the Kahane murder. It isnot known if the FBI investigatedMohamed in connection with thesedocuments.

Yet only hours after the 1990 killing, JosephBorelli , the chief of NYPD detectives,pronounced Nosair a “ lone derangedgunman.”43 A more extended account of hisremarks in the New York Times actuallyalluded to Mohamed, though not by name, andminimized the significance of the links toterrorism in a detailed account of the Nosairhome cache:

The files contained articles aboutfirearms and explosives apparentlyculled from magazines, like Soldierof Fortune, appealing to would-bemercenaries. But the police saidthe handwritten papers, translatedby an Arabic-speaking officer,a p p e a r e d t o b e m i n o rcorrespondence and did notmention terrorism or outline anyplan to kill the militant Jewishleader who had called for theremoval of all Arabs from Israel.

“There was nothing [at Nosair’shouse] that would st ir yourimagination," Chief Borelli said….A joint anti-terrorist task force ofNew York City police and theFederal Bureau of Investigationhas been set up to look into anypossible international links to theslaying, the official said, but so farhas not turned up anything.

"Nothing has transpired thatchanges our opinion that he actedalone," Chief Borrelli [sic] told anews conference yesterdayafternoon. 4 4

Later an FBI spokesman said the FBI alsobelieved “that Mr. Nosair had acted alone inshooting Rabbi Kahane.” “The bottom line isthat we can’t connect anyone else to theKahane shooting,” an FBI agent said.45

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Blaming the New York County DistrictAttorney, Robert Morgenthau, the FBI laterclaimed that the evidence retrieved fromNosair’s home was not processed for two orthree years.46 But Robert Friedman suggeststhat the FBI were not just lying to the public,but also to Morgenthau (who had just helpedexpose and bring down the CIA-favored Muslimbank BCCI).

According to other sources familiarwith the case, the FBI told DistrictAttorney Robert M. Morgenthauthat Nosair was a lone gunman,not part of a broader conspiracy;the prosecution took this positionat trial and lost, only convictingN o s a i r o f g u n c h a r g e s .Morgenthau speculated the CIAmay have encouraged the FBI notto pursue any other leads, thesesources say. ‘The FBI lied to me,’Morgenthau has told colleagues.‘They’re supposed to untangleterrorist connections, but theycan’t be trusted to do the job.’47

Using evidence from the Nosair trial transcript,Peter Lance confirms the tension betweenMorgenthau’s office, which wanted to pursueNosair’s international terrorist connections,and the FBI, which insisted on trying Nosairalone.48

The FBI’s Protection of Ali Mohamed inthe 1993 WTC Bombing

In thus limiting the case, the police and the FBIwere in effect protecting, not just Ali Mohamed,but also Nosair’s two Arab coconspirators,Mahmoud Abouhalima and MohammedSalameh, in the murder of a U.S. citizen. Thetwo were thus left free to kill again onFebruary 26, 1993, one month after the FBIsecured Mohamed’s release in Vancouver. BothAbouhalima and Salameh were ultimatelyconvicted in connection with the 1993 WorldTrade Center bombing, along with anotherMohamed trainee, Nidal Ayyad.

To quote the Pentagon bio yet again,

In February 1993, the terrorist cellthat Mohamed had tra inedexploded a truck bomb under theWorld Trade Center that killed sixand injured about 1,000 persons.The perpetrators of this bombingincluded people Mohamed hadtrained, and Mohamed had been inclose contact with the cell duringthe period leading up to thebombing [i.e. including January1993, the month of Mohamed’sd e t e n t i o n a n d r e l e a s e i n

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Vancouver]. Mohamed's nameappeared on a list of 118 potentialun-indicted co-conspirators thatw a s p r e p a r e d b y f e d e r a lprosecutors.

Ali Mohamed was again listed as one of 172unindicted co-conspirators in the follow-up“Landmarks” case, which convicted SheikhRahman and others of plotting to blow up theUnited Nations, the Lincoln and Hollandtunnels, and the George Washington Bridge.49

The two cases were closely related, as much ofthe evidence for the Landmarks case camefrom an informant, Emad Salem, whom the FBIhad first planted among the WTC plotters. Butthe prosecutors’ awareness of Ali Mohamed’sinvolvement must be contrasted with theapparent intelligence failure at the CIA’sCounterterrorism Center: according to SteveColl, the CTC “immediately established a seven-day, twenty-four hour task force to collectintelligence about the World Trade Centerbombing…but nothing of substance came in.”50

In the WTC bombing case, the FBI movedswiftly to bring the Al-Kifah plotters to trial onemonth later, in March. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer,a DIA officer, later said that

we [i.e. DIA] were surprised howquickly they’d [i.e. FBI] made thearrests after the first World TradeCenter bombing. Only later did wefind out that the FBI had beenwatching some of these people formonths prior to both incidents [i.e.both the 1993 WTC bombing and9/11].51

Shaffer’s claim that the FBI had been watchingsome o f the p lo t te r s i s abundant l ycorroborated, e.g. by Steve Coll in GhostWars.52

The U.S., Egyptian, and Saudi Backing forthe Makhtab Network

What was being protected here by the FBI?One obvious answer is an extension of Lance’sexplanation for Zent’s behavior: that Mohamedhad already been a domestic FBI informantsince 1992. However I entirely agree with NewYork County District Attorney RobertMorgenthau, who suspected that a much largerasset was being protected, the Saudi-sponsorednetwork which we now know was the Makhtab-i-Khidimat, by this time already evolving into al-Qaeda.

On the day the FBI arrested fourArabs for the World Trade Centrebombing, saying it had all of thesuspects, Morgenthau’s earspricked up. He didn’t believe thefour were ‘self-starters,’ andspeculated that there was probablya larger network as well as aforeign sponsor. He also had ahunch that the suspects would leadback to Sheikh Abdel Rahman. Buthe worried [correctly] that the dotsmight not be connected becauset h e U . S . g o v e r n m e n t w a sprotecting the sheikh for his helpin Afghanistan.53

This “larger network” of the Makhtab, althoughcreated in 1984, consolidated an assistanceprogram that had been launched by the U.S.Government much earlier in Egypt by ZbigniewBrzezinski. At almost the beginning of theAfghan war itself, Brzezinski arranged for aprogram to train members of the anti-Communist Muslim Brotherhood, a groupwhich the CIA, and the British MI-6, hadsupported in various ways since the 1950s.54

In January 1980, Brzezinski visitedEgypt to mobilize support for the

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jihad. Within weeks of his visit,Sadat authorized Egypt’s fullparticipation, giving permission forthe U.S. Air Force to use Egypt asa base…and recruiting, training,and arming Egyptian MuslimBrotherhood activists for battle….Not only were they packaged andshipped to Afghanistan, but [by theend of 1980] they received experttraining from U.S. Special Forces.55

U.S. military trainers had in fact already beenin Egypt since at least 1978 (the year of theIsrael-Egypt Camp David peace accords),training Sadat’s elite praetorian guard, ofwhich Mohamed Ali was at the time a member.At first the training was handled by a “private”firm, J.J. Cappucci and Associates, owned byformer CIA officers Ed Wilson and TheodoreShackley. But after Brzezinski’s visit in 1980,the contract was taken over by the CIA.56

In 1981 Ali Mohamed was selected out of theU.S.-trained praetorian guard for four monthsof Special Forces training at Fort Bragg:“Working alongside Green Berets, he learnedunconventional warfare, counterinsurgencyoperations, and how to command elite soldierson difficult missions.”57 Mohamed was in FortBragg as part of the Pentagon’s ProfessionalMilitary Education (PME) program for futureleaders; he was being trained to transmit toEgypt the kind of Afghanistan-related skills thathe later provided to Al-Kifah on Long Island in1989.58

Mohamed was thus in America when some ofhis fellow guard members, responding to afatwa or rel igious order from MuslimBrotherhood member Sheikh Omar AbdelRahman, assassinated Sadat in October 1981.The assassination only accelerated the exportout of Egypt to Afghanistan of MuslimBrotherhood members accused of the murder.These included two of Mohamed’s eventual

close associates, Sheikh Abdel Rahman andRahman’s then friend Ayman al-Zawahiri, towhom Mohamed swore a bayat or oath ofallegiance in 1984, after his return to Egypt.59

The Al-Kifah Target in 1993: NotAfghanistan but Bosnia

Morgenthau’s suspicions about Afghanistan in1993 were very pertinent, but also somewhatanachronistic; by 1993, under its new directorJames Woolsey, both the CIA and al-Kifah hadlost interest in Afghanistan. The new interimpresident of Afghanistan, Mojaddedi, underpressure from Washington, announced that theArab Afghans should leave. Pakistan followedsuit, closed the offices of all mujahedin in itscountry, and ordered the deportation of allArab Afghans.60

But the Al-Kifah support network had newtargets in mind elsewhere.

After 1991 the Brooklyn center was focusedchiefly on training people for jihad in Bosnia,and at least two sources allege that AliMohamed himself visited Bosnia in 1992 (whenhe also returned to Afghanistan).61

Al-Kifah’s English-languagenewsletter Al-Hussam (The Sword)also began publishing regularupdates on j ihad act ion inBosnia….Under the control of theminions of Shaykh Omar AbdelR a h m a n , t h e n e w s l e t t e raggressively incited sympatheticMuslims to join the jihad in Bosniaand Afghanistan themselves….TheAl-Kifah Bosnian branch office inZagreb, Croatia, housed in amodern, two-story building, wasevidently in close communicationw i t h t h e o r g a n i z a t i o n a lheadquarters in New York. Thedeputy director of the Zagreboffice, Hassan Hakim, admitted to

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receiving all orders and fundingdirectly from the main UnitedStates office of Al-Kifah on AtlanticAvenue controlled by Shaykh OmarAbdel Rahman.62

One of Ali Mohamed’s trainees at al-Kifah,Rodney Hampton-El, assisted in this supportprogram, recruiting warriors from U.S. Armybases like Fort Belvoir, and also training themto be fighters in New Jersey.6 3 In 1995Hampton-El was tried and convicted for his role(along with al-Kifah leader Sheik Omar AbdelRahman) in the plot to blow up New Yorklandmarks. At the trial Hampton-El testifiedhow he was personally given thousands ofdollars for this project by Saudi Prince Faisal inthe Washington Saudi Embassy.64 (In addition,“Saudi intelligence has contributed to SheikhRahman’s legal-defence fund, according toMohammed al-Khilewi, the former firstsecretary to the Saudi mission at the U.N.”)65

Later in this essay we shall have much more tosay about Saudi support for this terroristnetwork, and in particular about the Saudiembassy in Washington.

Al-Kifah, Al-Qaeda, Tajikistan, and Drugs

Meanwhile the ISI had not lost interest in binLaden’s Arabs, but began to recruit them withbin Laden’s support for battle in new areas,notably Central Asia and Kashmir.66 Bin Ladenin the same period began to dispatch his jihadisinto areas of the former Soviet Union, notablyto the infant Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan(IMU) in Tajikistan.

The outbreak of Islamist violencein Tajikistan…moved bin Laden tosend a limited number of Al-Qaedacadre to support Tajik Islamistforces, among them his closeassociate Wali Khan Amin Shah [anUzbek later working in the

Philippines with Ramzi Yousuf andKhalid Sheikh Mohammed] and thesoon-to-be-famous mujahid, IbnKhattab. In addition, bin Laden,even after his 1991 move to Sudan,continued to run training camps inAfghanistan, where he welcomedthe chance to train Tajiks, Uzbeks,Uighurs, and Chechens.67

In an al-Qaeda document captured in Iraq, binLaden wrote

with the grace of Allah, we weresuccessful in cooperating with ourbrothers in Tajikistan in variousfields including training. We wereable train a good number of them,arm them and deliver them toTajikistan. Moreover, Allahfaci l i tated to us del iveringweapons and ammunition to them;we pray that Allah grants us allvictory68

Many other accounts report that the delivery ofarms and ammunition was facilitated by theinvolvement of the IMU and bin Laden in themassive flow of heroin from Afghanistan intothe former Soviet Union. According to AhmedRashid,

Much of the I.M.U.’s financingcame from the lucrative opiumtrade through Afghanistan. RalfMutschke, the assistant director ofInterpol’s Criminal IntelligenceDirectorate, estimated that sixtyper cent of Afghan opium exportswere moving through Central Asiaand that the “I.M.U. may beresponsible for seventy per cent ofthe total amount of heroin andopium transiting through the

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area.”69

Among the experts confirming the IMU-al-Qaeda-drug connection is Gretchen Peters,

The opium trade… supported theglobal ambitions of Osama binLaden…. There was … evidencet h a t b i n L a d e n s e r v e d a smiddleman between the Talibanand Arab drug smugglers…. WithMullah Omar’s approval, bin Ladenhijacked the state-run ArianaAirlines, turning it into a narco-terror charter service… accordingto former U.S . and Afghanofficials…. One U.S. intelligencerepor t seen by the au thordescribed a smuggling routesnaking up through Afghanistan’snorthwest provinces in Baghdis,F a r y a b , a n d J o w z a n i n t oTurkmenistan. It was being used asof mid-2004 by “extremistsassociated with the Taliban, theIslamic Movement of Uzbekistanand al-Qaeda,” the report said.Traffickers would move “bothheroin and terrorists” along theroute and “then onwards into othercountries in Central Asia,” the CIAdocument said.70

It has been widely reported that in the early1990s, as US financial support dwindled andbin Laden’s finances were being rapidlyexhausted in Sudan, his new involvement withthe IMU and later the Taliban involved al-Qaeda also in the growing Afghan herointraffic. Peters saw a CIA document confirmingthis.71 Yet the 9/11 Report, in contortedlanguage, denied this, as did a Staff Report:

No persuasive evidence exists that

al Qaeda relied on the drug tradeas an important source of revenue,had any substantial involvementwith conflict diamonds, or wasfinancially sponsored by anyforeign government.72

This surprising claim was at odds with theviews of many U.S. intelligence operatives. Italso contradicted the official position of theBritish government, which told its Parliamentin 2001,

Usama Bin Laden and Al Qaidahave been based in Afghanistansince 1996, but have a network ofoperations throughout the world.The network includes trainingc a m p s , w a r e h o u s e s ,communication facilities andcommercial operations able toraise significant sums of money tosupport its activity. That activityincludes substantial exploitation ofthe i l legal drugs trade fromAfghanistan.73

Meanwhile there were allegations that theBrooklyn Al-Kifah Center, as well as bin Laden,was involved in drug trafficking. Back in 1993,the New York Times reported that, according toinvestigators, “Some of the 11 men charged inthe [Day of Terror] plot to bomb New York Citytargets are also suspected of trafficking indrugs.”74 Mujahid Abdulqaadir Menepta, aMuslim suspect in both the 9/11 case and the1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was linked bytelephone numbers on his cell phones toongoing criminal investigations, involving“organized cr ime, drugs, and moneylaundering.”75 And Raed Hijazi, an al-Qaedaterrorist arrested in Jordan in 1999, hadpreviously become an FBI informant in order toavoid drug charges.76

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Why were these allegations of Al-Kifah druginvolvement never pursued? We must considerthe possibility that once again (as I havedemonstrated elsewhere) the CIA providedprotection for a traffic that supported theactivities of its assets abroad.77

Was the U.S. Protection of the Al-KifahCenter Intended to Help Export andFinance Jihadis?

