FTR#360—The Ties that Bind, Part IV—(Two 30-minute segments) (Sources are noted in parentheses) (Recorded on 5/19/2002.)
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Continuing the discussion of 9/11, this
program highlights some of the political and economic “ties that bind”—those
ties enabling the continuation of the devastation and the heartache, as well as
mandating the silence of the compromised. (For more
about the attacks, see FTR#’s 325-359.)
1.
The broadcast begins with review of a terrifying disclosure that was
recently revealed by British intelligence analysts. In the context of the
discussion that follows, one should not lose sight of the alleged source of the
new financing for Al Qaeda—Saudi Arabia. “The
al-Qaeda terrorist network has been deluged with funds from Osama Bin Laden’s
Saudi supporters since the start of the Middle East crisis, a British
intelligence dossier has revealed. Intelligence
chiefs have also warned the government that Mr. Bin Laden could be plotting
another terrorist atrocity on the scale of the September 11 attack on the World
Trade Center. One senior minister said
he was shocked by the scale of the threat outlined in the ‘chilling’ intelligence
briefing presented to the government recently.
It suggested the September 11 atrocities could be repeated at any time.
. .The minister said: ‘Bin Laden might be cornered in a cave, but that won’t
necessarily prevent Al-Qaeda carrying out further attacks. We were pretty shocked at what we
heard. “The American attacks were five
years in the planning: who knows what could also be in the pipeline?’’ (“Bin Laden Supporters ‘Still Funding
Al-Qaeda’” by Cathy Newman; The Financial
Times; 5/8/2002; p.8.) In light of the recent (as of 5/19/2002) warnings of another
devastating attack, the continued Saudi funding of Al Qaeda should be
noted. So should George W. Bush’s
unwillingness to reproach the Saudis and the utter cowardice of those who
remain silent in light of what has been done, what is being done, and what is
about to come.
2.
Next, the program develops some of the deep politics underlying the
Clearstream network, which appears to have been a major funding conduit for Al
Qaeda. (For more about Clearstream, see
FTR#’s 356-359.) According to the
remarkable Ernest Backes, the Clearstream network (run by Cedel) was the
principal conduit for the Banco Ambrosiano scandal. (For more about the P-2 and the Banco Ambrosiano scandal, see RFA#’s 17-21.) “By
1980, [Cedel executive Ernest] Backes had become Cedel’s No.3 official, in
charge of relations with clients. But
he was fired in May 1983. Backes says the reason given for his sacking was an argument
with an English banker, a friend of the CEO.
‘I think I was fired was because I knew too much about the Abrosiano
scandal,’ Backes says. Banco Ambrosiano
was once the second most important private bank in Italy, with the Vatican as a
principal shareholder and loan recipient.
The bank laundered drug-and-arms-trafficking money for the Italian and
American Mafias and, in the’80’s, channeled Vatican money to the Contras in
Nicaragua and Solidarity in Poland. The
corrupt managers also siphoned off funds via fictitious banks to personal
shell company accounts in Switzerland, the Bahamas, Panama and other offshore
havens. Banco Abrosiano inspired a
subplot of The Godfather, Part III. Several of those behind the swindle have met
untimely ends. Bank chairman Roberto
Calvi was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London. Michele Sindona, convicted in 1980 on 65
counts of fraud in the United States, was extradited to Italy in 1984 and
sentenced to life in prison; in 1986, he was found dead in his cell, poisoned
by cyanide-laced coffee. (Another
suspect, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank, now lives in
Sun City, Arizona with a Vatican pasport; U.S. authorities have ignored a Milan
arrest warrant for him.) Just two
months after Backes’ dismissal in 1983, [Cedel general manager Gerard] Soisson,
48 and healthy, was found dead in Corsica, where he’d gone on vacation. Top Cedel officials had the body returned
immediately and buried, with no autopsy, announcing that he had died of a heart
attack. His family now suspects he was
murdered. “If Soisson was murdered, it
was also related to what he knew about Ambrosiano,’ Backes says. “When Soisson died, the Ambrosiano affair
wasn’t yet known as a scandal. [After
it was revealed] I realized that Soisson and I had been at the crossroads. We
moved all those transactions known later in the scandal to Lima and other
branches. Nobody even knew there was a
Banco Ambrosiano branch in Lima and other South American countries.’” (“Explosive Revelation$” by Lucy
Komisar; In These Times; 3/15/2002;
pp.2-4; accessed at www.inthesetimes.com/issue26/10/feature1_1.shtml
.) (For more about P-2 member Silvio
Berlusconi, Al Taqwa and the Clean Hands investigation, see FTR#’s 342, 351, 356, 357, 359.)
