Yet another reason for world peace

2006-11-11T16:58:00.000-08:00

Introduction

This is a story about a network. It’s a naughty network. It’s one of the most important networks of banks and financial institutions on the planet. You’ve probably never heard of it. It’s the al-Taqwa network, the web of Switzerland and Bahamas-based banks that comprise the financial arm of the international wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. And what’s the Muslim Brotherhood? The Muslim Brotherhood is merely the leading network of Sunni Islamists dedicated to the propagation of various forms of theocratic Islam. And so, with the Muslim Brotherhood being at the heart of so many of the social movements that we’ve vowed to defeat in our global “War on Terror”, and with its rather extensive ties to al-Qaeda (it’s hard to say where one begins and the other ends), it’s easy to imagine why the story behind Bank al-Taqwa is rather important. Perhaps even very important.

So let’s get this ball-o-bizarre history rolling and start learning about the al-Taqwa network with an excellent March 2002 article from the San Francisco Chronicle (and an egregious number of comments):

“

From the San Francisco Chronicle

Swiss probe anti-U.S. neo-Nazi
Suspected financial ties to al Qaeda

Jay Bushinsky, Chronicle Foreign Service

Tuesday, March 12, 2002

Bern, Switzerland -- At the behest of President Bush, Swiss law authorities are investigating an alliance between Islamic militants and European neo-Nazis who have allegedly been providing financial support to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Experts say Islamic militants and far-right movements -- a coalition they call the Third Position -- share common hatreds: the United States and Jews.

…

“

Egads! Neo-Nazis supporting Islamist militants! Actually, as we’ll see they aren’t really Neo-Nazis in many cases. They’re just the same ol’ swastika-saluting fascist movement, gone underground.

Continuing…

“

…

"Extremists manage to find ways to put aside their differences and find common cause," Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said recently.

The central figure in the probe is Ahmed Huber, a 74-year-old Swiss convert to Islam who says the "Zionist Israel lobby controls the U.S. government and mass media and shapes U.S. policy."

…

“

Jews control the media, you see, which explains why there have been so few articles in the US media on the very real historical Islamist/International fascist (including Nazis) connection. President Bush enjoys talking about the “Islamic fascists”, although he is less keen about discussing the many “Islamic fascists” connections of his own. We will be discussing those in great detail in this series of essays.

Continuing…

“

…

Nada Management, the Bern company Huber helps direct, has been singled out publicly by President Bush.

Huber, a gregarious and outspoken former journalist who spent three decades covering the Swiss Parliament for a socialist newspaper, is a strong supporter of Germany's neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) and such extreme-right politicians as France's Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Huber serves on the board of directors of Nada Management. Founded by a Swiss Nazi and formerly known as al Taqwa Bank, the consulting and management firm is part of the international al Taqwa group, which the United States believes has long acted as a financial adviser to al Qaeda.

…

“

Just think of the al-Taqwa network as the Charles Schwab for militant Jihadists, but instead of “Chuck”, your friendly financial expert that wants you to buy a no-load S&P500 index fund, you instead get “Ahmed”, the neo-Nazi convert to militant Islam who admires Hitler, the Ayatollah Khomeini (the whole Sunni-Shia gets murky once we delve into these things), really really really hates Jews, and thinks you should consider investing in a nice Jihad in one of their many attractive locales (Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, North Africa, and South East Asia, to name a few examples). And as an added incentive, he’ll throw in a free copy of Mein Kompf.

Continuing…

“

…

"Al Taqwa is an association of offshore banks and financial management firms that have helped al Qaeda shift money around the world," Bush said on Nov. 7. The U.S. government has frozen Huber's assets and is pressuring the Swiss government to arrest him for his alleged role in the al Qaeda money network.

Swiss investigators say Huber's travels on the Muslim lecture circuit in Western Europe and North America brought him into contact with bin Laden's followers. Huber has admitted to meeting with associates of the Saudi exile, describing them as "discreet, well-educated, very intelligent people." But he denies that Nada Management underwrites al Qaeda activities.

During an interview in his study, lined with books and portraits and photographs of Adolf Hitler, Richard Wagner, Ayatollah Khomeini, Haj Amin al- Husseini (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Huber expressed his views to a Chronicle correspondent.

"The U.S. is the ally of 15 million Jews against 1.3 billion Muslims; it is allied with 5 million Israelis against 200 million Arabs," he said. "We will bring down the Israel lobby and change foreign policy. We'll do it in America. When it happens, you'll understand."

Huber minimizes his role on Nada Management's board of directors, saying he is a minor player who receives only $1,500 annually in compensation. He says the company's sponsors are mostly wealthy Muslims from Malaysia and the Persian Gulf states who specialize in projects "beneficial to Third World countries -- like new roads, clinics, agricultural development."

But Hansjuerg Mark Wiedmer, a spokesman for the Swiss attorney general, disagrees. His office has been investigating Nada Management's activities in Switzerland, Germany and the United States for the past six months.

"There have been indications that al Taqwa could have been financing al Qaeda," he said. "Since Sept. 11, we have been seeking criminal connections. We had been on their trail before but did not have enough evidence to open criminal proceedings. This has changed."

…

“

Yeah, too bad it changed back. Flash forward a few years and you’ll see how this line of 9/11 investigating by our government just sort of died. Keep reading to see why.

Continuing…

“

…

Wiedmer says the data he has gathered have been made available to U.S. authorities, but he specified that if charges are eventually filed, the "culprits" will be tried in a Swiss court.

Three other Nada Management board members have also been questioned by Swiss, Italian and U.S. authorities: Youssef Nada, an Egyptian expatriate who has Italian citizenship; Ali Himmat, a Syrian national; and Mohamed Mansour, a Zurich resident.

Nada lives in Campione d'Italia, a tiny Italian enclave and tax haven near the southern Swiss city of Lugano. Three months ago, Campione police raided Nada Management's local office and confiscated records and documents.

…

“

Oooo…this Youssef Nada fellow sounds like a great chance to play “four-degrees of separation from the Bush family”. Ok, let’s see…Youssef Nada(1) is a former business associate of Jamal Barzinji(2), who helped found Nada International back in 1976. Barzinji is also, president of the Safa Trust and Vice President of the Institute for Islamic Thought(IIT). Both of these Barzinji-backed Institutions are closely connected with and helped fund the Islamic Institute back in 1999, which was started by none other than Grover Norquist(3)*, one of the leaders of the modern Conservative Movement and a Field Marshall for President Bush’s(4) agenda. Yay!! *Alternatively, we could have taken the path of “the Islamic Institute’s Chairman, Talat Othman(3) is a long-time Bush family friend and served on the board of Harken Energy.”

Continuing…

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…

The Nada Management board is assisted by a committee of Muslim scholars headed by Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian linked to his country's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. The committee's purpose is to make sure Nada conforms to Islamic doctrine such as a ban on interest rates.

Huber's longtime Swiss nemesis is Jean-Claude Buhrer, a correspondent for the prominent French daily Le Monde. Buhrer recently cited a column published in Morgenstern, a newspaper read by surviving former members of Germany's wartime Waffen SS, in which Huber said Muslims and Nazis were involved in the same fight.