There is also no treatment in the 9/11 Report,and almost none elsewhere, of the allegationsfrom Steven Emerson that by 1987, the Al-KifahCenter Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn “hadbecome a center for counterfeiting tens ofthousands of dollars.”78 Similarly there hasbeen no government follow-up of the allegationby Yossef Bodansky, citing FBI informant EmadSalem, that one of the Al-Kifah cell leaders(Siddiq Ibrahim Siddig Ali)

had offered to sell a million dollars[of counterfeit currency] for$150,000, well below marketvalue. … Quantities of counterfeit$100 bills were later found at theapartment of Sheikh Umar Abdel-Rahman.79

J.M. Berger goes further, reporting from courttestimony: “In order to support Al Kifah’soperations,” Mustafa Shalabi, the head of theAl-Kifah Center until his murder in 1991,“employed a number of for-profit criminalenterprises, including gunrunning, arson forhire, and a counterfeiting ring set up in thebasement of the jihad office.”80 Yet the 9/11Report is silent about these serious charges,which U.S. prosecutors at the time did notpursue.

Why this official reticence? The answer may liein the fact that by 1996 bin Laden was“supporting Islamists in Lebanon, Bosnia,Kashmir, Tajikistan, and Chechnya.”81 And in

step with bin Laden, the al-Kifah Center wasalso support ing j ihad after 1992 “ inAfghanistan, Bosnia, the Philippines, Egypt,Algeria, Kashmir, Palestine, and elsewhere.”82

But bin Laden and al-Kifah were not acting ontheir own, they were supporting projects,especially in Tajikistan (1993-95) and thenChechnya (after 1995), where their principalally, Ibn al-Khattab (Thamir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem) also enjoyed high-level support inSaudi Arabia.83

Khattab enjoyed a certain amountof logistical and financial supportfrom Saudi Arabia. Saudi sheikhsdeclared the Chechen resistance alegitimate jihad, and private Saudidonors sent money to Khattab andhis Chechen colleagues. As late as1996, mujahidin wounded inChechnya were sent to SaudiArabia for medical treatment, apractice paid for by charities andtolerated by the state.84

Ali Soufan adds that America also supportedthis jihad: by 1996, “the United States hadbeen on the side of Muslims in Afghanistan,Bosnia, and Chechnya.”85

By protecting the al-Kifah Center and itsassociates (including Mohamed) and notprosecuting them for their crimes (includingmurder), the U.S. Government was in effectimitating Saudi Arabia and Egypt, by keepingopen a channel to export those in America whowished to wage jihad -- thereby ensuring theywould wage jihad in other countries, not here.(After the arrest of Sheikh Rahman in 1993 al-Kifah closed itself down. But we shall see thatan allied institution, Sphinx Trading, continuedafter 9/11 to be protected, even after the FBIknew it had helped one of the alleged 9/11hijackers.)86

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Was all this protection intended to keep justsuch a channel open? It was certainly anintentional result of the protection and supportfor the Makhtab al-Khidimat in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Support for the Makhtab, and Laterfor Al-Qaeda

The Saudis, like the Egyptians, had domesticreasons for wishing to export as many MuslimBrotherhood members to possible death inAfghanistan, Bosnia, or anywhere else. Until1979 Saudi Arabia had provided a home toBrotherhood members fleeing persecution incountries like Syria and Egypt, where some ofthem had tried to assassinate the Saudis’political enemy Gamel Abdel Nasser. But in1979 radical Wahhabis, condemning the rulingSaudi family as corrupt infidels, seized theGrand Mosque at Mecca and defended it forweeks.87 Profoundly shaken, the Saudi familyused its foundations, like the World MuslimLeague (WML), to subsidize the emigration ofpolitical Islamists, above all to the new jihad inAfghanistan, which opened one month lateragainst the Soviet Union.88

In Afghanistan both Rahman and al-Zawahiriworked with the Makhtab al Khidamat that hadbeen created in 1984 by two other members ofthe Muslim Brotherhood, the PalestinianAbdullah Azzam and the Saudi Osama binLaden.89 All that the 9/11 Commission Reporthas to say about the Makhtab’s financing isthat “Bin Laden and his comrades had theirown sources of support and training, and theyreceived little or no assistance from the UnitedStates.” (p. 56). But the Pakistani authorAhmed Rashid makes clear the support comingfrom the Saudi royal family, including PrinceTurki (the head of Saudi intelligence), and alsoroyal creations like the World Muslim League:

Bin Laden, although not a royal,was close enough to the royals andcertainly wealthy enough to leadthe Saudi contingent. Bin Laden,

P r ince Turk i and Genera l[Hameed] Gul [the head of thePakistani ISI] were to become firmfriends and allies in a commoncause. The center for the Arab-Afghans was the offices of theWorld Muslim League and theMuslim Brotherhood in Peshawarwhich was run by Abdullah Azam.Saudi funds flowed to Azam andthe Makhtab al Khidamat orServices Center which he createdin 1984 to service the new recruitsand receive donations from Islamiccharities. Donations from SaudiIntel l igence, the Saudi RedCrescent, the World MuslimLeague and private donations fromSaudi princes and mosques werechanneled through the Makhtab. Adecade later the Makhtab wouldemerge at the center of a web ofradical organizations that helpedcarry out the World Trade Centerbombing [ in 1993] and thebombings of US Embassies inAfrica in 1998.90

Former Ambassador Peter Tomsen hasdescribed how the evolution of the Makhtabinto al-Qaeda was accomplished with supportfrom the of f ices of royal ly ordainedorganizations like the World Muslim League(WML) and the World Assembly of MuslimYouth (WAMY):

Bin Laden’s brother-in-law,Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, headedthe Muslim World League office inPeshawar during the mid-1980s. In1988, he moved to Manila andopened a branch office of theWorld Assembly of Muslim Youth.He made the charity a front for binLaden's terrorist operations in thePhilippines and Asia. Al-Qaeda

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operatives, including Khalid SheikhMohammed, mastermind of the9/11 attacks, and his nephewRamzi Yusuf [master bomb-makerof the 1993 WTC bombing],traveled to Manila in the early1990s to help Khalifa strengthenal-Qaeda networks in SoutheastAsia and plan terrorist attacks inthe region.91

There are many other examples of WML andWAMY connections to al-Qaeda. For exampleMaulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, a signatory ofOsama bin Laden's 1998 fatwa to kill Jews andAmericans, was invited in 1996 to the 34thWML Congress in Mecca and also spoke thereto WAMY.9 2 Yet there are only minimalreferences to Maulana Fazlur Rehman in thewestern (as opposed to the Asian) media, andnone (according to a Lexis Nexis search in July2013) linking him to the WML or WAMY.

The FBI’s hands-off attitude towards WAMY inAmerica was in keeping with its protection ofAli Mohamed. According to former federalprosecutor John Loftus and others, there was ab lock in fo rce in the 1980s aga ins tantiterrorism enforcement that mightembarrass the Saudis.93 This block explains forexample the protection enjoyed by the chair ofWAMY in Virginia, Osama bin Laden’s nephewAbdullah bin Laden. The FBI opened aninvestigation of Abdullah bin Laden in February1996, calling WAMY “a suspected terroristorganization,” but the investigation was closeddown six months later.94

What Saudi Prince Helped a PassportlessOsama Leave Saudi Arabia?

None of the official or privileged sources on AliMohamed has linked him to Saudi intelligenceactivities. But there is at least one such link, histrip, as described in the Coleman FBI affidavit,when in 1991 (still a U.S. Army reservist) he“travelled to Afghanistan to escort Usama bin

Laden from Afghanistan to the Sudan.”95 TheFBI affidavit presents this, without explanation,as an act in furtherance of an al-Qaeda “murderconspiracy.” But Osama’s move to Sudan wassynchronized with a simultaneous investmentin Sudan by his bin Laden brothers, includingan airport construction project that was largelysubsidized by the Saudi royal family.96

A great deal of confusion surrounds thecircumstances of bin Laden’s displacement in1991-92, from Saudi Arabia via Pakistan (andperhaps Afghanistan) to the Sudan. But inthese conflicted accounts one important fact isnot contested: bin Laden’s trip was initiallyarranged by someone in the royal family.97

Steven Coll in Ghost Wars suggests that royalfamily arranged this trip amicably, blaming it iton pressure from the U.S:

Peter Tomsen and other emissariesfrom Washington discussed therising Islamist threat with [Saudiintelligence chief] Prince Turki inthe summer of 1991…. At some ofthe meetings between Turki andthe CIA, Osama bin Laden’s namecame up explicit ly. The CIAcontinued to pick up reporting thathe was funding radicals such asHekmatyar in Afghanistan…. “Hisfamily has disowned him,” Turkiassured the Americans about binLaden. Every effort had been madeto persuade bin Laden to stopprotesting against the Saudi royalfamily. These efforts had failed,Turki conceded, and the kingdomwas now prepared to take sternermeasures…. Bin Laden learned ofthis when Saudi police arrived athis cushion-strewn, modestlyfurnished compound in Jeddah toannounce that he would have toleave the kingdom. According to anaccount later provided to the CIA

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by a source in Saudi intelligence,the officer assigned to carry outthe expulsion assured bin Ladenthat this was being done for hisown good. The officer blamed theAmericans. The U.S. governmentwas planning to kill him, he toldbin Laden, by this account, so theroyal family would get him out oft h e k i n g d o m f o r h i s o w nprotection. The escort put binLaden on a plane out of SaudiArabia.98

Coll’s magisterial but privileged book appearedin February 2004. Six months later the 9/11Commission Report published a quite differentaccount, implying that by 1991 the Saudigovernment was estranged from bin Laden:

The Saudi government… undertookto silence Bin Laden by, amongother things, taking away hispassport . With help from adissident member of the royalfamily, he managed to get out ofthe country under the pretext ofattending an Islamic gathering inPakistan in April 1991.99

Lawrence Wright claims, persuasively, that theprince returning Osama’s passport was no“dissident,” but Interior Minister Prince Naif,after bin Laden persuaded him he was neededin Peshawar “in order to help mediate the civilwar among the mujahideen.”100 Prince Naif, themost anti-American of the senior Saudi royals,gave back bin Laden’s passport on onecondition, that he “sign a pledge that he wouldnot interfere with the politics of South Arabiaor any Arab country.”101

The “Islamic gathering” is almost certainly areference to the on-going negotiations inPeshawar which eventually produced the

Saudi-backed Peshawar Accord (finalized inApril 1992) to end the Afghan Civil War. Byseveral well-informed accounts, Bin Laden didplay an important part in these negotiations, infurtherance (I would argue) of Prince Turki’sown policies. Like Sheikh Rahman before himin 1990, bin Laden tried, vainly, to negotiate atruce between the warring mujahideen leaders,Massoud and Hekmatyar. In these negotiations(according to Peter Tomsen, who was there),Saudi Arabia , Pakis tan , the Musl imBrotherhood and al-Qaeda were all united inseeking the same objective: a united Sunniarmy (in opposition to American appeals forShia representation) that could retake Kabul byforce.102

Thus I believe it is quite clear that bin Laden, inhis mediation attempts to bring Hekmatyar intothe Peshawar consensus, was acting in linewith official Saudi and Pakistani interests.Others disagree. Without documentation, theauthor of the Frontline biography of bin Ladenasserts,

Contrary to what is a lwaysreiterated bin Laden has never hadofficial relations with the Saudiregime or the royal family. All hiscontacts would happen through hisbrothers.103 …. Specifically he hadno relation with Turki al-Faisalhead of Saudi intelligence. He usedto be very suspicious of his role inAfghanistan and once had openconfrontation with him in 1991 andaccused him of being the reason ofthe f i gh t be tween A fghanfactions. 1 0 4

Michael Scheuer, once head of the CIA’sCounterterrorism Center, endorsed this claim,and reinforced it with the testimony of Sa’ad al-Faqih (a critic of the Saudi royal family who hasbeen accused by the U.S. Treasury of beingaffiliated with al-Qaeda) that, “after the Soviets

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withdrew ‘Saudi intelligence [officers] wereactually increasing the gap between Afghanifactions to keep them fighting.’”105

But this claim if true must have been afterKabul fell to the jihadis in 1992, whenMassoud, backed by the favored Saudi clientAbdul Rasul Sayyaf, began to fight Hekmatyar,the favored client of Pakistan’s ISI. Before thistime the U.S. State Department’s Afghan policywas to promote a broad-based opposition to therump Communist government in Kabul, while“side-lining the extremists,” including bothHekmatyar and Sayyaf.106