3.
Recent review of Backes’ book by a former investment industry
professional (who knew Backes) lent support to Mr. Backes’ credibility. (“Revelation$: A Book by Denis Robert &
Ernest Backes;” by David Guyatt; accessed at www.deepblacklies.co.uk/bulletin.html .)
4.
Backes has also alleged that the Clearstream network was a principal
conduit in what has come to be called the “October Surprise.” (For more about
the October Surprise, see RFA#’s 31, 38.) “In
November 1979, the U.S. Embassy in Iran was seized, and 52 Americans were held
hostage. Their capture, and the Carter
administration’s failure to win their release, became a major issue in the 1980
presidential campaign. Carter had
frozen billions in Iranian assets in U.S. banks, money that was being claimed
by American firms and individuals who had lost property in the Islamic
revolution. American and Iranian
officials were negotiating the amount of funds to be released in return for
freeing the hostages. The Iranians also
wanted Carter to release arms that had been ordered and paid for by the deposed
Shah. Reagan campaign officials
allegedly met with Iranian representatives several times during the 1980
campaign, promising arms and money if Iran delayed release of the hostages
until after the November election. This
scandal would become known as the ‘October Surprise.’ Reagan won the election, but Carter officials continued to
negotiate with the Iranians. Finally,
around the turn of the year, an accord was reached under which the United
States would release $4 billion but no arms.
However, the Iranians did not release the hostages immediately. A few days before
Reagan’s inauguration, Ernest Backes recalls, Cedel got an urgent joint
instruction from the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and the Bank of England to
transfer $7 million in bearer bonds, $5 million from an account of Chase
Manhattan Bank and $2 million from an account of Citibank, both in offshore
secrecy havens. The money was to go to
the National Bank of Algeria, and from there to an Iranian bank in
Teheran. Backes was informed that the
$7 million was a small fraction of sums being sent from around the world and
concentrated in the Algerian bank. He
was told the transfers were linked to the fate of the hostages. The Fed and the Bank of England were not
members of Cedel, and by its rules had no right to order the transfers. Backes’ two superiors were absent. He informed the president of the Cedel
administrative council, Edmond Israel, then acted to execute the order. (Israel, now honorary chairman, did not
respond to phone and e-mail messages.)
On January 20, 1981, about 15 minutes after Reagan took the oath of office,
the hostages were finally freed. Reagan
and then Vice President George Bush have always denied the payoff happened.” (“October Surprises;” [sidebar to
“Explosive Revelation$” by Lucy K million from an account of Citibankomisar]; In These Times; 3/15/2002; accessed at www.inthesetimes.com/issue26/10/feature1_side2.shtml
.)
5.
Next, the broadcast reviews the untimely death of Salem Bin Laden
(another of Osama’s brothers), and the allegation that Salem was involved with
the “October Surprise.” “Bin Laden’s son
Salem was also very close to the kind [of Saudi Arabia], and it is likely that
he rendered significant services to the monarchy, in particular by carrying out
secret missions. According to several
witnesses, his mysterious death is evidence of this. In 1988, a BAC 111 plane
piloted by Salem crashed in Texas. His
death gave rise to speculations about the exact role he played for King Fahd
and the Saudi government in secret operations in the Middle East and Central
America. For instance, there was an indication
from American sources that he was connected to a secret meeting between Iranian
and American emissaries in Paris in October 1980. Some felt that his death was not an accident.” (In the Name of Osama Bin Laden; by
Roland Jacquard; Copyright 2002 [SC]; Duke University Press; ISBN
0-8223-2991-3; p. 12.)
6.
The program also reviews the fact that a key Bin Laden business
executive (Baudoin Dunant) represented key Nazi banker Francois Genoud in a
case in 1983, in which Genoud was charged with terrorism. “It
[Geneva Sico, the Saudi Investment Company] is headed by Yeslam bin Laden, and
the board of directors is made up almost exclusively of members of the family
clan, except for a Swiss citizen, Baudoin Dunant. This well-known lawyer from
French-speaking Switzerland, who is on the boards of several dozen companies,
came to public notice in 1983 when he agreed to represent the Swiss banker
Francois Genoud, a controversial figure who had been a disciple of Hitler and sole
heir of Goebbels’s copyrights before becoming one of the financiers of the FLN
during the Algerian War. The friendships of the Bin Ladens sometimes
seem surprising, but they are logical:
Francois Genoud has always been pro-Arab.” (Ibid.; pp. 17-18.)
(For more about Genoud in the context of the 9/11 attacks, see FTR#’s 333, 335, 341, 343, 344, 350, 351,
351, 352, 354, 355, 356, 359.)