"This is tantamount to a marriage between the swastika and the (Islamic) crescent," wrote Buhrer.

Buhrer also assailed Huber for denying the scope of the Nazi Holocaust and for being a faithful disciple of Francois Genoud, a Swiss lawyer who funded Hitler and served as a German agent during World War II.

…

“

A Francois Genoud fun-fact: He holds the copyright to the writings of Hitler, Goebbels, and Martin Bormann.

And finishing our look at the San Francisco Chronicle article…

“

…

After the war, Genoud underwrote the clandestine Odessa organization, which, according to famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, enabled such notorious Nazi fugitives as Adolf Eichmann, Alois Brunner and Klaus Barbie to escape to South America and the Middle East.

Authorities believe Genoud founded al Taqwa Bank and allocated its resources to support international terrorists such as Vladimir Ilich Ramirez, alias Carlos the Jackal, and bin Laden.

Genoud committed suicide in 1996, shortly after Jewish leaders and Swiss banking officials announced an unprecedented agreement to set up a commission to examine secret bank and government files to search for funds deposited in Switzerland by Holocaust victims, according to Buhrer.

Over the years, Genoud paid French attorney Jacques Verges to defend Ramirez and Barbie and also covered the legal expenses of Eichmann before an Israeli court in 1961. He also subsidized Khomeini's prolonged exile in France when Iran was governed by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Genoud's admiration for Khomeini is shared by Huber. "'He was a fantastic man," Huber said.

“

Ok, get this: So Genoud paid French attorney Jacques Verges to defend Carlos “the Jackal” Ramirez, right? Verge’s protégé is Isabelle Coutant-Peyre. Coutant-Peyre is actually engaged to “the Jackal” AND was a lawyer for Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20^th hijacker”. It’s a small shadow Nazi-fascist-Islamist world, ain’t it?

Is your interest piqued yet? Good! Keep reading! It’s important! It’s important because this series of essays isn’t just about al-Taqwa Network. And it’s not going to be just about 9/11. This series of essays is going to cover the tangled topic of the intertwined history surrounding 9/11: The Muslim Brotherhood and its many splinter groups, the post-WWII fascist underground, the evolution of covert proxy wars, how that has become a template for the modern trend of privatized warfare, and much more. We’re just going to start off taking a look at the al-Taqwa network because it’s a kind of financial nexus where many different figures and money-trails meet. If you can avoid looking away from this historic train wreck you’ll learn a lot.

So let’s move on to the next topic. We’re going to take a “follow the money” approach and move on to an “also follow the minions of the money men, their larger support networks, and their ideologies and apparent goals” perspective. Such an approach leads to some strange places. Strange, relatively unknown, and vitally important places. If you told yourself that you had time this year to read only one series of zany rants, you have just found that series! So keep reading and enjoy…while you still can. Seriously, this country is in deep trouble.

2006-11-11T16:55:00.000-08:00

Part 1:

Operation Green Quest, and things you find while following the money

"The lifeblood of terrorism is money, and if we cut the money we cut the blood supply,"

Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff, head of the Justice Department's criminal division in October 2001 and current head of the Department of Homeland Security.

A couple notes before we start down the money trail: First, this series of essays are primarily going focus on how financing of modern day Islamic terrorist groups and the broader historical context of the actors involved in such activities. In particular, we will be focusing on the links between terror financing and fascism, as there is a wealth of relevant information on that topic. There have been some recent rather fascistic changes to the laws regarding terrorist financing that should be kept in mind while we explore this topic. On October 17, 2006, President Bush signed into law the Military Commission Act of 2006. Let’s take a quick look at some of the implications of this law with an excellent September 2006 article from the LA Times:

“

The White House Warden

Congress may give the president the power to lock up almost anyone he thinks is a terror threat.

By Bruce Ackerman
BRUCE ACKERMAN is a professor of law and political science at Yale and author of "Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism."

September 28, 2006

BURIED IN THE complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops "during an armed conflict," it also allows him to seize anybody who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison.

…

“

Middle Eastern charities and their ties to the financing of terrorist groups are a topic we are going to explore in great detail. You would be amazed what you find while looking under that rock, and it doesn’t make any side look particularly good. Except for the innocent charity workers and their needy recipients, who are serious victims in this whole mess.

And finishing our look at the LA Times article…

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…

Not to worry, say the bill's defenders. The president can't detain somebody who has given money innocently, just those who contributed to terrorists on purpose.

But other provisions of the bill call even this limitation into question. What is worse, if the federal courts support the president's initial detention decision, ordinary Americans would be required to defend themselves before a military tribunal without the constitutional guarantees provided in criminal trials.

Legal residents who aren't citizens are treated even more harshly. The bill entirely cuts off their access to federal habeas corpus, leaving them at the mercy of the president's suspicions

…

“

On September 29, 2006, two days after the Senate debated and approved of the bill, the US Treasury Department issued a warning specifically to Muslim charities. It was an unprecedented move. And so given the fact that these organizations appear to have been singled out as potential targets of the new powers given to President Bush, it is a topic we urgently need to understand because the individuals involved with Muslim charities just might become some of the first targets of these new powers.

It is also a highly complicated and confusing topic that cuts to the heart of so many modern-day conflicts because money is both the lifeblood and motivation for a lot of war and terror. Many Muslim charities have, indeed, been involved with terror financing and appear to be used as fronts for powerful people that support militant Islamist groups. They also provide real charitable services for people in need. And as we’re going to see, many of these powerful people have successfully escaped prosecution after 9/11 in large part due to their powerful political connections. It is a complicated, confusing, and embittering topic.

The second note is that we’re going to be using the term “Islamism” a lot in these essays, in part because it’s a common term used to describe movements that view Islam as both a religious and political system. But terms like “Islamism” and “Islamists” are also vague, often loaded terms, and ripe for abuse. Christians that feel the Bible should be the guiding principle in how we govern ourselves are not one and the same, do not all share the same vision, and are obviously not all militant. The same is true for “Islamists”.

Still, the militant strains of Islam propagated by the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudis can fairly be characterized as “Islamist”. And they’re ideological strains that are often involved with conflicts across the globe that include Muslim peoples. Whether we’re talking about Muslim populations in Egypt, Chechnya, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bosnia, or just about anywhere else where there are conflicts involving Muslim populations, you will find Muslim Brotherhood Islamists with a heavy dose of Saudi financing. That does not mean those native Muslim populaces are also Islamists. The vast majority of Muslims are like people of any religion: peaceful, and not particularly zealous, and like all people, they can end up in conflicts for whatever reason. Keep that in mind also as we examine the financial networks primarily set up and maintained by Muslim Brotherhood and fueled by Saudi petrodollars, because assuming that Islam = Islamism or that Islamism = militant Islamism would be a grave mischaracterization indeed.

A third note is that these essays are not a refined, finished products. Quite simply, the author has run out of time. There are also a number of links that will inevitably die. Feel free to change links, modify the commentary, correct mistakes and mischaracterizations, and hopefully build upon this body of knowledge. This information is urgently important and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Having said all that, let’s start down the money-trail:

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 we all wondered what the United States’ response would be. Certainly a criminal investigation was already underway, and talk of military retaliation was in the air. But some of the first shots fired in the War on Terror weren’t fired from a gun, but a pen:

“

President Freezes Terrorists' Assets
Remarks by the President, Secretary of the Treasury O'Neill and Secretary of State Powell on Executive Order
The Rose Garden

9:35 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. At 12:01 a.m. this morning, a major thrust of our war on terrorism began with the stroke of a pen. Today, we have launched a strike on the financial foundation of the global terror network.