Pakistan’s ISI in the same period clearlywanted a strong rebel alliance united behindHekmatyar, and both the CIA and the Saudiscontinued to support them. As Barnett Rubinreports, “During this period, political ‘unity’ ofsome sort among the mujahidin groups was amajor goa l o f U .S . -Pak is tan i -Saudipolicy.”107And in 1990-91, as Washington cut itsallocation for the CIA’s covert Afghan programby 60 percent, Prince Turki more than made up

for the shortfall by increased contributionsfrom Saudi Arabia.108

I conclude that bin Laden’s mediation efforts inPeshawar in 1991 were in accordance withPrince Turki’s preferences, just as was AliMohamed’s effort, in organizing bin Laden’ssubsequent move from Afghanistan andPakistan to the Sudan. As Steve Coll reports,the break between bin Laden and the Saudiroyal family did not become serious until atleast 1993, after the involvement of bin Laden’sal ly Sheikh Rahman in the f i rst WTCbombing. 1 0 9

The State Department-CIA Split OverAfghanistan -- and Oil

In 1991 the Soviet troops had been out of Kabulfor two years; and, as former US AmbassadorTomsen has reported, the CIA’s objective of aPakistan-backed military overthrow in Kabulwas at odds with the official U.S. policy ofsupport for “a political settlement restoringAfghanistan’s independence.”110 AmbassadorTomsen himself told the CIA Station Chief inIslamabad (“Bill”) that, by endorsing Pakistan’smilitary attack on Kabul,

he was violating fundamental U.S.policy precepts agreed to inWashington by his own agency.American pol icy was to cutHekmatyar off, not build him up.Bill looked at me impassively as Ispoke. I assumed his superiors inLang ley had approved theoffensive. The U.S. governmentwas conducting two diametricallyopposed Afghan policies.111

Steve Coll agrees that “By early 1991, theAfghan policies pursued by the StateDepartment and the CIA were in opencompet i t ion wi th each o ther…. TheCIA…continued to collaborate with Pakistani

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military intelligence on a separate militarytrack that mainly promoted Hekmatyar andother Islamist commanders.”112

This conflict between the State Department andCIA was far from unprecedented. In particularit recalled the CIA-State conflict in Laos in1959-60, which led to a tragic war in Laos, andeventually Vietnam.113 Just as oil companies hada stake in the Indochina conflict, so too in1990-92 the CIA was thinking not just ofAfghanistan but of the oil resources of CentralAsia, where some of the al-Kifah-trained “ArabAfghans” were about to focus their attention.

The State Department in Afghanistanrepresented the will of the National SecurityCouncil and the public state. The CIA, on theother hand, was not “rogue” (as has sometimesbeen suggested), it was pursuing the goals ofoil companies and their financial backers – orwhat I have called the deep state -- inpreparing for a launch into the former Sovietrepublics of central Asia.

Covert Operations and Oil in Central Asia

In 1991 the leaders of Central Asia “began tohold talks with Western oil companies, on theback of ongoing negotiations betweenKazakhstan and the US company Chevron.”114

The first Bush Administration activelysupported the plans of U.S. oil companies tocontract for exploiting the resources of the

Caspian region, and also for building a pipelinenot controlled by Moscow that could bring theoil and gas production out to the west.

In the same year 1991, Richard Secord, HeinieAderholt, and Ed Dearborn, three veterans ofU.S. operations in Laos, and later of OliverNorth’s operations with the Contras, turned upin Baku under the cover of an oil company,MEGA Oil.115 This was at a time when the firstBush administration had expressed its supportfor an oil pipeline stretching from Azerbaijanacross the Caucasus to Turkey.116 MEGA neverdid find oil; but it did contribute materially tothe removal of Azerbaijan from the sphere ofpost-Soviet Russian influence, and hence to theultimate construction of the Baku TbilisiCeyhan (BTC) pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan inTurkey.

As MEGA operatives in Azerbaijan, Secord,Aderholt, Dearborn, and their men engaged inmilitary training, passed “brown bags filledwith cash” to members of the government, andabove all set up an airline on the model of AirAmerica which soon was picking up hundredsof mujahedin mercenaries in Afghanistan.117

(Secord and Aderholt claim to have leftAzerbaijan before the mujahedin arrived.)

Meanwhile, Hekmatyar, who at the time wasstill allied with bin Laden, was “observedrecruiting Afghan mercenaries [i.e. ArabAfghans] to fight in Azerbaijan against Armeniaand its Russian allies.”118 Hekmatyar was a

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notorious drug trafficker; and, at this time,heroin flooded from Afghanistan through Bakuinto Chechnya, Russia, and even NorthAmerica.119

Bin Laden, Ali Mohamed, and the SaudiRoyal Family

By attempting to negotiate Hekmatyar’sreconciliation with the other Peshawarcommanders, bin Laden in 1991 was clearly animportant part of the CIA’s effort to establish apro-Pakistan regime in Kabul. So, a yearearlier, had been the blind Sheikh Omar AbdulRahman:

In 1990, after the assassination ofAbdullah Azzam, Abd al-Rahmanwas invited to Peshawar, where hishost was Khalid al-Islambouli,brother of one of the assassins ofSadat…. On this trip, reportedlypaid for by the CIA, Abd al-Rahmanpreached to the Afghans about thenecessity of unity to overthrow theKabul regime. 120

This presumably was shortly before SheikhAbdul Rahman, even though he was on a StateDepartment terrorist watch list after beingimprisoned for the murder of Egyptianpresident Anwar Sadat, was issued a multiple-entry U.S. visa in 1990 “by a CIA officerworking undercover in the consular section ofthe American embassy in Sudan.”121 This wasthe same CIA-sponsored program that six yearsearlier had admitted Ali Mohamed, “a visa-waiver program that was … designed to shieldvaluable assets or those who have performedvaluable services for the country.”122

And Ali Mohamed himself was, according to theNew York Times, part of the CIA’s plan for amilitary solution: “In the fall of 1992, Mr.Mohamed returned to fight in Afghanistan,training rebel commanders in military tactics,

United States officials said.”123 Before this,Mohamed had been charged with the majortask of moving bin Laden, his four wives, andhis seventeen children from Afghanistan toSudan. The task was a major one, for Osamamoved with his assistants, “a stable of Arabianhorses, and bulldozers.”124

Meanwhile Saudi royal support for this web ofradical organizations, in which Ali Mohamedwas a central organizer and trainer, continuedafter the WTC bombing of 1993. The Turki-binLaden connection, which was cemented byTurki's chief of staff and bin Laden's teacherAhmed Badeeb, may have been renewed as lateas 1998:

In sworn statements after 9/11,former Taliban intelligence chiefMohammed Khaksar said that in1998 the prince sealed a dealunder which bin Laden undertooknot to attack Saudi targets. Inreturn, Saudi Arabia would providefunds and material assistance tothe Taliban…. Saudi businesses,meanwhile, would ensure thatmoney also flowed directly to binLaden. Turki would deny after 9/11that any such deal was done withbin Laden. One account has it,however, that he himself met withbin Laden – his old protégé fromthe days of the anti-Soviet jihad –during the exchanges that led tothe deal.125

Royal Saudi Financing for Bin Laden,Including His Move to the Sudan

Summers also transmits insider reports

that at least two Saudi princes hadbeen paying, on behalf of thekingdom, what amounted to

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protection money since 1995. Theformer official added, “The dealwas, they would turn a blind eye towhat he was doing elsewhere. ‘Youdon’t conduct operations here, andwe won’t disrupt them elsewhere.’”

American and British officialsources, speaking later with SimonHenderson, Baker Fellow at theWashington Institute for Near EastPolicy, named the two princes inquestion. They were, Hendersontold the authors, Prince Naif, theinterior minister, and PrinceSultan. The money involved in thealleged payments, according toHenderson ’s sources , hadamounted to “hundreds of millionsof dollars.” It had been “Saudiofficial money—not their own.”126

Prince Naif bin Abdul-Aziz

It would appear moreover that Saudi royalmoney may have helped pay for Bin Laden’smove to the Sudan in 1991-92: the moveorganized by Ali Mohamed, possibly incollaboration with bin Laden’s family. There ishotly contested evidence that Osamaparticipated with his brothers in theconstruction of the Port Sudan airport, a

project underwritten with funds from the Saudiroyal family.127 According to Lawrence Wright,“the Saudi Binladin Group got the contract tobuild an airport in Port Sudan, which broughtOsama frequently into the country to overseethe construction. He finally moved to Khartoumin 1992….”128

Not contested, but largely overlooked, is theevidence of how bin Laden financed his move,through investing $50 million in the Sudaneseal-Shamal Islamic bank – a bank that also hadsupport from both the bin Laden family and theSaudi royal family. As the Chicago Tribunereported in November 2001,

Al Shamal Islamic Bank

Accord ing to a 1996 Sta teDepartment report on bin Laden’sfinances, bin Laden co-founded theAl Shamal bank with a group ofwealthy Sudanese and capitalizedit with $50 million of his inheritedfortune…..129

According to public records,among the investors in the AlShamal Islamic Bank is a Geneva-b a s e d f i n a n c i a l s e r v i c e sconglomerate headed by Prince

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Mohamed al-Faisal al-Saud,[brother of Prince Turki], son ofthe late King [Faisal al-] Saud anda cousin [i.e. nephew] of thecurrent Saudi monarch, King Fahd.

The Al Shamal bank, which openedfor business in 1990, admits thatOsama bin Laden held threeaccounts there between 1992 and1997, when he used Sudan as hisbase of operations before fleeing toAfghanistan. But the bank insistsin a written statement that binLaden “was never a founder or ashareholder of Al Shamal IslamicBank.”

Told of the bank’s statement, theState Department official repliedthat “we stand by” the assertionthat bin Laden put $50 million intothe bank.

T h e A l S h a m a l b a n k d o e sacknowledge that among its five“main founders” and principalshareholders is another Khartoumbank, the Faisal Islamic Bank ofSudan.130 According to publicrecords, 19 percent of the FaisalIslamic Bank is owned by the DarAl-Maal Al-Islami Trust, headed bySaudi Prince [Mohammed al-Faisal] al-Saud.

(The Dar Al-Mal Al-Islami or DMI Trust, “basedin the Bahamas and with its operations centerin Geneva,” was one of a spate of banks, mostlydominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, thatwere set up with western guidance andassistance – in DMI’s case the assistance camefrom Price Waterhouse and eventually HarvardUniversity.131 DMI was one of the two mainbanks which, according to Jane’s IntelligenceReview, had been funding the Makhtab andalso the International Is lamic Rel ief

Organization (IIRO), of which more below.)132

The $3.5 billion DMI Trust, whoseslogan is “Allah is the purveyor ofsuccess,” was founded 20 yearsago to foster the spread of Islamicbanking across the Muslim world.Its 12-member board of directorsinc ludes Haydar MohamedBinladen, according to a DMIspokesman, a half-brother ofOsama bin Laden…..

Though small, the Al ShamalIslamic Bank enabled bin Laden tomove money quickly from onecountry to another through itscorrespondent relationships withsome of the world’s major banks,several of which have beensuspended since Sept. 11.

The Al Shamal bank was identifiedas one of bin Laden’s principalfinancial entities during the trialearlier this year of four Al Qaedaoperatives convicted in the 1998bombings of two U.S. embassies inAfrica.133

One might have expected this early andrevealing insight into bin Laden’s finances tohave been developed in the spate of privilegedbin Laden and al-Qaeda books that appeared inthe years after 2001. In fact I have located onlyone brief inconsequential reference, in SteveColl’s The Bin Ladens: “Osama had reorganizedhis personal banking at the Al-Shamal Bank inKhartoum, but his accounts gradually driedup.”134

There is of course no mention of the al-ShamalBank in the 9/11 Commission Report.

U.S. and Saudi Protection for Osama binLaden’s Brother-in-Law, Mohammed Jamal

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Khalifa

It seems clear that the 1980s official USG blockagainst antiterrorism actions that mightembarrass the Saudis was still in force inAmer ica in 1995 . We see th i s in theextraordinary federal protection extended toMohamed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’sbest friend and brother-in-law.

On December 16, 1994, the San Francisco FBIarrested Khalifa in Morgan Hills (not far fromAli Mohamed’s home). Khalifa’s business cardhad been discovered in a search one yearearlier of Sheikh Rahman’s residence, afterwhich he had been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Landmarks case. Soonafterwards, a State Department cabledescribed him as

a known financier of terroristoperations and an officer of anIslamic NGO in the Philippines thatis a known Hamas front. He isunder indictment in Jordan inconnection with a series of cinemabombings earlier this year.135

Khalifa, in other words, was like Ali Mohamedinvolved in terrorist operations on aninternational level. He was an important sourceof information and talked freely to the FBIagents who arrested him. In his possession theyfound “documents that connected Islamicterrorist manuals to the International IslamicRelief Organization, the group that he hadheaded in the Philippines.”136 And in hisnotebook they found evidence linking himdirectly to Ramzi Yousef, who at the time wasthe FBI’s most-wanted terrorist for his role inthe 1993 WTC bombing.