7.
For an understanding of how far back some of this “networking” goes,
the program highlights the tenure of the relationship between Genoud and the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Note that
Genoud became the manager of the Grand Mufti’s funds. “In 1934, back in
Switzerland, the 19-year-old Genoud joined the pro-Nazi National Front, and two
years later he began to forge the other political links that would prove so valuable. He traveled to
Palestine. There he met the Grand Mufti
of Jerusalem, the pro-Nazi religious and political leader of Palestinian
Muslims, Amin el-Husseini, who was to spend most of World War II in Germany,
and who, according to British author Gitta Sereny, ‘would consider [Genoud] a
confidant until his death in 1974.’
Genoud traveled to Berlin frequently during the war ‘to see his friend
the Grand Mufti,’ and visited him afterward many times in Beirut, according to
Le Monde correspondent Jean-Claude Buhrer.
The Grand Mufti ‘entrusted Genoud with the
management of his enormous financial affairs,’ according to Sereny.” (“Hitler’s Swiss Connection” by David
Lee Preston; The Philadelphia Inquirer;
1/5/1997; p. 2; accessed at http://members.aol.com/voyl/barbie/genoud.htm .) (For more about the Grand Mufti, see also: RFA-22, L-7, FTR 2, 147, 159, 161, 237,
270, 328, 329, 330, 332, 333, 335, 340, 341, 343, 352, 354, 358.)
8.
In an interrogative mode, the program discusses the fact that Robert F.
Kennedy’s son Joseph was among the hostages in a hijacking in which Genoud
assisted. “More is to be learned about
Genoud’s contacts with the Americans.
The State Department has yet to declassify 16 documents relating to
Genoud; 29 other documents relating to his application for a visa or permit to
enter the U.S. remain classified. The Lufthansa Boeing 747 bound for Frankfurt was ready for
takeoff in Bombay when the control tower received a bizarre message: ‘Call us
the Victorious Jihad. If you call us
Lufthansa, we won’t answer you.’ It was
the evening of Feb. 21, 1972, and Palestinian hijackers had taken the plane
hostage. Among the 188 passengers was
Joseph Kennedy, 19-year-old son of assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The next day, a letter from Cologne demanded
$5 million for the ‘Organization for the Victims of the Zionist
Occupation.’ In perfect English, the
letter gave Lufthansa explicit instructions: A man carrying a suitcase with the
money should wear a black jacket and gray pants, disembark at the Beirut
airport holding Newsweek magazine in
his left hand and the suitcase in his right hand, and go the parking lot. With the key sent in the envelope from
Cologne, he was to open an old Volkswagen parked under a sycamore tree and read
the instructions on the rear seat. The jet flew to Yemen, where the crew and passengers were
freed, including the young Kennedy. And
$5 million in used bills went to the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, which has committed numerous international terrorist attacks
since. The operation was orchestrated
by the Palestinian terrorist Wadi Hadad with the assistance of Francois Genoud,
who drove overnight to Cologne with his wife carrying the letter with the
ransom demand. After sending the
letter to Lufthansa and to news agencies, Genoud and Elisabeth took off for
vacation in the Belgian Ardennes. ‘The
amount of money demanded of Lufthansa was very high,’ Genoud told French
journalist Pierre Pean, revealing his role in the hijacking in a biography
published this year in Paris. ‘Too low
a number would have made us lose credibility.
Too high a number might have made the operation fall through, especially
considering how quickly the money had to be collected.’” (Ibid.; p.
4.) One wonders just how deep the
Genoud/RFK assassination entanglement goes.
How thick are these “ties that bind?”
9.
In the context of the previous item, the broadcast reviews a couple of
elements of information from FTR#350. A remark made by Sheik Rahman (convicted of
conspiracy in 1993) is reviewed. “‘Slow down; slow
down a little bit,’ the sheik cautioned, whispering for fear the FBI was
bugging his apartment—which it was.
‘The one who killed Kennedy was trained for three years.’ It was never made clear in later court
testimony which assassination the sheik was talking about.” (Wall Street Journal; 11/26/2001; p.
A6.) It is Mr. Emory’s belief that the
reference is probably to the assassination of Robert Kennedy, allegedly committed
by a Palestinian Arab, Sirhan Sirhan.
Sirhan supposedly killed Kennedy because of his support for Israel. (The available evidence suggests very
strongly that Sirhan was a patsy and a probable victim of mind control. For more on Sirhan and the RFK
assassination, see RFA#’s 6, 9, as
well as FTR#175.)