Make no mistake about it, I've asked our military to be ready for a reason. But the American people must understand this war on terrorism will be fought on a variety of fronts, in different ways. The front lines will look different from the wars of the past.

So I told the American people we will direct every resource at our command to win the war against terrorists: every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence. We will starve the terrorists of funding, turn them against each other, rout them out of their safe hiding places and bring them to justice.

I've signed an executive order that immediately freezes United States financial assets of and prohibits United States transactions with 27 different entities. They include terrorist organizations, individual terrorist leaders, a corporation that serves as a front for terrorism, and several nonprofit organizations.

Just to show you how insidious these terrorists are, they oftentimes use nice-sounding, non-governmental organizations as fronts for their activities. We have targeted three such NGOs. We intend to deal with them, just like we intend to deal with others who aid and abet terrorist organizations. This executive order means that United States banks that have assets of these groups or individuals must freeze their accounts. And United States citizens or businesses are prohibited from doing business with them.

We know that many of these individuals and groups operate primarily overseas, and they don't have much money in the United States. So we've developed a strategy to deal with that. We're putting banks and financial institutions around the world on notice, we will work with their governments, ask them to freeze or block terrorist's ability to access funds in foreign accounts. If they fail to help us by sharing information or freezing accounts, the Department of the Treasury now has the authority to freeze their bank's assets and transactions in the United States.

We have developed the international financial equivalent of law enforcement's "Most Wanted" list. And it puts the financial world on notice. If you do business with terrorists, if you support or sponsor them, you will not do business with the United States of America.

I want to assure the world that we will exercise this power responsibly. But make no mistake about it, we intend to, and we will, disrupt terrorist networks. I want to assure the American people that in taking this action and publishing this list, we're acting based on clear evidence, much of which is classified, so it will not be disclosed. It's important as this war progresses that the American people understand we make decisions based upon classified information, and we will not jeopardize the sources; we will not make the war more difficult to win by publicly disclosing classified information.

And, by the way, this list is just a beginning. We will continue to add more names to the list. We will freeze the assets of others as we find that they aid and abet terrorist organizations around the world. We've established a foreign terrorist asset tracking center at the Department of the Treasury to identify and investigate the financial infrastructure of the international terrorist networks.

It will bring together representatives of the intelligence, law enforcement and financial regulatory agencies to accomplish two goals: to follow the money as a trail to the terrorists, to follow their money so we can find out where they are; and to freeze the money to disrupt their actions.

….

“

President Bush was right: Money is key to understanding an event like 9/11, and prosecuting those behind it. Terrorists are rarely of the “lone wolf” variety, and there’s no reason to believe those that supported groups like al-Qaeda before 9/11 will suddenly pursue a less-violent form of patronage unless they’re forced to. Nor is there any reason to believe we can come close understanding the full scale of those supporting the particularly poisonous brand of militant theocratic Islamism we face until we take to time to learn about the myriad of groups supporting it, including governments, Non-government organizations (NGOs), and wealthy individuals. And neither can we expect to make much sense of how this state of affairs came about and where its heading without looking at the history of Islamic terrorist financing and what’s been done since 9/11 to disrupt those money flows. Those are the topics that we’ll be covering in this initial set of essays: the who, what, when, why, and how of terror financing.

Let’s take a look back at the formation of the new Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center (FTATC) at the Department of the Treasury with this excelent October 2001 article from the Associated Press:

“

Terror Asset Tracking Center Delayed

By Ken Guggenheim
Associated Press Writer
Friday, Oct. 26, 2001; 3:22 a.m. EDT

WASHINGTON –– Just three days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Treasury Department announced it was creating a new team to fight terrorists: an asset tracking center that would work to cut off their funding.

It sounded like a new idea, but it wasn't: Congress had agreed almost a year before to fund the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center, but Treasury hadn't set it up yet.

"It just wasn't given the kind of priority it should have been, frankly, by the outgoing administration or the incoming administration," said Stuart Eizenstat, deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration.

Past and present government officials, some speaking on condition they not be identified, cited several reasons for the delay:

–Bureaucratic snags in setting up the center, especially a lack of access to classified materials at Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, known as OFAC, where the center is based.

–The normal delays that occur during a presidential transition were compounded by the hold Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., put on the confirmation of a key official.

–A perception at Treasury that the Bush administration was less interested in financial investigations than the Clinton administration had been.

No one suggested that if the center had been established earlier, the attacks could have been prevented.

…

Jonathan Winer, deputy assistant secretary of state for international enforcement in the Clinton administration, said Treasury has had problems getting intelligence information for 20 years.

"It began to be an obvious problem" in President Reagan's first term, "and it hasn't been solved, near as I can tell, prior to Sept. 11," he said.

“

Ok, so this clearly isn’t the most positive look back at our early terror finance efforts. The problem is that there just aren’t too many positive ways to look at this topic. Effective anti-terror financing efforts, especially when they involved Saudi financing, are an old, unsolved problem. Over 20 years old, as the article indicates, and coincidentally (perhaps) going back to the time the Reagan administration saw a budding covert intelligence alliance with the Saudi regime blossom, and US-Saudi efforts to fund proxy armies around the world took place. The Afghan Mujahedeen and the Nicaraguan Contras were prominent recipients of US-Saudi aid, but not the only ones. As such, the above article is likely correct that 9/11 still could not have been prevented had the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center been created in time. The problems are run deeper and go back long before 2001.

But why are the problems so deep and far reaching? That’s something we need to keep asking ourselves as we delve into this topic? Why wouldn’t the existence of a functional Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center have made a difference? Is it primarily due to the commonly given reasons (i.e. Bureaucratic snags, lack of inter-agency communication, lack of available tools and enforcement options)? Are their other agendas at work? And if so, which factions in the US government supported turning a blind eye to these threat, and why? Who are their supporters and political backers? Whose toes would have been stepped on (other than the toes of an obscenely rich theocratic monarchy that sells us lots of oil), and whose agendas would have been disrupted? The many articles we’re going to look at regarding terror financing help answer these questions, so let’s continue down this path of inquiry by taking a look at the formation of a 2^nd multi-agency terror-financing task force, Operation Greenquest (also spelled “Green Quest”), with this excellent CBS News article:

“

From CBS News

Feds Launch 'Operation Green Quest'
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25, 2001

The government is assembling a team of financial sleuths to cut off terrorists from their lifeblood - money.

Under Operation Green Quest, law enforcement people with financial expertise will investigate how terrorists move their money and where, the Bush administration announced Thursday.

The government would use the findings to freeze financial assets, seize money, impose fines and launch legal proceedings, including criminal prosecutions.

Using undercover operations, electronic surveillance and other techniques, the special investigative team will closely examine underground financial systems, illicit charities and corrupt financial institutions. It also will target other funding mechanisms for terrorists, including counterfeiting, credit card fraud, cash smuggling and drug trafficking.