But as Peter Lance narrates, “The Feds nevergot a chance to question him.” Instead, inJanuary 1995, a decision was made bySecretary of State Warren Christopher and

supported by Deputy Attorney General JamieGorelick to whisk Khalifa from the UnitedStates to Jordan for trial, where he was soon“acquitted of terrorism charges and allowed tomove to Saudi Arabia.”137 There “Saudi officialsgreeted him at the airport.”138

“I remember people at CIA whowere ripshit at the time” over thedecision, says Jacob L. Boesen, anEnergy Department analyst thenw o r k i n g a t t h e C I A ’ sCounterterrorism Center. “Noteven speaking in retrospect, butcontemporaneous with what theintelligence community knewabout b in Laden, Khal i fa ’sdeportation was unreal.” 1 3 9

Even more unreal was the decision of a court ina civil case to return to Khalifa before hisdeportation the contents of his luggage,including his notebook and other computerfiles.140

I believe that Peter Lance, after all hismeticulous scholarship, failed to identify whowas really being protected by this evasivemeasure. He writes that Khalifa, from 1983 to1991, “had been trusted by al Qaeda withrunning the Philippines branch of theInternational Islamic Relief Organization(IIRO), one of their key NGOs.”141

But the IIRO was in the hands of a far greaterpower than al-Qaeda, which in any case did notexist in 1983. It was a charitable organizationthat had been authorized in 1979 by Saudiroyal decree, as an affiliate of another keyinstitution of the royal family, the MuslimWorld League (MWL).142 According to formerCIA officer Robert Baer, the IIRO has been run“with an iron hand” by Prince Salman ibnAbdul-Aziz al Saud (the brother of Saudi KingAbdullah), who “personally approved allimportant appointments and spending.”143

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International Islamic Relief Organization

The creation date of 1979 reflects theimportant shift in that year of the Saudi royalfamily’s attitude towards the political Islamismof the Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwan (of whichMohammed Jamal Khalifa was a seniormember). As already noted, 1979 was the yearradical Wahhabis, seized the Grand Mosque atMecca. In response, the Saudi familyfoundations like the IIRO began to subsidizethe emigration of the Muslim Brotherhood.144

Thus Khalifa’s status in the IIRO was notanomalous. Besides the bombings in Jordan,the IIRO has also been linked to support ofterrorists in the Philippines,145 India,146

Indonesia,147 Canada,148 Albania, Chechnya,Kenya,149 and other countries, notably Bosnia.150

In particular Khalifa personally has beenaccused of financing the Philippine terroristgroup Abu Sayyaf (which in 1993 hadkidnapped an American Bible translator).151 Yet“The U.S. government has not designatedKhalifa as a financial supporter of terrorism.”152

U.S. and Royal Protection for Al-QaedaPlotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

The Saudi royal protection for Jamal Khalifawas more than matched by the Qatari royalprotection of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM),Ramzi Yousuf’s uncle and co-conspirator in thePhilippines. The 9/11 Commission, who judgedKSM to be “the principal architect of the 9/11attacks,” made a muted acknowledgment ofthis Qatari protection of him:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed --Yousef's uncle, then located inQatar -- was a fellow plotter ofYousef's in the Manila air plot andhad also wired him some moneyprior to the Trade Center bombing.The U.S. Attorney obtained anindictment against KSM in January1996, but an of f ic ia l in thegovernment of Qatar probablywarned him about it. Khalid SheikhMohammed evaded capture (andstayed at large to play a centralpart in the 9/11 attacks).153

From other sources, notably Robert Baer whowas then a CIA officer in Qatar, we learn thatthe “official” was Sheikh Abdallah bin Khalidbin Hamad al-Thani, the Qatari minister of theInterior and the brother of then Qatari EmirSheikh Hamad bin Khalid al-Thani.154 Accordingto ABC News,

Mohammed is believed to have fledQatar with a passport provided bythat country's government. He isalso believed to have been given ahome in Qatar as well as a job atthe Department of Public WaterWorks. Officials also said binLaden himself visited Abdallah binKhalid al-Thani in Qatar betweenthe years of 1996 and 2000.155

The 9/11 Commission Report itself, in a

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footnote, notes that

Although KSM claims that SheikhAbdallah was not a member,financier, or supporter of al Qaeda,he admits that Abdallah under-wrote a 1995 trip KSM took to jointhe Bosnia jihad.156

This admission is hard to reconcile with theCommission’s official finding that

It does not appear that anygovernment other than the Talibanfinancially supported al Qaedabefore 9/11, although somegovernments may have containedal Qaeda sympathizers who turneda blind eye to al Qaeda’s fund-raising activities.157

In 2013 the Syrian nightmare finally made USmedia admit, in the words of The Atlantic, thatQatar is “a global financial backer of theBrotherhood.”158 This admission considerablycomplicates the earlier establishmentstereotype of political Islamists like KSM as“non-state actors.”159

In Triple Cross, Peter Lance, who does notmention KSM’s escape from Qatar, focusesinstead on the way that, later in the same year,U.S. federal prosecutors kept his name out ofthe trial of Ramzi Yousuf in connection with the1993 World Trade Center bombing:

Assistant U.S. Attorneys MikeGarc ia and D ie t r i ch Sne l lpresented a riveting, evidencecase… and characterized thematerial retrieved from Ramzi’sToshiba laptop as ‘the mostdevastating evidence of all.”….While Yousuf’s Toshiba laptop…

contained the full details of theplot later executed on 9/11, not aword o f tha t scenar io wasmentioned during trial. …. Mostsurprising, during the entiresummer-long trial, the name of thefourth Bojinka conspirator, KhalidS h a i k h M o h a m m e d … w a smentioned by name only once, inreference to a letter found in[Yousuf’s apartment].160

Lance repeatedly suggests that U.S.prosecutors in New York, and particularlyDietrich Snell, were responsible for minimizingthe role of Khalid Sheikh Mohamed and othershortcomings, because they were seeking “tohide the ful l truth behind the JusticeDepartment’s failures.”161 But the matter ofKSM’s escape in 1996, like the release of JamalKhalifa, was sensitive at a much higher levelthan that of prosecutors. It was a matter thatreached back into the black hole that isrepresented by the ultimate United Statesdependency on Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and OPEC,for the defense of the petrodollar.

In other words, the suppression of KSM’s namewas not surprising at all. On the contrary, itwas totally consistent with one of the mostsensitive and controversial features of the 9/11story: the much-discussed fact that before CIAtwo counterterrorist officers protected two ofthe alleged future hijackers from detection andsurveillance by the FBI.

Federal Protection for Alleged 9/11Hijackers

Morgenthau’s hypothesis that the CIA wasprotecting Saudi criminal assets receivedfurther corroboration in the wake of 9/11.T h e r e i s n o w e v i d e n c e , m u c h o f i tsystematically suppressed by the 9/11Commission, that before 9/11 CIA officersRichard Blee and Tom Wilshire inside the CIA’sBin Laden Unit, along with FBI agents such as

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Dina Corsi, were protecting from investigationand arrest two of the eventual alleged hijackerson 9/11, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi-- much as the FBI had protected Ali Mohamedfrom arrest in 1993.

There are also indications that al-Mihdhar andal-Hazmi, like Hampton-El before them, mayhave been receiving funds indirectly from theSaudi Embassy in Washington:

“[B]etween 1998 and 2002, up toUS$73,000 in cashier cheques wasfunneled by [Saudi AmbassadorPrince] Bandar's wife Haifa - whoonce described the elder Bushes aslike "my mother and father" - totwo Californian families known tohave bankrolled al-Midhar and al-Hazmi. … Princess Haifa sent

regular monthly payments ofbetween $2,000 and $3,500 toMajeda Dweikat, wife of OsamaBasnan, believed by variousinvestigators to be a spy for theSaudi government. Many of thecheques were signed over to ManalBajadr, wife of Omar al-Bayoumi,himself suspected of covertlyworking for the kingdom. TheBasnans, the al-Bayoumis and thetwo 9/11 hijackers once shared thesame apartment block in SanDiego. It was al-Bayoumi whogreeted the killers when they firstarrived in America, and providedthem, among other assistance,with an apartment and socialsecurity cards. He even helped themen enroll at flight schools inFlorida.”162

The Report of the Joint Congressional Inquiryinto 9/11 (pp. 173-77), though very heavilyredacted at this point, supplies corroboratinginformation, including a report that Basnan hadonce hosted a party for the “Blind Sheikh”Omar Abdul Rahman. In other words, theCongressional investigation found indicationsthat those supporting the Islamist conspiratorsof 1993, were in 2001 supporting thoseeventually accused of 9/11.

The 9/11 Commission Report, overruling FBIreports, simply denied that Saudi embassymoney had supported the two hijackers.163 Itrecognized that there had been an intelligencefailure with respect to the al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, but treated it as an accident that mightnot have occurred “if more resources had beenapplied.”164 This explanation, however, hassince been rejected by 9/11 CommissionChairman Tom Kean. Asked if the failure todeal appropriately with al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi could have been a simple mistake, Keanreplied:

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Oh, it wasn’t careless oversight. Itwas purposeful. No question aboutthat .… The conclusion that wecame to was that in the DNA ofthese organizations was secrecy.And secrecy to the point of ya don’tshare it with anybody.165

In 2011 an important book by Kevin Fenton,Disconnecting the Dots, demonstratedconclusively that the withholding waspurposive, and sustained over a period ofeighteen months.166 This interference andmanipulation became particularly blatant andcontroversial in the days before 9/11.167

Before reading Fenton’s book, I was satisfiedwith Lawrence Wright’s speculation that theCIA may have wanted to recruit the two Saudis;and that “The CIA may also have beenprotecting an overseas operation [possibly inconjunction with Saudi Arabia] and was afraidthat the F.B.I. would expose it.”168 However, Iam now persuaded that Lawrence Wright’sexplanation, that the CIA was protecting acovert operation, may explain the beginnings ofthe withholding in January 2000, but cannotexplain its renewal, after a quiescent period, inthe days just before 9/11.

Fenton analyzes a list of thirty-five differentoccasions where the two alleged hijackers wereprotected in this fashion, from January 2000 toabout September 5, 2001, less than a weekbefore the hijackings.169 In his analysis, theincidents fall into two main groups. In theearlier incidents he sees an intention “to covera CIA operat ion that was a l ready inprogress.”170 However after “the system wasblinking red” in the summer of 2001, and theCIA expected an imminent attack, Fenton cansee no other explanation than that “the purposeof withholding the information had become toallow the attacks to go forward.”171

In support of Fenton’s conclusion, there isevidence (not mentioned by him) indicatingthat in mid-2001 the CIA’s CounterterrorismCenter (CTC), who were the chief suppliers ofthe CIA protection, believed an al-Qaeda attackwas imminent, and that al-Mihdhar wasimpor tan t t o i t . On Augus t 15 , C IACounterterrorism Chief Cofer Black told asecret Pentagon conference, “We’re going to bestruck soon…. Many Americans are going todie, and it could be in the U.S.”172 Three weeksearlier, CTC Deputy Chief Tom Wilshire hadwritten that ““When the next big op is carriedout… Khallad [bin Attash] will be at or near thetop ….Khalid Midhar should be very highinterest.”173 Yet Wilshire (like his superior,Richard Blee), instead of telling the FBI whathe knew about al-Mihdhar, did the opposite: he

not only failed to tell anyone elseinvolved in the hunt [for Al-Mihdhar] that Almihdhar wouldlikely soon be a participant in amajor al-Qaeda attack inside theUS, but also supported a dubiousprocedure which meant that theFBI was only able to focus afraction of the resources it had onthe hunt.174

Fenton’s serious al legation has to beconsidered in the light of the earlier instancesof protection we have surveyed:

1) the protection given to Salamehand Abouhalima in the 1990Kahane murder, leaving them freeto participate in the 1993 WorldTrade Center bombing;

2) the failure for two or three yearsto process A l i Mohamed ’sdocuments seized in 1990, whichcould have prevented the 1993World Trade Center bombing;

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3) the release of Ali Mohamed fromRCMP detention in 1993, leavinghim free to participate in the 1998Nairobi Embassy bombing;

4) the treatment of Ali Mohamedas an “unindicted coconspirator” inthe 1993 WTC bombing case andLandmarks case, leaving him freeto participate in the 1998 NairobiEmbassy bombing.

An On-Going Cover-Up That Did Not Endwith 9/11

There are other indicators that these eventswere part of a single long-term cover-up, onethat is still on-going. One of the connectors isSheikh Abdul Rahman’s Al-Salaam Mosque inJersey City, visited by Ali Mohamed and histrainees in 1989, and allegedly frequented bytwo of the alleged 9/11 hijackers (MohamedAtta and Marwan al-Shehhi) in 2000-01.175

Next door to the Mosque in Jersey City was theSphinx Trading Company, whose incorporatorand director, Waleed Abouel Nour, was like AliMohamed listed as an unindicted coconspiratorin the 1995 Landmarks conspiracy case. (TheNew York Times later reported that the FBIhad identified Nour as a terrorist.)176

At m in imum [ s i c ] , two A l iMohamed-trained members of theNew York cell -- El Sayyid Nosairand Siddig Al i Siddig - - areconfirmed to have kept mailboxesat Sphinx Trading during the1990s, as did the blind Sheikhhimself. A decade later, themailboxes were still being used bya l Q a e d a - l i n k e dterrorists.Testifying in a sealedproceeding in 2002, a New Jerseypoliceman said the FBI told himthat "several of the hijackers

involved in the September 11thevent also had mailboxes at thatlocation." Police searched theoffice of a New Jersey businessman[Mohamed el-Atriss] whose nameappeared on the Sphinx TradingCo. incorporation papers and foundthe names and phone numbers ofseveral hijackers among hispapers . The bus inessmaneventually admitted having soldfake identification cards to two ofthe hijackers.177

[One of the fake IDs was given to Khalid al-Mihdhar.]178

This important inquiry into the infrastructure ofthe Ali Mohamed connection was quickly shutdown by the FBI:

The police officer testified in 2002that the FBI had shut down theNew Jersey police investigation ofthese connections, withoutexplanation but amid unconfirmedrumors (reported by the New YorkTimes) that the businessman washimself an FBI informant. Allterrorism charges against thebusinessman were eventuallydropped.179

The Saudi-American Petroleum Complexand the Defense of the Petrodollar

This on-going cover-up of a terroristinfrastructure spanning a decade is mirroredby the censorship of the Joint Inquiry findingsabout Osama Basnan, involved in the pass-through of Saudi Embassy funds to al-Mihdhar,and earlier the host of a party for Sheikh AbdulRahman. One factor enabling the cover-up isthe overarching and little understood U.S.-Saudi relationship. To understand it we must

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also consider the context of petrodollars, OPECand the major oil companies.