10. An affidavit submitted by
Robert Byron Watson alleged that an intelligence-connected guns and drug
smuggling operation was heavily involved in the killing of King, and that the
same organization was planning to kill Robert Kennedy two months later.
Beginning with an excerpt from RFA#8, the
second side of the program highlights an article detailing key aspects of the
Robert Byron Watson affidavit. (“King Assassination Conspiracy Revealed” by
David Wemple; Hudson Valley Chronicle;
July 1977 [Vol. 1, #1].)
11. One of the
alleged participants in this network was PFLP kingpin George Habash’s brother,
Fouad Habash. Fouad Habash, in turn,
was close to Anthony Malek, alleged by Watson to have been a key planner in the
RFK assassination. (Idem.)
12. One of Genoud’s proteges was
Klaus Barbie attorney Jacques Verges and one of the employees in Verges’ law
firm is representing “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui. It appears that Moussaoui’s activities had
attracted some rather prescient thinking (tragically ignored) on the part of
some FBI analysts. An FBI memorandum is
eerie to contemplate. “The memorandum may not be the only
internal document embarrassing to the bureau.
In August, an agent speculated in notes, made
when investigators sought to explain why Zacarias Moussaoui was enrolled in a
fMinnesota flight school, that Mr. Moussaoui might be planning to fly a plane
into the World Trade Center. Mr.
Moussaoui, a French citizen, who was soon arrested on immigration charges, was
believed by the United States government to be the intended 20th
hijacker on September.” (“Pre-Attack Memo Cited Bin Laden;” by David
Johnston; The New York Times; p.
A16.)
13. It would appear that Hakim Murad’s activities had attracted
attention for years and alerted some to the possibilities of 9/11. “However
the Phoenix memorandum was not the first warning that terrorists affiliated
with Al Qaeda had interest in learning to fly.
In his 1996 confession, a Pakistani terrorist, Abdul Hakim Murad, said
that he planned to use the training he received at flight schools in the United
States to fly a plane into C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or another
federal building. Mr. Murad, who was captured in the Philippines in 1995 and
convicted in New York on charges of conspiring to blow up 12 American jumbo
jets over the Pacific simultaneously, received flight training at schools in
New York, North Carolina, California and Texas. Information from Mr. Murad’s confession formed a basis for an
analysis prepared for United States intelligence agencies in 1999. The analysis warned that Bin Laden
terrorists could hijack a jet and fly it into government buildings like the
Pentagon. Additionally, a flight school
in Oklahoma that provided training last year to Zacarias Moussaoui, the
so-called 20th hijacker in the September 11 attacks, had been under
scrutiny by the F.B.I. in 1998 after the discovery that another former student
had been linked to the bombing that year of two American embassies in East
Africa, attacks atributed to Al Qaeda.
The school, the Airman Flight School in Norman, has cooperated with the
F.B.I.” (“F.B.I. Knew for Years About Terror Pilot Training” by Philip
Shenon; p. A1.)
14. In conclusion, and in light
of the above information about Mr. Murad, the broadcast reviews some of Murad’s
other associates in the Philippines. Murad has “binding ties” (apparently) with
people involved with the Oklahoma City Bombing. “While making final preparations for Bojinka
[a terrorist attack], the terrorists met with Terry L. Nichols several times in
Cebu City. Nichols, along with Timothy
McVeigh, were charged with the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, that killed 168 people and wounded another
600. Some FBI officials now believe
that Nichols, who has ‘mail-order’ Filipino wife from Cebu, obtained contact
with Youssef through Muslim students at Southwest College in Weatherford,
Oklahoma. The officials further believe that Youssef and [Abdul Hakim] Murad
provided Nichols with training in making and handling bombs. Without such instruction, Nichols and
McVeigh would not have been able to assemble a 5,600-pound bomb made of
ammonium nitrate and nitromethane.
Several informants recently gave testimony that they met Nichols with
Youssef in the Philippines and that the American was affectionately known there
as ‘the Farmer.’ After that
Oklahoma bombing, Murad told prison guards that Youssef’s ‘Liberation Army,’ a
branch of Al Queda, was responsible for it.
He later made this same claim in writing.” (Al Queda: Brotherhood of Terror; by Paul Williams; Copyright 2002
[SC]; Alpha Books; ISBN 0-02-864352-6; pp. 145-146.) (For more about connections between the Oklahoma City Bombing and
the attacks on the World Trade Center, see FTR#’s
328, 330, 336, 339, 349, 357. For more about the Oklahoma City bombing, see
also: FTR#’s 9, 10, 11, 12, 27, 60, 88,
92, 97, 235.)
(Recorded on 5/19/2002.)