"The lifeblood of terrorism is money, and if we cut the money we cut the blood supply," said assistant attorney general Michael Chertoff, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division.

….

“

You tell ‘em Chertoff! Surely we can expect great things from this Chertoff fellow as we follow his post-911 career.

Continuing…

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…

The U.S. government considers Osama bin Laden the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

His al-Qaida network has built a fund-raising operation using Islamic charities and relief organizations that attract money from wealthy donors.

…

“

Not surprisingly, most of these US-based foundations and charities were founded and funded by wealthy Saudis with the intent on promoting the extreme forms of Islam around the globe. The particular Islamic charities, think tanks, and foundations investigated in Operation Green Quest are a big component of the story behind 9/11, and understanding just who’s promoting them and why is critical to understanding 9/11.

Continuing…

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…

Al-Qaida moves its money through front companies and in suitcases stuffed with cash, and by using the ancient, informal banking network known as "hawala" that is popular in the Middle East and south Asia.

…

“

It’s worth noting, given recent port ownership controversies, that it was the United Arab Emirates' informal network of hawalas that came under particular scrutiny after 9/11.

It’s also worth noting that, when one reads into history of crime and questionable behavior, whether it is terrorism, cronyism, government and business fraud, or whatever malevalence you can think of, nearly every case involves an “informal network” of some type of another. While not all informal networks are criminal (and the vast majority of hawalas are not not criminal), they’re are a common vehicle through which influence is conveyed in the behind-the-scenes world where politics, money, and power intersect. For example, Khalid bin Mahfouz, the Saudi billionaire and general international man of mystery, is a walking, talking informal network. From terror financing (especially with the various Saudi charities involved), US-Saudi covert operations (think Iran Contra and BCCI), and Bush family dealings (Harken Energy, for example), Khalid bin Mahfouz, his money, and numerous associates have been there.

Continuing…

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…

"It's a tough nut to crack," acknowledged Deputy Treasury Secretary Ken Dam. Federal officials said hawala brokers operate in the United States, but wouldn't say how many or where.

President Bush has ordered assets blocked of 66 individuals and organizations suspected of conducting or financing terror, including bin Laden and his senior aides. Since the attacks, 152 countries have now joined the effort to disrupt terrorist funding, with 81 issuing blocking orders.

Roughly 30 people from various federal law enforcement agencies will be reassigned to the project, to be run out of a Customs Service command center. A senior Customs official will serve as director, a senior IRS official will be the deputy, and a senior FBI official will be on staff, as will two Justice Department prosecutors.

Over time, roughly 200 law enforcement experts involved in the "El Dorado" anti-money-laundering task force in New York will refocus their work on the terrorists' money trail, officials said. The 9-year-old task force, which includes people from Customs, FBI, IRS and state and local law enforcement, has produced more than 1,000 arrests and $425 million in seized assets.

The team will serve as the investigative arm for the Treasury's office that freezes financial assets and for a newly created center that has brought together intelligence, law enforcement and financial regulators to chase terrorist money.

“

Ok, so to review, on October 25, 2001 the government set up Operation Greenquest, a multi-agency task force designed to coordinate the terrorist-financing investigations amongst the multiple agencies involved. It will serve Treasury Department’s investigative arm and is located out of a Customs Service command center. Senior officials from Customs the IRS, both of which fall within the Treasury Department, will serve as director and deputy director, with a senior FBI official and two Justice Department prosecutors on staff.

But hold on now...wasn’t the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center (FTATC) also primarily a Treasury Department-run multi-agency unit set up to investigate terror financing and coordinate the activities of all government agencies involved? Yep, and it appears there wasn’t too much conflict between the two, since the belatedly-launched FTATC quietly languished in understaffed obsolescence until November of 2002, when Congress renamed it the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Group, and transferred it to the CIA. From an excellent January 2005 report by the Center for Contemporary Conflict we find:

“

…

A number of bureaucratic battles developed in the aftermath of the September 11 th attacks. The Treasury Department was at the center of most of them. Within the Treasury Department, the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) was hastily made the home of the Financial Assets Tracking Center, established and funded in fall 2000, but it was only established three days after the September attacks. It initially was made up of the same agencies as Customs’ Operation Green Quest. FTATC never fully functioned at Treasury, and the CIA essentially took over the operation. This fact was made official by November 2002, when the Bush Administration renamed it the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Group and made it an independent entity administered by the CIA. Since its move to the CIA, the Treasury Department has not detailed any analysts from Treasury to FTATG. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Center (FinCEN) also does not detail analysts to FTATG. FTATG now functions as a targeting arm of the PCC, but it appears to have a low priority within the Administration, as it had been without a director for five months as of August 2004.[84]

…

“

So we have two Treasury Department-run multi-agency units created within months of 9/11, one of which dies a quiet death a year later. Is this the extent of the bureaucratic messiness involved with the terror-financing investigation? Certainly not. Let’s take a quick look at this overview from the same Center for Contemporary Conflict report on the various terror-financing units set up in the wake of 9/11:

“

…

U.S. Counter-Terrorist Financing Efforts after the 9/11 Attacks

The shock of the September 11, 2001 attacks caused radical changes in the way the U.S. framed and managed the issue of terrorist financing. Within days, federal bureaucracies came together to act collectively to understand the financial basis of the attacks. Agencies immediately established new units to work the problem, and agreed to interagency cooperation. The FBI, which was harshly criticized in the 9/11 Commission Staff Monograph for its failures prior to 9/11, established an interagency Financial Review Group within days of the attacks. This group became the Terrorist Financing Operations Section (TFOS). It focuses on ensuring that the U.S. develops a real-time financial tracking capability for urgent financial investigations and that each terrorism investigation has a financial component. Most importantly, for the first time it coordinates in a single office the FBI’s counter-terrorist financing efforts.[78] The U.S. Customs established Operation Green Quest to investigate terrorist financing. The Justice Department reallocated resources from other areas after 9/11 to create a unit devoted to pursuing and coordinating terrorist financing criminal investigations nationwide.[79] In 2003, a FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force combined the investigative efforts of the FBI, Justice Department, Customs (now under the Department of Homeland Security) and the IRS. Within a week of the September 11 attacks, the CIA had created a new interagency section to develop long-term intelligence on terrorist financing, track terrorists and disrupt their operations.

The NSC set up an ad hoc structure immediately after the attacks, which was replaced by a Policy Coordinating Committee (PCC) on Terrorist Financing in March 2002.[80] The PCC was chaired by the Treasury Department Office of Legal Counsel until November 2003, and owing largely to General Counsel David Aufhauser’s personality, was able to overcome differences.[81] The Treasury’s lead on counter-terrorist financing came under fire from an Independent Task Force on Terrorist Financing of the Council on Foreign Relations, which insisted that the NSC must take the lead on the PCC because of diplomatic and intelligence aspects of counter-terrorist financing. The Independent Task Force also recommended that the Administration needed to designate a single point person for terrorist financing in the NSC to chair the PCC in order to insure the requisite level of priority and integration with the government’s broader counterterrorism strategy.[82] The 9/11 Commission staff also reported that the PCC was not well integrated into the U.S.’ broader counterterrorism effort, particular with regard to Saudi Arabia, a criticism loudly echoed by the Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force.[83]

…

“

Ok, so multiple agencies set up their own multi-agency units (sometimes multiple multi-agency units) to better coordinate the multiple agencies involved in investigating terror financing. What could possibly go wrong? A lot, unfortunately.