The export of Saudi oil, paid for by allcustomers in U.S. dollars, and in the U.S. caselargely offset by the export of U.S. arms toSaudi Arabia, is a major underpinning ofAmerica’s petrodollar economy. As I havedocumented elsewhere, its current strength issupported by OPEC's requirement (secured bya secret agreement in the 1970s between theUS and Saudi Arabia and continuing to thisday) that all OPEC oil sales be denominated indollars.180 $600 billion of the Saudi dollarearnings have been reinvested abroad, most ofit in U.S. corporations like Citibank (where thetwo largest shareholders are members of theSaudi Royal family).181

This fusion of U.S. and Saudi governinginterests is as much political as economic. Thefirst oil price hikes of 1972-73, arranged byNixon with the King of Saudi Arabia and theShah of Iran, helped pay to arm Iran and SaudiArabia as U.S. proxies in the region, followingthe withdrawal of British troops from theregion in 1971.182 The oil price hikes of1979-80, on the other hand, were assuredly notthe intention of President Carter, a politicalvictim of the increases. They have howeverbeen credibly attributed to the work of oilmajors like BP, possibly acting in collusion withRepublicans; and had the result of helping toelect Ronald Reagan (as well as MargaretThatcher in England).183

I am suggesting that there is a high-level fusionof interests between the U.S. and Saudigovernments, oil companies and banks (not tomention facilitating alliances like the CarlyleGroup) which the CIA tends to representcontinuously, and not just ad hoc for the sakeof any one particular goal. The on-goingprotection given through the years to criminalslike Salameh, Ali Mohamed, al-Mihdhar, and al-Hazmi should be seen as consequences of thishigh-level fusion of interests. Needless to add,

the 99 percent of ordinary American people,having as a result now suffered a series ofrecurring attacks (the first World Trade Centerbombing, the 1998 Embassy bombings, possiblyeven 9/11 itself), have been losers from thisarrangement.

I am confident that the mystery of USGprotection to terrorists can be traced in part tothis “roof” of inscrutable governmental,financial, and corporate relationships betweenthe United States and Saudi Arabia. There is a“black hole” at the center of this roof in whichthe interests of governments, petrodollarbanks, intelligence agencies, and multinationaloil companies, are all inscrutably mixed.

This multinational pyramid, with interests atodds with the American people’s, is growingstronger. In March 2007 the major U.S.corporation Halliburton, one of the primeforces behind U.S. involvement in the Caspianbasin, announced it would “open a corporateheadquarters in the United Arab Emirates cityof Dubai and move its chairman and chiefexecutive, David J. Lesar, there.”184 One can seewhy. The UAE is a corporate paradise, with lowtaxes and unions forbidden by law.185

Haliburton in Dubai

Its petrodollars empower it to counter trendstoward a more democratic Middle East: forexample, the $8 billion aid now promised fromthe UAE and the Saudis to al-Sisi after the

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military coup in Egypt now marginalizes thepaltry $1.5 billion annual aid package from theUnited States.186

And in the UAE there will be increasinglysophisticated infrastructure for a global reach,immune from popular oversight. A secretAmerican-led mercenary army is being puttogether for the UAE by Erik Prince, thebillionaire founder of Blackwater, who is now aUAE resident.187 In 2013 the UAE also hiredBooz Allen, one of the National SecurityAgency’s most important contractors “toreplicate the world’s largest and most powerfulspy agency in the sands of Abu Dhabi.”188

Still at the apex of this pyramid are probablythe banks and the colossi of the military-industrial-petroleum complex. FranklinRoosevelt wrote to Col. House in 1933: “Thereal truth . . . is, as you and I know, that afinancial element in the larger centers hasowned the Government ever since the days ofAndrew Jackson.”189 A year later Senator GeraldNye, a Republican, presided over a series ofinfluential hearings into munitions companiesand banks, after which Sen. Nye commentedthat it was “altogether fair to say that thesebankers [referring to the “house of Morgan”]were in the heart and center of a system thatmade our going to war inevitable.”190

That inevitability appears to have beenreinforced by the introduction of swollen Saudioil profits into the American political system.Adnan Khashoggi, a wealthy political fixer ofthe 1960s and 1970s, is said to have once left abriefcase containing one million dollars withNixon at his Western White House, and to haveheld deposits of $200 million in the bank ofNixon’s crony Bebe Rebozo.191 In 1977 Saudibillionaires Khalid bin Mahfouz and GhaithPharaon teamed up with former TexasGovernor John Connally to buy the Main Bankin Houston – a bank distinguished by its “highlyunusual “ practice of obtaining and disbursing“more than ten million dollars a month in

hundred dollar bills.”192 Khalid bin Mahfouzalso “helped finance the Houston skyscraperfor the Texas Commerce Bank, in which[Reagan’s Chief of Staff] James Baker had asignificant stake.”193 Repeated investments inthe struggling oil company of the young GeorgeW. Bush (Arbusto, later part of Harken Energy),led to speculation by “a knowledgeable Saudisource” that they “may have been part of thesame strategy the Saudis had of investing inU.S. companies that were connected topowerful politicians.”194

George W. Bush and Prince bin Sultan

If we are ever to free our state from theinvisible deep state behind it, and protect ourinstitutions and people from onslaughts offoreign wealth, a first step, I am convinced,must be a closer public examination of ourpseudo-war on terror.

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomatand English Professor at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, is the author of Drugs Oila n d W a r(https://apjjf.org/admin/site_manage/details),T h e R o a d t o 9 / 1 1(http://amzn.com/0520237730?tag=theasipacjo0b-20), and The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, andt h e D e e p P o l i t i c s o f W a r(http://amzn.com/0980121361?tag=theasipacjo0b-20). His most recent book is American War

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Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global DrugConnection and the Road to Afghanistan(http://amzn.com/0742555941?tag=theasipacjo0b-20). His website, which contains a wealth ofh i s w r i t i n g s , i s h e r e(http://www.peterdalescott.net/q.html) .

Recommended citation: Peter Dale Scott, "TheFalsified War on Terror: How The US HasProtected Some of Its Enemies," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 40, No. 2,October 7, 2013.

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Notes

1 Dana Priest and William Arkin, Top SecretAmerica: The Rise of the New AmericanSecurity State (New York: Little Brown, 2011),52.

2 E.g. Marc Ambinder and D.G. Grady, DeepState: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry(New York: Wiley, 2013); John Tirman, “TheQu ie t Coup : No , Not Egypt . Here , ”Huf f ing tonPos t , Ju ly 9 , 2013 , here(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-tirman/nsa-deep-state_b_3569316.html).

3 Erich Lichtblau, “In Secret, Court VastlyBroadens Powers of N.S.A.,” New York Times,July 6, 2013.

4 In addition there are unproven allegationsthat the United States granted a green card toAyman al Zawahiri, identified in the 9/11Commission Report (p. 57) as “the mostimportant Egyptian in bin Laden’s circle,” andsince 2011 the leader of al-Qaeda (NafeezMosaddeq Ahmed, The War On Truth: 9/11,Disinformation And The Anatomy Of Terrorism[Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2005],46). It is not contested that “Foreign trialtranscripts and U.S. court records confirmedthat Zawahiri had previously flown to America,once in the early 1990s, and again in 1994….

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Ali Mohamed, bin-Laden’s American-trainedmilitary adviser, served as Zawahiri’s hostduring the 1994 American fundraisingcampaign” (Jayna Davis, The third terrorist: theMiddle East connection to the Oklahoma Citybombing [Nashville, TN: WND Books, 2004],318-19).

5 Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: InsideAmerica’s War on Terror (New York: FreePress, 2004), 30.

6 It is relevant that in 2011 the U.S. providedassistance to the armed overthrow of Gaddafiin Libya, by a violent resistance force in whichthe MB were prominent. See Peter Dale Scott,"The Libyan War, American Power and theDecline of the Petrodollar System",” Asian-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, April 27, 2011,here (https://apjjf.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3522).

7 E.g. Mark Mazzetti, “Spy Agencies Say IraqWar Worsens Terrorism Threat,” New YorkT i m e s , S e p t e m b e r 2 3 , 2 0 0 6 , h e r e(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/world/middleeast/24terror.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0).

8 A recent FBI circular instructs enforcementofficials that people should be “consideredsuspicious” of possible involvement in "terroristactivity" if they hold the "attitude" described as"Conspiracy theories about Westerners” (RalphLopez, “FBI calls half of populace with 9/11doubts potential terrorists,” Crime, September1 9 , 2 0 1 3 , h e r e(http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/358624);citing FBI circular, "Potential Indicators ofTerrorist Activities Related to Sleepers”).

9 Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié,Ben Laden: la vérité interdite (Paris: Denoël,2001), 14.

10 Robert Baer, See No Evil: the true story of aground soldier in the CIA's war on terrorism(New York: Crown Publishers, 2002), 243-44;discussion in Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, oil, andwar: the United States in Afghanistan,

Colombia, and Indochina (Lanham, MD:Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). 28-31; The Roadto 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future ofAmerica (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 2007), 170-72.

11 Cf. my enlargement of the concept of anAmerican deep state beyond paral lelgovernment in Peter Dale Scott, American WarMachine (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,2010), 20-23; Peter Dale Scott, “The ‘DeepState’ behind U.S. democracy,” VoltaireNet,A p r i l 6 , 2 0 1 1 , h e r e(http://www.voltairenet.org/article169316.html); etc.

12 All of America’s military engagements since1950 have involved defense of the petrodollarsystem. See Peter Dale Scott, “The Libyan War,American Power and the Decline of thePetrodollar System,” Asian-Pacific Journal:J a p a n F o c u s , A p r i l 2 7 , 2 0 1 1 , h e r e(https://apjjf.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3522).

13 Peter Lance, Triple Cross: How bin Laden'sMaster Spy Penetrated the CIA, the GreenBerets, and the FBI -- and Why PatrickFitzgerald Failed to Stop Him (New York:Regan/ HarperCollins, 2006), 120-25. Cf.Toronto Globe and Mail, November 22, 2001;Tim Weiner, Enemies: a history of the FBI (NewYork: Random House, 2012), 397.

14 Ali H. Soufan, The Black Banners: The InsideStory of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda(New York: Norton, 2011), 75-77.

15 Lance, Triple Cross, 373. Cf. J.M. Berger,“Paving the Road to 9/11,” Intelwire, here(http://intelwire.egoplex.com/unlocking911-1-ali-mohamed-911.html): “Ali Mohamed was theutility player who created al Qaeda's terroristinfrastructure in the United States -- a series ofconnections, ideas, techniques and specifictools used by the [9/11] plot's hijackers andmasterminds…. Mohamed described teachingal Qaeda terrorists how to smuggle box cuttersonto airplanes.”

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16 Lance, Triple Cross, 123-24.

1 7 Soufan, The Black Banners, 561. Thetestimony of former FBI agents like Ali Soufanthat Mohamed was not incarcerated has beenchallenged in a curious book by Special Forcesveteran Pete Blaber, The Mission, The Men,and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta ForceCommander (New York: Berkley Trade, 2010).Blaber claims to have interviewed Mohamed ina prison cell, after reading Mohamed’sperceptive document on how to track downOsama bin Laden. Blaber argues strenuouslythat Mohamed was not a double agent, but failsto deal with any of the countervailing evidence(such as the RCMP release).

18 “D.E.A. Deployed Mumbai Plotter DespiteWarning,” New York Times, November 8, 2009;cf. Scott, American War Machine, 246-47. Cf.The Globe and Mail (Canada), May 26, 2011:“FBI thought Mumbai massacre plotter workedfor them, court told.” Another much simplerdomestic example of this puzzle is RichardAoki, the FBI informant who in the 1960ssupplied the Black Panthers in Oakland witharms (Seth Rosenfeld, Subversives: The FBI'sWar on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise toPower [New York: Macmillan, 2012], 418-24,etc.).

19 Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth,Empire, and the Future of America (Berkeley:University of California Press, 2007), 151-60.For a summary, see Peter Dale Scott, "Bosnia,Kosovo, and Now Libya: The Human Costs ofWashington's On-Going Collusion withTerrorists," Asian-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus,J u l y 2 9 , 2 0 1 1 , h e r e(https://apjjf.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3578).

20 Steven Emerson, American jihad: theterrorists living among us (New York: FreePress, 2002), 57-58; Peter L. Bergen, Holy war,Inc.: inside the secret world of Osama binLaden (New York: Free Press, 2001), 135;Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-

Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf,2006), 181-82. Wright gives a detailedsummary of John Zent’s ensuing interview withMohamed in May 1993, but says not a wordabout Zent’s intervention with the RCMP. Tomy knowledge the only privileged book to do sois Tim Weiner, Enemies: a history of the FBI(New York: Random House, 2012), 397: “Heexplained that he was working for the FBI andhe offered the telephone number of his Bureaucontact in San Francisco. The Canadiansreleased Mohamed after the agent vouched forhim.” Weiner’s relative candor came in 2012,long after this FBI scandal had already beenpublicized by Lance and other authors,including myself.

21 Cf. Washington Post, June 1, 2012: “Soufan'scase was unusual because he never worked forthe CIA. The PRB's [Publications ReviewBoard’s] authority [i.e. legal authority] isgrounded in the secrecy agreements signed byagency employees that require them to submitany material prepared for public disclosure‘either during my employment . . . or at anytimethereafter.’" In other words, the CIA’s PRB hadno legal right to censor Soufan’s book, but didso anyway – an example of the blurring of pastbureaucratic distinctions in today’s shadowstate.

22 Michael Scheuer, Osama bin Laden (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2011), 218n.

23 “Ali Mohamed Case,” Defense HumanResources Activity (DHRA), Department ofD e f e n s e , h e r e(http://www.dhra.mil/perserec/adr/counterterrorism/mohamed.htm); citing the Toronto Globeand Mail.

24 Benjamin Weiner and James Risen, “TheMasking of a Militant: A special report; ASoldier's Shadowy Trail In U.S. and in theMideast,” New York Times, December 1, 1998.This embarrassing exercise in damage controlcannot be found on Lexis Nexis.

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25 Peter Waldman, Gerald F. Seib, JerryMarkon, Christopher Cooper, “Sergeant ServedU.S. Army and bin Laden, Showing Failings inFBI's Terror Policing,” Wall Street Journal,November 26, 2001.

26 Daniel Coleman, Affidavit, Sealed Complaint,United States of America v Ali AbdelseoudMohamed, U.S. District Court, SouthernDistrict of New York, September 1998(obtained by INTELWIRE.com), p.7, here(http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fintelfiles.egoplex.com%2Fali-mohamed-coleman-affidavit.pdf&h=UAQFrJ-ys). In factMohamed had been an FBI informant since atleast 1992 (see below).

27 I had no choice but to remove certainrelevant material from The Road to 9/11. AsBritish and American lawyers pointed out tome, my sources had already retracted theirstatements before me.

2 8 Lance, Triple Cross , 125. Cf. StevenEmerson, “Osama bin Laden's SpecialOperations Man,” Journal of Counterterrorismand Security International, September 1, 1998,h e r e(http://www.investigativeproject.org/187/osama-bin-ladens-special-operations-man): “In aseemingly bizarre twist, while in California,Mohammed volunteered to provide informationto the FBI on a smuggling operations involvingMexicans and other aliens not connected toterrorist groups. Within time, officials say, therelationship allowed Mohammed to divert theFBI's attention away from looking at his realrole in terrorism into examining theinformation he gave them about othersmuggling.” But it could not have diverted theFBI’s attention for very long. By May 1993, fivemonths later, Mohamed had described to Zentin some detail his activities with Obama and al-Qaeda (Wright, Looming Tower, 181-82; J. M.Berger, ed., Ali Mohamed: An IntelwireSourcebook (Intelwire Press, 2006), 31-32).

29 Lance, Triple Cross, 95. Cf. Tim Weiner,Enemies, 397.

30 Lance, Triple Cross, 99. Similarly Tim Weinerwrites that the FBI agents handling Mohamed“did not comprehend him” (Weiner, Enemies: ahistory of the FBI, 397).

31 “Ali Mohamed Case,” Defense HumanResources Activity (DHRA), Department ofD e f e n s e , h e r e(http://www.dhra.mil/perserec/adr/counterterrorism/mohamed.htm), emphasis added.

32 Miller, Stone, Mitchell, The Cell, 90-91.

3 3 U.S. vs. Omar Abdel Rahman et al . ,September 11, 1995; quoted in Berger, AliMohamed, 210; cf. Lance, Triple Cross, 48.

34 “Sergeant Served U.S. Army and bin Laden,”Wall Street Journal, November 26, 2001: “Atthe time, the FBI wrote them off as harmlesszealots, fired up to help the mujahedeenfighting the Soviet puppet government inAfghanistan.”

35 Bergen, Holy War, Inc., 134. The al-KifahCenter (al-Kifah means “the struggle”) was“known informally as ‘the jihad office.’… Therewas no problem finding volunteers, who mightstay in Afghanistan up to three months at atime.... The volunteers joined the forces of theHezb-I-Islami (Party of Islam), led by GulbuddinHekmatyar" (Stephen Franklin, “Slain MuslimHad Link To Radical Cleric,” Chicago Tribune,J u l y 1 1 , 1 9 9 3 , h e r e(http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-07-11/news/9307110208_1_world-trade-center-bombing-sheik-omar-abdel-rahman-mustafa-shalabi).)

36 Mitchell D. Silber, The Al Qaeda Factor: PlotsAgainst the West (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 2012), 169-70.

37 Peter Bergen, Holy War, Inc., 130-31.

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38 Lawrence Wright, Looming Tower, 180;citing Boston Globe, February 3, 1995; cf.Robert Friedman, “The CIA’s Jihad,” NewYorker, March 17, 1995; Paul L. Williams, AlQaeda: brotherhood of terror ([Parsippany,NJ?]: Alpha, 2002), 117.

39 Lance Williams and Erik McCormick, "AlQaeda terrorist worked with FBI,” SanFrancisco Chronicle, November 4, 2001.

4 0 “Ali Mohamed Case,” Pentagon, here(http://www.dhra.mil/perserec/adr/counterterrorism/mohamed.htm).

41 Robert Friedman, “The CIA and the Sheik,”Village Voice, March 30, 1993; Evan Kohlmann,Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe (New York: Berg,2004), 26.

42 John Miller, Michael Stone, Chris Mitchell,The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBIand CIA Failed to Stop It (New York: Hyperion,2002), 44. Cf. J.M. Berger, Jihad Joe: Americanswho go to war in the name o f I s lam ,(Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2011), 44:“The stash included military training manualsand documents given to Nosair by Sergeant AliMohamed, the jihadist mole at Fort Bragg.”

43 Newsday, November 8, 1990.

44 New York Times, November 8, 1990.

45 New York Times, December 16, 1990.Compare the Pentagon’s terrorist account ofthe training given by Mohamed (“surveillance,weapons and explosives”) with the more benignversion in the long article about Mohamed inthe New York Times: “Mr. Mohamed met thelocal Muslims at an apartment in Jersey City,and taught them survival techniques, mapreading and how to recognize tanks and otherSoviet weapons, according to testimony by oneof his students at Mr. Nosair's 1995 Federaltrial” (Weiner and Risen, “The Masking of aMilitant: A special report,” New York Times,December 01, 1998).

46 TV journalist John Miller, a former New Yorkdeputy police commissioner who would laterbecome the FBI’s Assistant Director for PublicAffairs, reported in The Cell (44) that thedisputed evidence from Nosair’s home waswithheld from NYPD officer Edward Morris,who prepared the NYPD case against Nosair:“On the third day after the shooting, whileNorris was out to lunch, the FBI removedNosair's 16 boxes of files from Norris's squadroom. Unfortunately the evidence was about toenter a black hole. The FBI now says it turnedthe files the evidence was about to enter ablack hole. The FBI now says it turned the filesover to the Manhattan District Attorney'sOffice, after it was decided, following a seriesof meetings and phone calls, that the localprosecutor and the NYPD would have exclusivejurisdiction over the murder case. TheManhattan DA's office won't comment on whatwas done with the files before Nosair's trial,though Norris was never informed they wereavailable. But this much is certain: The bulk ofthe material remained untranslated and unreadfor nearly three years." [This last sentence ishard to reconcile with the detailed descriptiongiven at the time by Borelli.]

47 Friedman, “The CIA’s Jihad.”

48 Lance, Triple Cross, 58-62.

49 For the list, see Lance, Triple Cross, 574-75.

50 Steve Coll, Ghost wars: the secret history ofthe CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from theSoviet invasion to September 10, 2001 (NewYork: Penguin Press, 2004), 251.

51 Quoted in Peter Lance, Triple Cross, 383.

52 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, 255; “Since 1989 theFBI had been running paid informants insidecircles of Islamic radicals in New York and NewJersey. In 1990, the FBI carted away forty-seven boxes of documents and training manualsfrom the home of El Sayyid Nosair.” Cf. Lance,Triple Cross, 73-75, etc.

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53 Robert Friedman, “The CIA’s Jihad,” NewYorker, March 17, 1995.

54 Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game: how theUnited States helped unleash fundamentalistIslam (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003),73-79, 98-108, 120-25. Cf. Robert Baer (aformer CIA officer), Sleeping with the Devil(New York: Crown, 2003), 99: “The WhiteHouse looked on the Brothers as a silent ally, asecret weapon against (what e lse?)communism. This covert action started in the1950s with the Dulles brothers… when theyapproved Saudi Arabia’s funding of Egypt’sBrothers against Nasser;” Scott, Road to 9/11,44.

55 Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, 274-75; quoting JohnCooley, Unholy Wars (London: Pluto Press,1999), 31-32: “By the end of 1980, U.S. militarytrainers were sent to Egypt to impart the skillsof the U.S. Special Forces to those Egyptianswho would, in turn, pass on the training to theEgyptian volunteers flying to the aid of themujahideen in Afghanistan.”

56 Joseph J. Trento, Prelude to terror: the rogueCIA and the legacy of America's privateintelligence network (New York: Carrol andGraf, 2005), 150, 247.

5 7 “ A l i M o h a m e d C a s e , ” h e r e(http://www.dhra.mil/perserec/adr/counterterrorism/mohamed.htm).

58 Cf. Emerson, “Osama bin Laden's SpecialOperations Man:” “He had been in the UnitedStates earlier that decade, having graduated asa captain from a Special Forces Officers Schoolat Fort Bragg in 1981 in a program for visitingmilitary officials from foreign countries.”

59 Lance, Triple Cross, 194 (oath).

60 Scott, Road to 9/11, 161-62; citing Guardian(London), January 7, 1993; Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe, 16.

61 Ferrukh Mir, Half Truth (iUniverse.com,2011), 163-64: “In 1992, Ali Mohamed, adouble agent and ex-US Special Forces officerwith close ties to Al-Kifah, led a group of USmilitants who were all ex-US soldiers to trainand fight in Bosnia. Abu Obadiah Yahiya, an ex-US Marine and security chief at the Brooklynbranch, lead [sic] a second group of USmilitants to fight in Bosnia.” Cf. Mark Huband,Trading Secrets: spies and intelligence in anage of terror (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013),112; “Mohamed – using the nom-de-guerre Abu‘Abdallah – travelled to Bosnia as part of a teamwhich trained and armed Muslim fighters thereuntil June 1993, when he travelled on toKhartoum and was asked by bin Laden to setup the al-Qaeda cell in Nairobi, Kenya.”

62 Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe, 39-41;citing Steve Coll and Steve LeVine, “GlobalNetwork Provides Money, Haven,” WashingtonPost, August 3, 1993. Bin Laden also gavemoney to the Third World Relief Agency to buyweapons for Bosnian fighters (Anonymous[Michael Scheuer], Through our enemies' eyes:Osama bin Laden, radical Islam, and the futureof America [Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books,Inc., 2006], 151).

63 Scott, Road to 9/11, 149-50; Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe, 45, 73-75.

64 Scott, Road to 9/11, 149; Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe, 73. I have been unableto identify this Prince Faisal securely. He isperhaps Prince Faisal bin Salman bin AbdulazizAl Saud, who frequently visited the UnitedStates in connection with his horse-breedinginterests in Kentucky. In 2003 Gerald Posnerclaimed that Faisal’s older brother andbusiness partner Ahmed bin Salman had hadties to al-Qaeda and advance knowledge of 9/11(Gerald Posner, Why America slept: the failureto prevent 9/11 [New York: Random House,2003]), 202. Cf. Anthony Summers and RobbynDay, The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11and Bin Laden (New York: Ballantine Books,

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2011), 405-07, 419, 563-64.

65 Friedman, “The CIA’s Jihad.” About this time,Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 2013 the leader of al-Qaeda, came without difficulty to America toraise funds in Silicon Valley, where he washosted by Ali Mohamed (Lawrence Wright, NewYorker: “Zawahiri decided to look for money inthe world center of venture capitalism-SiliconValley. He had been to America once before, in1989, when he paid a recruiting visit to themujahideen's Services Bureau branch office inBrooklyn. According to the F.B.I., he returnedin the spring of 1993, this time to Santa Clara,California, where he was greeted by AliMohamed, the double agent.”)

66 Bruce O. Riedel, The Search for Al Qaeda: ItsLeadership, Ideology, and Future (Washington,D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2008), 43:“Osama also worked with ISI in the creation ofa key Kashmiri jihadist group in the late 1980s,the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.” Cf. Yossef Bodansky,Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War onAmerica (Rocklin, CA: Forum, 2001), 320.

67 Michael Scheuer, “Central Asia in Al-Qaeda’sVision of the Anti-American Jihad, 1979-2006,”China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly (2006), 3.

6 8 T h e B l a c k V a u l t(http://www.theblackvault.com/documents/capturediraq/mullah.pdf)

69 Ahmed Rashid, “They’re Only Sleeping: Whymilitant Islamicists in Central Asia aren’t goingto go away,” New Yorker, January 14, 2002,h e r e(http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/01/14/020114fa_FACT); cf. Ahmed Rashid, Jihad(New Haven: Yale UP, 2002), 165; SvanteCornell, “Narcotics, Radicalism and Security inCentral Asia: The Islamic Movement ofUzbekistan,” Uppsala University, December2004, 19: “Bolot Januzakov, Head of the KyrgyzSecurity Council, asserted in 2000 that the IMUcontrolled the majority, perhaps up to 70%, ofthe heroin entering Kyrgyzstan.”

70 Gretchen Peters, Seeds of Terror: HowHeroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and Al Qaeda(New York: Macmillan, 2009), 69, 87, 89,132-33.

71 Peters, Seeds of Terror, 132-33.

72 9/11 Commission, “Monograph on TerroristFinancing: Staff Report to the Commission,” 7.Cf. 9/11 Commission Report, 171: “Al Qaedahas been alleged to have used a variety ofillegitimate means, particularly drug traffickingand conflict diamonds, to finance itself…. Whilethe drug trade was a source of income for theTaliban, it did not serve the same purpose for alQaeda.” The footnote to this sentence (p. 499)adds: “No evidence indicates any suchinvolvement in drug trafficking, and none of thedetained al Qaeda operatives has indicated thatthis was a method of fund-raising.”

7 3 "Evidence Presented to the Brit ishP a r l i a m e n t , 4 t h O c t o b e r 2 0 0 1(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-binladen-evidence.story)," Los AngelesTimes, October 4, 2001. Cf. New York Times,October 4, 2001. For further documentation,see Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 32,36.

7 4 New York Times, 7/20/93. Cf. J. R. deSzigethy, "Crime Scene -- World Trade Center(http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_275.html)," AmericanMafia.com, September2004: "The murders [from the 1993 WTCbombing] were the result of a plot by membersof an organized crime syndicate involved indrug trafficking."

75 Jayna Davis, The Third Terrorist: The MiddleEast Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing(Nashville: WND Books/Thomas Nelson, 2004),303.

76 Boston Herald, 10/17/01; cf. 9/11 Report,175.

77 Cf. Scott, American War Machine.

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78 Steven Emerson, American jihad: theterrorists living among us (New York: FreePress, 2002), 28.

79 Yossef Bodansky, Terror! The Inside Story ofthe Terrorist Conspiracy in America (New York:S.P.I. Books, 1994), 166. Similarly GeraldPosner notes “rumors that [Mustafa] Shalabi[the head of the al-Kifah Center until he wasmurdered in February 1991] … might beinvolved in counterfeiting” (Posner, WhyAmerica slept, 8).