Fortunately, much did go right, and a great deal was learned about the financial and institutional networks that feed the beasts of terror. And of all these task forces, the most relevant (and revealing) unit to follow is the Operation Greenquest task force. We’ll be spending much of the rest of these essays on the story that emerges out of Operation Greenquest’s findings, because few elements of the 9/11 investigation are more illuminating about why terror-financing is such a touchy topic in DC. At the same time, by following the money, we’ll learning quite a bit about the roots of modern militant Islam, whose been promoting it, and what they gain from it. As with so much in our lives, there is far more to this story, and our world, that meets the eye. It’s also an incredibly important part of our history with profound implications so keep reading!

2006-11-11T16:54:00.000-08:00

Part 2:

Operation Greenquest in Action

Just two weeks after the formation of Operation Greenquest was formed The first big raids were underway. Let’s take a look a closer look at these raids with this excellent November 2001 article in the New York Times:

“

November 8, 2001

MONEY TRAIL

U.S. Moves to Cut 2 Financial Links for Terror Group

By DAVID E. SANGER and KURT EICHENWALD

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 President Bush announced an international effort today to destroy two financial networks that American officials said had long been suspected of having ties to the Qaeda terrorist organization.

The announcement came as law enforcement officials in the United States and Europe carried out raids to disrupt their operations.

Announcing the action at the Treasury Department's financial intelligence center in Virginia, Mr. Bush said that the initiative "blocks an important source of funds" for Al Qaeda and "sends a clear message to global financial institutions: You are with us, or you're with the terrorists. And if you're with the terrorists, you will face the consequences."

The financial networks are called Al Barakaat and Al Taqwa, and President Bush said they did far more than move cash. The groups, with a presence in more than 40 countries, also financed the movement of arms, provided secure communications and served as a network for Osama bin Laden to transmit intelligence and instructions to terrorist cells in the loosely linked Al Qaeda organization, government officials said.

"Al Taqwa and Al Barakaat raise funds for Al Qaeda," the president said. "They manage, invest and distribute those funds."

Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill later described a complex mechanism that he said Al Barakaat used to provide secret financing to Al Qaeda. According to the secretary and other officials, the company "skimmed" a part of the fees charged on each financial transaction it conducted and paid that to Al Qaeda. These transactions, officials said, provide the terrorist network with tens of millions of dollars each year. Al Taqwa then aided Al Qaeda by providing investment advice and cash transfer abilities, they added.

…

“

So it sounds like Al-Barakaat helped raise the funds, and al-Taqwa helped move the money and make them grow. And yes, this is the same Bank al-Taqwa that was later probed for its ties to Swiss neo-Nazis.

Continuing…

“

…

While the officials described in general terms the connections between the financial networks and Al Qaeda, government officials did not provide specific evidence linking the organizations to the terrorists.

Youseff Nada, a principal of Al Taqwa, was interviewed by The New York Times early this week, when word of the administration's action became known, and he denied any involvement in terrorist activities. At the Barakaat headquarters in Mogadishu, officials defended their money-transfer operation as legitimate.

"How could we ever think to use our channels to help bin Laden?" said Abas Abdi Ali, Al Barakaat's deputy general manager. "If Al Qaeda gave us the opportunity, we wouldn't accept it."

…

“

Youseff Nada is a central character in the history of militant Islamism and fascism. We’ll have much more to say about him later.

Note too that the, given the Military Commissions Act of 2006, a the lack of evidence isn’t really an issue. And to complicate matters even more, the evidence that we have in public documentation seems to indicated that figures like Mr. Nada know how to conduct their business in a manner that will not leave a paper trail. It’s just messy all around.

Continuing …

“

…

Today's announcement came amid a flurry of raids and other actions by law enforcement officials around the world, in what the Bush administration portrayed as an example of the close cooperation the United States was receiving from foreign governments in the fight against terrorism.

In Switzerland, Mr. Nada and another man believed to be a principal of Al Taqwa were detained by the police but later released.

In the United Arab Emirates, officials today seized assets and records of Al Barakaat, which is based in Dubai. A number of European allies, including Liechtenstein and Italy, took enforcement actions against Al Taqwa. Still other nations, including several in the Middle East and Africa, helped with coordinated enforcement actions and by blocking assets of the organizations.

Whatever the financial effect, the announcement today may have reflected a significant diplomatic breakthrough for the Bush administration. It won the help of an array of countries in a coordinated crackdown on the financial networks. These include the Bahamas, Liechtenstein and the United Arab Emirates, which in years past have been known as centers for international money laundering.

…

“

If by “in years past” they mean “removed from the international money-laundering black-list as of June of 2001”, than yeah, one might describe the Bahamas and Liechtenstein as past centers for international money laundering (recall that this article is from November of 2001).

Continuing…

“

…

Twice today Secretary of State Colin L. Powell praised Saudi Arabia for signing a United Nations convention against terrorist financing, a clear effort to signal that the Bush administration believes that the kingdom is on board in the fight against terrorism — despite evidence that the country, which was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, has dragged its feet.

…

“
Yeah, you could pretty much describe our attitude towards the Saudis and terror financing as a “faith-based” initiative: our faith in the Saudis’ good will, and their faith in our ability to keep looking the other way as long as they keep selling us oil.

Continuing…

“

…

To date, Mr. O'Neill said today, 112 countries have put blocking orders in place. Other officials noted that even Saudi Arabia had reported to the administration that it had blocked accounts, and the world's largest Islamic country, Indonesia, reversed course several days ago and said it would also block specific accounts.

While the number of countries that say they are cooperating is surprisingly large, even Bush administration officials say they are uncertain how aggressively those governments are seeking out designated accounts and looking for suspicious activity.

…

“

Ooo…Indonesia is willing to block specific accounts. Well, that’s progress.

Continuing…

“

…

The announcement today was the second in a series of four public statements Mr. Bush is making this week in an effort to show that the coalition he has been piecing together is beginning to win some major battles.

On Tuesday the administration agreed to have Germany, Italy and other European countries contribute militarily to the war in Afghanistan. Today he used the announcement that 62 more individuals and businesses are being added to the list of those providing financial support to Al Qaeda to reinforce his message that the war is taking place on many fronts, not just the battlefield in Afghanistan.

On Thursday Mr. Bush travels to Atlanta to visit the Centers for Disease Control and address the country about the challenges of homeland defense. And on Saturday he is speaking to the United Nations.

Current and former government officials described Al Taqwa and Al Barakaat as having long been associated with Al Qaeda, according to reports from intelligence services in America and overseas, including France and Switzerland.

…

“

When the Swiss charge you with financial shenanigans, you know you messed up.

Continuing…

“

…

The intelligence, these officials said, was varied, involving information both from people and from electronic intercepts. Moreover, officials said, the types of records used in traditional financial investigations came into play, including wire transfers and other banking documents, and suspicious activity reports filed with the government by financial institutions.