80 Berger, Jihad Joe, 37; citing USA v. Rahman,S5 93 Cr. 181, court transcript, April 3, 1995.

81 Scheuer, Through Our Enemies' Eyes, 151.

82 Emerson, American jihad, 28.

83 Bin Laden’s and al-Qaeda’s proximity toKhattab is both asserted and disputed at highlevels. See Robert W. Schaefer, The Insurgencyin Chechnya and the North Caucasus: fromgazavat to jihad (Santa Barbara, CA: PraegerSecurity International, 2011), 165-66.

84 Thomas Hegghammer. Jihad in Saudi Arabia:violence and pan-Islamism since 1979 (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 56.

85 Soufan, Black Banners, 62. Jeremy Scahillalso writes of Special Operations veterans inBlackwater with previous “experience inChechnya” (Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars: TheWorld Is a Battlefield [New York: Nation Books,2013], 408.).

86 Berger, Ali Mohamed, 18 (discussed below).

87 Yaroslav Trofimov, The Siege of Mecca: The1979 Uprising at Islam's Holiest Shrine (NewYork: Anchor, 2008).

88 Peter Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan:messianic terrorism, tribal conflicts, and thefa i lures of great powers (New York:PublicAffairs, 2011), 179-82, 195-99.

89 Coll, Ghost wars, 155. For Azzam’s and OBL’sMuslim Brotherhood memberships, see SteveColl, The Bin Ladens: an Arabian family in theAmerican century (New York: Penguin Press,2008), 148, 253.

90 Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oiland Fundamentalism in Central Asia (NewHaven: Yale UP, 2001), 131. Cf. Steven A.Yet iv , The Petro leum Tr iangle : Oi l ,Globalization, and Terror (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 2011), 65.

91 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 198.

92 Scott, Road to 9/11, 171; citing RajeevSharma, Pak Proxy War (New Delhi: KaveriBooks, 2002), 145-46.

93 Cf. John J. Loftus, “What Congress Does NotKnow about Enron and 9/11,” May 2003, here(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4219.htm): “The … block order, in force sincethe 1980’s, was against any investigation thatwould embarrass the Saudi Royal family.Originally, it was designed to conceal Saudisupport for Muslim extremists fighting againstthe Soviets in Afghanistan and Chechnya, but itwent too far. Oliver North noted in hisautobiography, that every time he tried to dosomething about terrorism links in the MiddleEast, he was told to stop because it mightembarrass the Saudis. This block remains inplace.”

94 Scott, Road to 9/11, 172; citing Greg Palastand David Pallister, “Intelligence: FBI ClaimsBin Laden Inquiry Was Frustrated,” Guardian,N o v e m b e r 7 , 2 0 0 1 , h e r e(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/07/afghanistan.september11).

95 Coleman affidavit, 2; in Berger, Ali Mohamed,26.

96 Coll, The Bin Ladens, 399-401.

97 For a summary of some of the conflicting

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accounts, see Summers and Day, The EleventhDay, 215-16.

98 Coll, Ghost Wars, 231, emphasis added. In2001 Peter Bergen had claimed that bin Laden“used his family connections with King Fahd toconvince the [Saudi] government that heneeded to leave the country to sort out somebusiness matters in Pakistan. Arriving there inApril 1991, he then sent a letter to his familytelling them that he would not be able to returnhome. After some months in Afghanistan hearrived in Sudan” (Bergen, Holy War, Inc.,81-82).

9 9 9/11 Commission Report , 57. In theDecember 2004 paperback edition of GhostWars (231-32), Coll adjusted his account toreconcile with the 9/11 Report. He replaced hissentence, “The escort put bin Laden on a planeout of Saudi Arabia,” with two new ones: “Twoassociates of bin Laden later offered a differentversion while under interrogation. They said adissident member of the royal family helpedhim leave the country by arranging for binLaden to attend an Islamic conference inPakistan during the spring of 1991.” The“Islamic conference” is almost certainly areference to the negotiations in Peshawar,which produced the Saudi-backed PeshawarAccord (finalized in April 1992) to end theAfghan Civil War. Bin Laden did play a part inthese negotiations. Like Sheikh Rahman beforehim, he tried, vainly, to negotiate a trucebetween the warring mujahideen leaders,Massoud and Hekmatyar (Wright, LoomingTower, 161; Roy Gutman. How We Missed theStory: Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and theHijacking of Afghanistan [Washington DC.,Endowment of the United States Institute ofPeace, 2008], 34).

100 Steve Coll also suggests that the “interiorministry” (headed by the Prince) supplied binLaden with “a one-time exit visa to travel toPakistan to liquidate investments there” (Coll,The Bin Ladens, 381). Both motives may have

been present in bin Laden’s mind, but hiscapacity to serve as a mediator may have beenmore influential in persuading the Saudis toarrange for his departure.

101 Wright, Looming Tower, 161. For Naif (orNayef) as anti-American, see Coll, Ghost Wars,399; Coll, The Bin Ladens, 437, 626n.

102 Tomsen, Wars of Afghanistan, 485: “Al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood extremists, andPrince Turki’s General Intelligence Directoratesupported the ISI’s extremist-centered Afghanstrategy.”

103 Against this odd claim cf. e.g. Wright,Looming Tower, 154: “The minister of theinterior, Prince Naif, … summoned bin Laden tohis office…. Bin Laden had reported toNaif…many times during the Afghan jihad.” Asnoted above, Ahmed Rashid claims that binLaden and Prince Turki became “firm friendsand allies” in the same cause (Taliban, 131).

1 0 4 “A Biography of Osama bin Laden,”F r o n t l i n e , P B S , h e r e(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/bio2.html).

105 Anonymous [Michael Scheuer], Through ourenemies' eyes, 131.

106 Coll, Ghost Wars, 207.

107 Barnett R. Rubin, Afghanistan in the Post-Cold war Era (New York: Oxford UP, 2013), 86.

108 Coll, Ghost Wars, 215-16.

109 Coll, The Bin Ladens, 403-05: (“Osama nowbecame a target; it is not entirely clear why”).

110 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 337.

111 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 406-07.

112 Coll, Ghost Wars, 225.

113 Scott, American War Machine, 94-105; Peter

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Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, andthe Deep Politics of War (Ipswich MA: MaryFerrell Foundation Press, 2008), 98-103.

114 Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, 145.

115 Thomas Goltz, Azerbaijan Diary: A RogueReporter’s Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic (Armonk, NY: M. E.Sharpe, 1999), 272-75. Cf. Mark Irkali, TengizKodrarian and Cali Ruchala, “God Save theShah,” Sobaka Magazine, May 22, 2003, here(http://www.diacritica.com/sobaka/2003/shah2.html). A fourth operative in MEGA Oil, GaryBest, was also a veteran of North’s Contrasupport effort. For more on General Secord’sand Major Aderholt’s role as part of TedShackley’s team of off-loaded CIA assets andcapabilities, see Jonathan Marshall, Peter DaleScott, and Jane Hunter, The Iran-ContraConnection: Secret Teams and CovertOperations in the Reagan Era (Boston: SouthEnd Press, 1987), 26-30, 36-42, 197-98.

116 It was also a time when Congress, underpressure from Armenian voters, had banned allmilitary aid to Azerbaijan (under Section 907 ofthe Freedom Support Act) . This ban,reminiscent of the Congressional ban on aid tothe Contras in the 1980s, ended after 9/11. “Inthe interest of national security, and to help in`enhancing global energy security’ during thisWar on Terror, Congress granted PresidentBush the right to waive Section 907 in theaftermath of September 11th. It was necessary,Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress,to `enable Azerbaijan to counter terroristorganizations’” (Irkali, Kodrarian and Ruchala,“God Save the Shah,” Sobaka Magazine, May22, 2003).

117 Goltz, Azerbaijan Diary, 272-75; Peter DaleScott, Drugs, Oil, and War (Lanham, MD:Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 7. As part of theairline operation, Azeri pilots were trained inTexas. Dearborn had previously helped Secordadvise and train the fledgling Contra air force

(Marshall, Scott, and Hunter, The Iran-ContraConnect ion , 197) . These importantdevelopments were barely noticed in the U.S.press, but a Washington Post article didbelatedly note that a group of American menwho wore “big cowboy hats and big cowboyboots” had arrived in Azerbaijan as militarytrainers for its army, followed in 1993 by “morethan 1,000 guerrilla fighters from Afghanistan’sradical prime minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.”(Washington Post, 4/21/94) Richard Secord wasallegedly attempting also to sell Israeli arms,with the assistance of Israeli agent DavidKimche, another associate of Oliver North. SeeScott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 7, 8, 20. Whetherthe Americans were aware of it or not, the al-Qaeda presence in Baku soon expanded toinclude assistance for moving jihadis onwardsinto Dagestan and Chechnya.

118 Cooley, Unholy Wars, 180; Scott, Drugs, Oil,and War, 7. These important developmentswere barely noticed in the U.S. press, but aWashington Post article did belatedly note thata group of American men who wore "bigcowboy hats and big cowboy boots" had arrivedin Azerbaijan as military trainers for its army,followed in 1993 by “more than 1,000 guerrillafighters from Afghanistan's radical primeminister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.” (WashingtonPost, April 21, 1994). The Azeri “AfghanBrigade” was formally dissolved in 1994, afterwhich it focused more on sabotage andterrorism (Cooley, Unholy Wars, 181),

119 As the 9/11Commission Report notes (58),the bin Laden organization established an NGOin Baku, which became a base for terrorismelsewhere. It also became a transshipmentpoint for Afghan heroin to the Chechen mafia,whose branches “extended not only to theLondon arms market, but also throughoutcontinental Europe and North America (Cooley,Unholy Wars, 176).

120 Rubin, Afghanistan from the Cold War, 86.

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121 Bergen, Holy War, Inc., 67. Cf. Ali Soufan,Black Banners, 565 (murder of Anwar Sadat,watch list); Berger, Jihad Joe, 24 (watch list).

122 Lawrence Wright, Looming Tower, 180; cf.Paul L. Williams, Al Qaeda: brotherhood ofterror ([Parsippany, NJ?]: Alpha, 2002), 117.

123 “A Soldier's Shadowy Trail In U.S. and in theMideast,” New York Times, December 1, 1998,h e r e(http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/01/international/120198LADEN_SHADOW.html?pagewanted=4).

124 Phil Karber, Fear and faith in paradise:exploring conflict and religion in the MiddleEast (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,2012), ZZ; cf. Wright, Looming Tower, 164-65.

125 Summers, The Eleventh Day, 393: “Citing aU.S. intelligence source, the author SimonReeve reported as much in 1999 – well before itbecame an issue after 9/11.”

126 Summers and Swan, The Eleventh Day, 394.

127 Coll, The Bin Ladens, 399-401. Cf. GeoffreyWawro, Quicksand: America's pursuit of powerin the Middle East (New York: Penguin Press,2010): “Osama mixed business and religion. Hecommitted to build an airport at Port Sudan;”Karber, Fear and faith in paradise: “Bin Ladenpromised the people of Sudan an airport at PortSudan.”

128 Wright, Looming Tower, 165.

129 The text of the State Department paper ofAugust 14, 1996, “State Department IssuesFactsheet on Bin Ladin,” is reproduced inBrisard and Dasquié, Ben Laden: la véritéinterdite, 257-58.

130 The Faisal Islamic Bank of Sudan and theFaisal Islamic Bank of Egypt were both foundedin 1977 with official approval by PrinceMohammed al-Faisal al-Saud, a graduate of

Menlo College in California. Cf. “Sudan IslamicB a n k i n g , ” P h o t i u s , h e r e(http://www.photius.com/countries/sudan/economy/sudan_economy_islamic_banking.html):“The Faisal Islamic Bank, whose principalpatron was the Saudi prince, Muhammad ibnFaisal Al Saud, was officially established inSudan in 1977 by the Faisal Islamic Bank Act.The ‘open door’ policy enabled Saudi Arabia,which had a huge surplus after the 1973Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries(OPEC) increases in the price of petroleum, toinvest in Sudan. Members of the MuslimBrotherhood and its political arm, the NationalIslamic Front, played a prominent role on theboard of directors of the Faisal Islamic Bank,thus strengthening the bank's position inSudan.”

131 Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, 180-81.

132 Jane’s Intelligence Review, August 1, 2001;quoted in Scott, Road to 9/11, 356.

133 John Crewdson, “Swiss Officials Freeze BankAccounts Linked to Supporters of TerroristG r o u p s(http://www.sudanreeves.org/2004/12/22/us-state-departments--growing-expediency-in-dealing-wi th -khar toums- terror i s t -connect ions -november-5-2001/).” Chicago Tribune,November 3, 2001, Cf. Ahmed, War on Truth,98; Financial Times, November 29 2001: “A USState Department report in 1996 and a Frenchinvestigation into the bank separately concurthat bin Laden invested $50m in the bank onhis arrival in Sudan in 1991, an allegation MrI s m a i l [ o f t h e b a n k ] d e n i e s .(http://specials.ft.com/attackonterrorism/FT3RNR3XMUC.html)” Cf. also Brisard, Ben Laden:La Verité Interdite, 119-21, 308-10, etc.

134 Coll, The Bin Ladens, 413. There is a briefreference to the State Department White Paperin Bergen, Holy Wars, Inc. (2001), 83: “BinLaden…sank $50 million of his own money intothe Al-Shamal Islamic Bank in Khartoum” (cf.

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264n). The controversial author YossefBodansky links both the Faisal Islamic Bankand the Al-Shamal Bank to significant jihadactivities, as well as possible drug trafficking(Bodansky, Bin Laden, 42-43).

135 Lance, Triple Cross, 157-59, citing StateDepartment Cable 1994STATE335575.

136 Steve A. Yetiv, The petroleum triangle: oil,globalization, and terror (Ithaca, NY: CornellUP, 2011), 114-15.

137 Zachary Abuza, Militant Islam in SoutheastAsia: Crucible of Terror (Boulder, CO: LynneRienner, 2003), 108. At ease in Saudi Arabia,Khalifa became a misleading source, ratherthan a topic of inquiry, in privileged bin Ladenbooks like Lawrence Wright’s The LoomingTower (112-13, 450).