Both financial networks came together in the late 1980's. The Barakaat Group was founded around 1989 by a former banker in Somalia, Ahmed Nur Ali Jumale.

American officials say Mr. Jumale befriended Mr. bin Laden during the Afghanistan war against the Soviet Union. A government fact sheet says that Mr. bin Laden "reportedly provided" capital to Mr. Jumale's group, which in turn allowed Mr. bin Laden to use the financial network to support extremist causes.

The legitimate side of the business grew as well, branching out to at least 40 countries, including the United States, tapping into the network of Somalis who live abroad but want to send cash back home. Those transfers amount to about $500 million a year. The Barakaat network expanded to provide telecommunication services to its customers, including Mr. bin laden and a related Somali terrorist organization.

The group's main bank is in the United Arab Emirates, a small Persian Gulf nation whose 47 banks play an important role in global financial transfers. Money makes its way to Dubai — and eventually to Somalia — through a series of "correspondent" relationships that Barakaat has with major international banks.

…

“

In December of 2001, a month after these raids, US government officials acknowledged that they had evidence that Al-Barakaat’s was funneling money to al-Qaeda back in 1999 but did nothing to stop it.

Also, given recent issues involving the United Arab Emirates management and ownership of sensitive US assets, it’s worth noting that it was the UAE's informal network of hawalas that came under particular scrutiny after 9/11.

And finishing off the New York Times article…

“

…

Around the United States, immigrants who have used the storefront money centers as their financial connection to family members overseas reacted with surprise and anger at the raids.

In Columbus, Ohio, agents raided Barakaat Enterprise at about 10 a.m., witnesses said. The business, in a small strip mall, was cleaned to the bare walls by federal agents. Only trash was left behind.

"They confiscated everything: the machines, the cash, the records," said Shaykh Amin Abdur-Rahim, registered agent for the Columbus store. "We are innocent people. We are in total opposition to the terrorists and their methods."

Yassin Hammeda, a local resident from Somalia, said that he believed the government must have made a mistake in raiding the Columbus storefront.

"People are only sending money to their families," he said. "Everybody uses this place. We are all Americans."

In Seattle, agents raided Barakaat Wire Transfer Company, which shares a small building with a mini- mart. By midmorning, agents had closed off the area and were removing food and office equipment from the minimart.

(New York Times)

“

This is an excellent example of how the businesses that form part of the the financial backbone of militant Islamism, hawalas in particular, are often providing very real jobs, services, and charity for people around the world. In the case of Somalia, al-Barakaat was not only its largest employer, but freezing al-Barakaat’s assets literally froze the ability for Somali expatriots to send money to their relatives back home to Somalia, which, on top of lacking a stable banking system, lacks a stable government.

And that’s assuming al-Barakaat is actually affiliated with al-Qaeda, not that evidence is an issue anymore.

But the difficulties in investigating and prosecuting the hawalas don’t end there, as we’re going to see in this November 12, 2001 Washington Post article on the troubles with the Swiss probe of al-Taqwa:

“

Swiss Probe Illustrates Difficulties in Tracking Al Qaeda's Cash

By Daniel Williams

Washington Post
November 12, 2001

In a town where don't ask, don't tell is the golden rule of business, police carting documents from the Al Taqwa Management Organization was an uncommon sight.

The search and seizure went against the grain of the economics of Lugano -- and all of Switzerland -- with its tradition of bank secrecy and the free flow of money. And hardly anyone here seems to think charges will be filed.

Even the Swiss prosecutors who ordered the raid Wednesday say they acted not because they were ready to make a case, but because Al Taqwa was on a list published by the Bush administration of groups and individuals suspected of having links with reputed terrorists such as Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.

"I would have liked to know better the . . . various links, but the publication by the United States of a list of people and organizations linked to international terrorism in effect fixed a deadline for taking action," Claude Nicati, the deputy Swiss prosecutor, told reporters Thursday. He said it would take at least three weeks to analyze the documents collected from Al Taqwa, which is thought to be part of a traditional money-transferring system known in Arabic as hawala.

The Swiss government also froze the bank accounts of Al Taqwa and 24 other companies and individuals listed by the United States.

Al Taqwa's lawyer, Pier Felice Barchi, said in an interview that he was confident the investigation "will end in nothing."

…

“

Make a note of al-Taqwa’s lawyer, Pier Felice Barchi. We’re going to have much more to say about him in the next essay.

Continuing…

“

…

The probe appears to be a case study in the difficulties of tracking the money that U.S. officials believe nourished al Qaeda terrorist cells in Europe and the United States. The Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington are believed to have cost tens of thousands of dollars, not millions, to finance. The number of channels available for moving such funds is practically infinite, through banks and dummy companies in tax havens worldwide.

In part, the difficulty in pinning down a Swiss connection lies in a regulatory gap.

…

“

These last two sentences are key to understanding the world that terrorist financing flows through. Yes, the Swiss have a “regulatory gap”, but there are also “practically infinite” channels to move money around the world. In other words, problems with lax banking laws extend far beyond Switzerland.

Continuing…

“

…

Campione is the home of Youssef Mustafa Nada and Ali Ghaleb Himmat, two elderly officers of Al Taqwa who both hold Egyptian and Italian citizenship. Each appeared on the U.S. list of individuals and businesses suspected of terrorist links. They are suspected of funneling funds to militant Islamic groups in Germany and Italy.

Acting on a Swiss request, Italian police raided their homes Wednesday and seized papers and computer disks. The men were questioned by Swiss police for six hours before being released.

Nada firmly denied ever meeting bin Laden or having any deals with him or his organization. "I am not involved in financing of terrorism," he said last week. He did acknowledge belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic political movement that originated in Egypt.

Another Al Taqwa official, Swiss citizen Ahmed Huber, who converted to Islam and changed his first name from Albert, was also named in the U.S. list. Huber said on Swiss television that he had never met bin Laden, but had encountered "members of his entourage" at Islamic conferences in the Middle East. He said he did not know exactly who they were because they "all traveled under false names." Huber also said Al Taqwa made charitable contributions to Muslim development projects abroad.

…

“

Yes, both Nada and Huber insist that they have no connection to Al-Qaeda, so it’s worth noting that in March of 2002 Ahmed Huber, the Swiss neo-Nazi-turned Islamist (who we will have much to say about in the next chapter), also shared his feelings that “Al Qaeda is a very honorable organization”, has admittedly close ties to the Ayatollah Khomeini, and Treasury officials claim that intelligence agencies actually have evidence that al-Taqwa funneled money to Bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks(1).

Continuing…

“

…

Barchi, the lawyer, said Al Taqwa served as an accountant for Middle Eastern business people and conducted "feasibility studies" for potential Middle Eastern investors throughout the world. It has branch offices in several offshore banking countries, including Liechtenstein and, until recently, the Bahamas, where it operated a bank.

Barchi said police first took an interest in Al Taqwa in 1995, when a French journalist wrote an article linking the firm to the Muslim Brotherhood. Last spring, Al Taqwa changed its name to Nada Management Organization.