138 Anonymous [Michael Scheuer], Through ourenemies' eyes, 151.

139 Lance, Triple Cross, 161, citing personalinterview.

140 Lance, Triple Cross, 162.

141 Lance, Triple Cross, 157-58.

142 Khalifa also “headed the Muslim WorldLeague office in Peshawar in the 1980s. In1988, he moved to Manila and opened a branchoffice of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth[an allied royal creation]” (Tomsen, The Warsof Afghanistan, 198).

143 Baer, Sleeping with the Devil, 167, 140.

144 Tomsen, The Wars of Afghanistan, 179-82,195-99.

145 Abuza, Militant Islam in Southeast Asia, 93.

146 Baer, Sleeping with the Devil, 69; AaronMannes, Profiles In Terror: The Guide ToMiddle East Terrorist Organizations (Lanham,

MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 41.

147 Kumar Ramakrishna (ed.), After Bali: TheThreat of Terrorism in Southeast Asia(Singapore: Institute of Defence and StrategicStudies, 2003), 139.

148 Wesley J. L. Anderson, Disrupting ThreatFinances: Utilization of Financial Informationto Disrupt Terrorist Organizations in theTwenty-First Century (S.l.: BiblioScholar,2012), 14.

149 Girma Yohannes Iyassu Menelik, Europe:The Future Battleground of Islamic Terrorism(München: GRIN-Verlag, 2010), 95.

150 Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe, 41-42.Before being captured in Pakistan, RamziYousuf was being sheltered by his maternaluncle Zahid al-Shaikh, a principal with MercyInternational (Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge,189). Mercy International was another IslamicNGO involved in recruiting “internationalvolunteers” for the war in Bosnia (RichardLabévière, Dollars For Terror: The UnitedStates and Islam (New York: Algora, 2000),151.

1 5 1 Larry Niksch, Abu Sayyaf: Target ofPhilippine-U. S. Anti-Terrorism Cooperation(Washington, D.C.: Congressional ResearchService, Library of Congress, 2007), CRS-4.

152 Peter L. Bergen, The Osama Bin Laden IKnow: An Oral History of Al Qaeda's Leader(New York: Free Press, 2006), 444.

153 9/11 Commission Report, 73; citing JointInquiry Report (classified version), 324-28. Cf.pp. 146, 148: “In 1992, KSM… moved his familyto Qatar at the suggestion of the formerminister of Islamic affairs of Qatar, SheikhAbdallah…, In January 1996, well aware thatU.S. authorities were chasing him, he left Qatarfor good.”

154 Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil, 18-19,

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194-96. Baer heard from another member ofthe al-Thani family, former police chief Hamadbin Jasim bin Hamad al-Thani, that when KSMcame from the Philippines, Abdallah bin Khalidgave him 20 blank Qatari passports. Later, "Assoon as the FBI showed up in Doha" in 1996,the emir ordered Abdallah to move KSM out ofhis apartment to his beach estate, andeventually out of the country (pp. 195-96).

155 Brian Ross and David Scott, “Al Qaeda Ally?Member of Qatari Royal Family Helped SeniorAl Qaeda Official Get Away,” ABCNEWS.com,F e b r u a r y 7 , 2 0 0 3 , h e r e(http://web.archive.org/web/20030209235027/http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/qatar_alqaeda030207.html).

156 9/11 Commission Report, 488; citingIntelligence report, interrogation of KSM, July23, 2003.

157 9/11 Commission Report, 171. A Sarajevopaper confirmed that KSM worked for a reliefgroup in Bosnia that “was just a cover for theCairo-based Islamist movement, the MuslimBrotherhood” (Adnkronos, January 20, 2009,h e r e(http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.2928330465)).

158 “How Saudi Arabia and Qatar are theTortoise and the Hare of the Middle East,” TheA t l a n t i c , A u g u s t 2 7 , 2 0 1 3 , h e r e(http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/how-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-are-the-t o r t o i s e - a n d - t h e - h a r e - o f - t h e - m i d d l e -east/279090/). Qatar’s motives for this supportseem to be the same as Saudi support earlier,for protection at home: “By aligning itself with[the Brotherhood] Qatar could extend itsinfluence and protect itself from revolution onits own soil, turning the Muslim Brotherhoodinto an ally rather than a threat” (Frida Ghitis,“ Q a t a r ’ s R i s k y B e t o n t h e M u s l i mBrotherhood,” World Policy Review, January31, 2013).

1 5 9 E .g . K imber l ey N . T rapp , Sta teResponsibility for International Terrorism (NewYork : Oxford University Press, 2011), 51.

160 Lance, Triple Cross, 253; emphasis inoriginal. Lance does discuss the role of Qatar’sSheikh Abdullah in helping KSM to escape theFBI (Cover up: what the government is stillhiding about the war on terror [New York:Regan Books, 2004], 168-69).

161 Lance, Triple Cross, 342.

162 Summers and Day, The Eleventh Day,410-15, 559-62; Former Senator Bob Graham,Keys to the Kingdom, 131-32; cf. David B.Ottaway, The king's messenger: Prince Bandarbin Sultan and America's tangled relationshipwith Saudi Arabia (New York: Walker &Company, 2008), 198-99.

1 6 3 9/11 Commission, ”Appendix A: TheFinancing of the 9/11 Plot, Staff Report,Terrorist Financing, 1.“Despite persistentpublic speculation, there is no evidence thatthe hijackers who initially settled in San Diego,Mihdhar and Hazmi, received funding fromSaudi citizens Omar al Bayoumi and OsamaBassnan, or that Saudi Princess Haifa al Faisalprovided any funds to the hijackers eitherdirectly or indirectly. A number of internal FBIdocuments state without reservation thatBayoumi paid rent on behalf of Mihdhar andHazmi, a claim reflecting the initial view ofsome FBI agents. More thorough investigation,however, has determined that Bayoumi did notpay rent or provide any funding to thehijackers.”

164 9/11 Commission Report, 266-72 (272).

165 Rory O’Connor and Ray Nowosielski, “WhoI s R i c h B l e e ?(http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20110921153919600)” 911Truth.org, September21, 2111; Rory O’Connor and Ray Nowosielski,“Insiders voice doubts about CIA’s 9/11 story,”S a l o n , O c t o b e r 1 4 , 2 1 1 1 , h e r e

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(http://www.salon.com/writer/rory_oconnor_and_ray_nowosielski/). O’Connor and Nowosielskia d d c o r r o b o r a t i o n f r o m f o r m e rCounterterrorism Chief Richard Clarke. “Clarkesaid he assumed that ‘there was a high-leveldecision in the CIA ordering people not toshare that information.’ When asked who mighthave issued such an order, he replied, ‘I wouldthink it would have been made by the director,”referring to Tenet — although he added thatTenet and others would never admit to thetruth today “even if you waterboarded them.’

166 Kevin Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots(Walterville, OR: TrineDay, 2011); cf. PeterDale Scott, “9/11 as a Deep Event: How CIAPersonnel Helped Allow It To Happen,” inJames R Gourley, ed., The 9/11 Toronto Report:International Hearings on the Events ofSeptember 11, 2001 (Seattle, WA: CreateSpaceIndependent Publishing Platform, 2012),109-27. According to Fenton (pp. 72-79), thepost-9/11 cover-up of Wilshire’s behavior wasprincipally the work of one person, BarbaraGrewe, who worked first on the JusticeDepartment Inspector General’s investigationof Wilshire’s behavior, then was transferred totwo successive positions with the 9/11Commission’s staff.

167 On August 29, less than two weeks before9/11, this interference led one FBI agent, SteveBongardt, to predict accurately that “somedaysomeone will die” (9/11 Commission Report,259, 271; Lawrence Wright, Looming Tower,352–54; Scott, American War Machine, 203).

168 Lawrence Wright, “The Agent,” New Yorker,July 10 and 17, 2006, 68; cf. Wright,LoomingTower, 339-44; discussion in Scott, The WarConspiracy, 355, 388-89.

169 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 383-86.

170 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 48. Cf.Lawrence Wright, “The Agent,” New Yorker,July 10 and 17, 2006, 68; quoted approvingly inPeter Dale Scott, American War Machine, 399.

171 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 371, cf. 95.

172 Quoted in Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars, 21.

173 Tom Wilshire, July 23, 2001, in “UnitedStates v. Zacarias Moussaoui (No. 01-455),Substitution for the Testimony of ‘John.’” U.S.Court for the District of Alexandria, July 31,2006; quoted in Fenton, Disconnecting theDots, 274, 401.

174 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 276.

175 Berger, Ali Mohamed, 17; citing WayneParry, “Mysterious pair in custody perplexesfederal investigators,” Associated Press,November 11, 2001; Falasten M. Abdeljabbar,“Neighborhood tired of suspicions and fear,”The Jersey Journal, December 18, 2001.

176 Robert Hanley and Jonathan Miller, “4Transcripts Are Released In Case Tied to 9/11Hijackers,” New York Times, June 25, 2003.

177 Berger, Ali Mohamed, 18; citing John Kifner,"Kahane Suspect Is a Muslim With a Series ofAddresses," New York Times, November 7,1990; Transcript, Sealed Bail Hearing, US v. El-Atriss, November 19, 2002. The transcriptswere unsealed after a lawsuit by severalorganizations including the New York Timesand the Washington Post.

178 Wayne Parry, “September 11 Fake IDSuspect Flees U.S.,” Associated Press, July 31,2 0 0 3 , h e r e(http://911review.org/Wiki/Mohamed-El-Atriss.html).

179 Berger, Ali Mohamed, 18; citing RobertHanley and Jonathan Miller, “4 Transcripts AreReleased In Case Tied to 9/11 Hijackers,” NewYork Times, June 25, 2003; Wayne Parry,“Judge releases transcripts in Sept. 11 fake IDscase,” Associated Press, June 24, 2003. TheNew York Times story is worth quoting further:“*Mr. Atriss was a co-founder of a Jersey Citycheck-cashing company, Sphinx Trading

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Company, that had bank accounts with millionsof dollars and had as a co-owner Waleed AbouelNour, whom the F.B.I. had identified as aterrorist. That business was at the samelocation, on Kennedy Boulevard, used as amailing address by several of the hijackers andearlier by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, whosefollowers were convicted of the 1993 bombingof the World Trade Center.”

180 Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War, 53. Cf.David E. Spiro, The Hidden Hand of AmericanHegemony: Petrodollar Recycling andInternational Markets (Ithaca: Cornell UP,1999), x: "In 1974 [Treasury Secretary William]Simon negotiated a secret deal so the Saudicentral bank could buy U.S. Treasury securitiesoutside of the normal auction. A few yearslater, Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthalcut a secret deal with the Saudis so that OPECwould continue to price oil in dollars. Thesedeals were secret because the United Stateshad promised other industrialized democraciesthat it would not pursue such unilateralpolicies.

181 See e.g. Michael Quint, “Saudi PrinceBecomes Citicorp’s Top Stockholder.” NewYork Times, February 22, 1991.

182 Andrew Scott Cooper, The Oil Kings: Howthe U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed theBalance of Power in the Middle East (NewYork: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 275, etc.;Scott, Road to 9/11, 33-34.

183 F. William Engdahl, A Century of War:Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New WorldOrder (London: Pluto Press, 2004), 173;Andrew Gavin Marshall, “The Imperial Anatomyof Al-Qaeda. The CIA’s Drug-Running Terroristsand the ‘Arc of Crisis.’” Global Research,S e p t e m b e r 4 , 2 0 1 0 , h e r e(http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-imperial-anatomy-of-al-qaeda-the-cia-s-drug-running-terrorists-and-the-arc-of-crisis/20907). Cf.Scott, Road to 9/11, 86-89.

184 “Halliburton to Move Headquarters toDubai,” New York Times, March 11, 2007, here(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/business/12halliburtoncnd.html?_r=0). Halliburton madethis announcement after it was “beinginvestigated by different government agenciesfor various allegations of improper businessdealings, and it is in the cross hairs ofDemocrats in Congress for alleged overbilling”( A B C N e w s , M a r c h 1 2 , 2 0 0 7 , h e r e(http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/story?id=2943017&page=1)).

In 2013 the hotel conglomerate Starwood,operating Sheraton and Westin hotels,announced a similar move for a month as “agrand experiment” (Business Insider, April 11,2 0 1 3 , h e r e(http://www.businessinsider.com/starwood-dubai-headquarters-2013-4)).

185 Energy analyst Roger Read said that ifHalliburton “formally incorporates itself in theU.A.E., the banking mecca of the Middle East,company profits will soar…. ‘You'd probably belooking at a tax savings of several hundredmil l ion [dol lars] . … It 's a win for theshareholders’" (ABC News, March 12, 2007,h e r e(http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/story?id=2943017&page=1)).

186 “Egypt Is Arena for Influence of ArabRivals,” New York Times, July 9, 2015, here(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/world/middleeast/aid-to-egypt-from-saudis-and-emiratis-i s - p a r t - o f - s t r u g g l e - w i t h - q a t a r - f o r -influence.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

187 “Secret Desert Force Set Up by Blackwater’sFounder,” New York Times, May 14, 2011, here(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/world/middleeast/15prince.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0).

188 David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, “AfterProfits, Defense Contractor Faces the Pitfalls ofCybersecurity,” New York Times, June 15,2 0 1 3 , h e r e

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(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/us/after-profits-defense-contractor-faces-the-pitfalls-of-cybersecurity.html?pagewanted=all)).

189 Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy: apolitical history of the American rich (NewYork: Broadway Books, 2002), 71.

190 “Nye Denies Inquiry ‘Cleared’ Morgan, NewYork Times, February 10, 1936;

quoted in Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, TheUntold History of the United States (New York:Gallery Books, 2012), 76.

191 Summers with Swan, Arrogance of Power,

283; Baer, Sleeping with the Devil , 43(briefcase); Renata Adler, “Searching for theReal Nixon Scandal,” Atlantic [December1976], 76–84 Rebozo’s bank).

192 Russ Baker, Family of secrets: the Bushdynasty, the powerful forces that put it in theWhite House, and what their influence meansfor America (New York: Bloomsbury Press,2009), 304; citing Craig Unger, House of Bush,House of Saud, 34.

193 Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, 101.

194 Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, 122;cf. Scott, Road to 9/11, 176-78.