In Lugano, few people with knowledge about Al Taqwa will speak about it. One intelligence official would speak only hypothetically about companies that want to launder money or simply transfer it anonymously. "These are not enterprises that buy things, add value to them through manufacturing and then resell them," the official said. "Rather, they provide services that do not necessarily result in a concrete product at the end. The value of the services are arbitrary, as are the fees."

What kind of business, for instance? "Feasibility studies could be one. Someone provides $50,000 for research into a project. Does the study really cost $50,000 to produce? Is it really a study? Or is it just a way to transfer $50,000 in disguise?" he said. "Basically, money is given and the giver doesn't want a return."

…

“

As we’re going to see in the next chapter, al-Taqwa actually does a lot more than just “feasability studies”, but the example of “feasibility studies” illustrates the important point that money-laundering isn’t just a global issue. It’s pretty easy to do if you know how.

And finishing off the Washington Post article…

“

…

The official said Al Taqwa was only one of a dozen hawalas in Switzerland, "so closing it down will not resolve problems."

He said information in the seized documents -- names, addresses or hints of wrongdoing -- might contribute to a "map" of money transfers.

Otherwise, it would be hard to pin a crime on Al Taqwa, the official said. Switzerland would need laws to open hawalas to audits and scrutiny, he added, and, "Until September 11, nobody cared about them."

“

After the investigations…

So how have the investigations of al-Taqwa and Al-Barakaat panned out? Starting with Al-Barakaat, let’s look at an excerpt a 2005 Forbes article on the difficulties of investigating and prosecuting hawalas:

“

…

The investigation of al-Barakaat went nowhere for a long time. All that changed after Sept. 11. The new Patriot Act strengthened anti-money-laundering statutes already on the books, requiring hawaladars to comply with state laws and register with the federal government. The Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Treasury Department began to pour enormous resources into cleaning up the alternative remittance business.

Two months after the attack on the World Trade Center federal agents raided eight al-Barakaat offices in the U.S. from Seattle to Boston, froze at least $1 million in assets and dismantled the operation. At a press conference with then-Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, President Bush described Jumale as a "friend and supporter of Osama Bin Laden" and "a principal source of funding, intelligence and money transfers for Bin Laden." The Office of Foreign Asset Control, a Treasury Department unit, designated al-Barakaat as a supporter of terrorist organizations.

Since then, though, the investigation has crumbled. U.S. authorities traveled a couple of times to the United Arab Emirates and pored over 2 million pages of documents. They interviewed Jumale twice and 22 other al-Barakaat personnel and returned home with 17,000 pages of records, plus data from al-Barakaat and bank computers. And still there is no proven connection between al-Barakaat and al Qaeda.

Today, despite any direct evidence, the U.S. Treasury Department insists al-Barakaat supported terrorists. The group and Jumale, now reportedly in Somalia, have long denied the allegations. (One al-Barakaat affiliate successfully sued Uncle Sam to have its name removed from a list of terrorist supporters.) Intelligence sources told the 9/11 Commission, which released its monograph on terror financing last summer, that its sources for much of the reporting on al-Barakaat's connection to al Qaeda had been terminated because of concerns they had fabricated evidence. The commission grimly concludes that the investigators' "attempt to make a criminal case simply had no traction."

…

“

Ok, so that’s not exactly the most positive result. How about al-Taqwa? Well, in June of last year the Swiss “suspended” the investigation of Youssef Nada and his web of companies, blaming the government of the Bahamas for not providing them with evidence for al-Taqwa’s Bahamas-based shell-bank. Now why would the Bahamas refuse to cooperate with an investigation that appears to be so important on its face? Well, it could have something to do with the fact that Sean Hanna, Bank al-Taqwa’s laywer for its Bahamas branch, is also a member of the prominent Hanna family of the Bahamas. Sean’s sister, Glenys Hanna-Martin, is the Cabinet Minster of Transport and Aviation. Sean’s father, Arthur D. Hanna, is a long-standing figure in Bahamian politics, and just this February became the Governor-General of the Bahamas. Sean Hanna also died unexpectedly just a month before his father took office and six months after the Swiss closed down their 3 ½ year investigation of al-Taqwa.

Keep in mind these kinds of political connections, and the lack of interest in thoroughly investigating the the Muslim Brotherhood’s international financial networks, because there’s plenty more investigative disinterest where that came from, it’s not all coming from the Bahamas, and it’s going to be what we look at in our next essay, so keep reading!!

Offline References

(1) "Terror's Cash Flow" by Mark Hosenball with Kevin Peraino and Cathrine Skipp; Newsweek; 3/25/2002; pp. 28-29

2006-11-11T16:51:00.000-08:00

Part 3:

Down the al-Taqwa rabbit hole…

So what’s makes the al-Taqwa network so important? Well, The al-Taqwa network is major component of one of the largest reverse-money-laundering setups funding radical Islam: “Clean” money flows into the al-Taqwa network, sloshes around back and forthworth between banks across world, and then gets distributed back out to the multiple militant Islamist movements, financially feeding the likes of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated militant groups like al-Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Abu Sayaff, to name just a few.

So al-Taqwa is a financial nexus. But it’s also a historic nexus because directing this flow of funds we find a cast of characters that are literally the living embodiment of one of the most powerful and least understood alliances of the 20^th. It’s an alliance forged between the nascent Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islamist movements in the 1930’s and their ideological and aspirational brethren found in many far-Rightists movements of that day. And yeah, when we’re talking about far-rightist movements from the 1930’s, we’re talking about Nazis. And not just Nazis. We’re talking about the much larger world of fascist, racially-charged nationalists, and all sorts of other characters that share one thing in common: A loathing of Western Democracy and culture (the US in particular nowadays), and a passionate hatred of Communism. This is the milieu we’re talking about, and, as the story of al-Taqwa and their fellow financiers of terror demonstrates, this alliance between the extremist followers of the crescent and the swastika isn’t just a 20^th century phenomena. It’s still going. In other words, Osama has allies, and they don’t all heil Allah.

Even five years since 9/11 most of this history remains unknown to the public. Understanding the past, a task critical to our future and one of the most neglected topics of our age, is often opaque in the public mind. The story of al-Taqwa, and the people behind it, is even more opaque. Much of it wasn’t known until recent decades. Some critical sources simply aren’t published in English. Fortunately, in our modern age of a free press, much of this story has been told, in bits and pieces, scattered amongst the myriad of books and publications available to us. It’s a story hiding in plain site, and a story that easily remains hidden through its sheer messiness and complexity. But, it is also amongst the most important stories of our time, so let’s get started with a a closer look the al-Taqwa network and the people behind it, with an excellent March 2002 article by money-laundering expert Lucy Komisar:

“

Shareholders in the Bank of Terror?

A previously unpublished list reveals that backers of a bank that the U.S. says helped fund al-Qaida include prominent members of the Arab world.

By Lucy Komisar

March 15, 2002 | According to an unpublished list obtained by Salon, the Al Taqwa bank, part of a network of financial companies named by the Bush administration as a major source and distributor of funds for Osama bin Laden's terrorist operations, has shareholders that include prominent Arab figures from numerous countries in the Middle East. Among the shareholders are the grand mufti of the United Arab Emirates and prominent families in the UAE and Kuwait. Two sisters of Osama bin Laden are also on the list, undermining the bin Laden family's claim that it separated itself from his terrorist pursuits after he was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1994.

Ahmed Huber, a Swiss director of the bank who is a radical Islamist and Hitler admirer, acknowledged in 1995 that wealthy Saudi Arabians were large contributors to the Al Taqwa bank. The just-revealed list of shareholders demonstrates further connections between important individuals in moderate Middle Eastern countries and a financial network allegedly vital to bin Laden.

...

“

It’s worth noting that the term “moderate” is often applied to Middle Eastern countries that are allied with the US regardless of how moderate their policies actually are with regards to human rights, religious freedom, or, as we’ll see, financial support radical Islam. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan, for example, may be “moderate” when it comes to selling us oil and supporting US geostrategic interests in that region, but that’s about it.

Continuing…

“

…

The FBI may have known who the shareholders were for as long as four years. There is also evidence that Swiss authorities have since the mid-1990s refused to cooperate with international intelligence inquiries into the bank's activities. Swiss officials have said they were aware of reports that Al Taqwa was connected to terrorist groups, but there was never sufficient evidence to merit a search warrant.

…

“

This is one of those patterns we’re going to see over and over when we look into the post-9/11 terror financing investigations. Authorities around the world have known who these guys were for years. The problem is, as the article stated above, many of these guys are also connected to “important individuals in moderate Middle Eastern countries”. As we’ll see, the term “important individuals” is often an understatement when talking about the folks we’re talking about. “Untouchable individuals” might be more like it.

Continuing…

“

…

The names appear on an unpublished shareholders register of "Bank Al Taqwa" that reflects holdings as of December 1999. Bank Al Taqwa is based in the Bahamas; the Al Taqwa group (which changed its name to Nada Management Organization a year ago, after authorities began an investigation into its dealings) is headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland. In November, the U.S. named the Al Taqwa network a funnel for Bin Laden's al-Qaida financial network. Representatives of the bank have denied any involvement in terrorist activities.

The list has been confirmed as authentic by both U.S. officials and Al Taqwa. Michele Davis, spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, was shown the documents on March 13 and acknowledged, "We have the list. We are doing the same as you -- trying to find out who these people are." There are 745 names on the 18-page register.

…

“

While all men are created equal, all shareholders aren’t. And neither are the shareholders equal in terms of influence. Just ask the founders and directors of Dar Al-Mal Al-Islami (DMI), a massive financial consortium and one of the two Saudi-based godfathers of the Islamic financial world that’s flourished since the oil-boom of the 70’s. Set up by Saudi princes and “important individuals” back in 1981, DMI is also a principle shareholder of Al-Taqwa(1). Along with its sister financial conglomerate Dallah al-Baraka, DMI is one of the most important institutions for spreading Wahabbi ideas within the Sunni muslim world. It also has a number of ties to Osama bin Laden and terrorist financing (Lucy Komisar has written quite a bit about this topic. It’s not a popular topic). So while there are a number of small players involved with al-Taqwa, its important to remember that the the big shareholders in al-Taqwa include significant Saudi-backed institutions with terrorist connections.

Continuing…

“

…

Al Taqwa president Youssef Moustafa Nada, one of several top bank officials who was put on the U.S. "supporters of terrorism" list in November, also confirmed the veracity of the list. "It is genuine," he said in a phone interview. "You can ask Mr. Nicati [the Swiss deputy attorney general]. He investigated all these things four months ago. The FBI knows since 1997. I talked to them."

Nada has vehemently denied funding bin Laden.

Included on the list are Yousuf Abdullah Al-Qaradawi, the grand mufti of the United Arab Emirates, and five members of his family; Mariam Al-Sheikh A. Bin Aziz Al-Mubarak of a branch of the Kuwaiti royal family; and members of the prominent Khalifeh family of the United Arab Emirates. Sisters Huta and Iman Binladen, who live in Saudi Arabia, and Hassan el-Banna, a leader of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood group, are also listed.

…

“

To avoid confusion, the Hassan el-Banna on the list of al-Taqwa shareholders is not the same Hassan el-Banna (also spelled “al-Banna”) that founded the Muslim Brotherhood back in 1929 and died 20 years later (unless its an honorary listing of some sort).

Youssef Nada, on the other hand, definitely harkens back to the early history of Muslim Brotherhood. Specifically, the WWII-period armed branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. In one of the many relationships between Arab nationalists and the Nazis during this period, Youssef Nada joined the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1940’s while also working for the German Abwehr (military intelligence) under Admiral Canaris. In 1954, Youssef Nada was implicated in the plot to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser, and was forced to flee to German and then Italy, where he resides today in Campione d’Italia (which is actually an Italian enclave within Switzerland)(2).

Continuing…

“

…

Al Taqwa was a so-called "hawala" operation (an informal word-of-mouth system that keeps no records and relies on trust) that facilitated transfers of cash between agents worldwide. The bank also used correspondent accounts -- accounts that banks have in other banks -- to transmit cash to its agents.

In October, Swiss Attorney General Valentine Roschacher said he'd received names from the FBI and they were being checked, but said no evidence of any wrongdoing had been found. He added, "It's difficult for us to get information." Swiss banks are protected by stringent secrecy laws, and the hawala system makes ascertaining the exact nature of Al Taqwa's transactions even more difficult.

…

“

As we’re going to see in Part 10, correspondent accounts can give a shell bank a huge amount of money-moving functionality. So al-Taqwa was, in some respects, a Swiss-based hawala-shell bank hybrid. It could act on a word-of-mouth system, keeps no records, and through its “Bank al-Taqwa” branch in the Bahamas it can wire money all over the world via its correspondent account. Now that is one shady shell bank.

Continuing…

“

…

One American law enforcement official who was shown the list recognized names of members of the militant Palestinian organization Hamas, which is on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, among the shareholders. Additional publicly accessible records show that some of the bank's shareholders are connected to organizations Western intelligence officials link to al-Qaida.

Al Taqwa has been viewed with suspicion by Western intelligence sources for years. In the mid-1990s, the Italian anti-terrorist agency DIGOS (Division of General Intelligence and Special Operations), concerned about radical Islamic activity at the Islamic Cultural Institution of Milan, found links to Al Taqwa. In 1995, according to journalists Paolo Fusi and Martin Stoll in the Swiss newsweekly Facts, DIGOS told Swiss federal prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, "The Nada group comprises the most important financial structure of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic terrorist organizations." The newsweekly said the agency later reported that Swiss officials appeared loath to look into Nada's operations.

Included in the list of shareholders of Al Taqwa are bank founder and director Ahmed Idriss Nasreddin, an Ethiopian who worked for the Binladen Group (the bin Laden family's construction company) and was honorary consul of Kuwait in Milan, board member of the Islamic Center of Milan and president of the Islamic Community of Ticino.

…

“

As Lucy points out, Ahmed Idris Nasreddin isn’t just a founder and director of al-Taqwa. On top of working for the Bin Laden Group, Nasreddin also set up and runs Akida Bank, another bank suspected of moving terrorist funds and is closely affiliated with al-Taqwa’s operations. Akida bank even shares the same Bahamas address as Bank al-Taqwa. On August 29, 2002 the US and Italy acted in concert to freeze the assets of 25 individuals and entities with alleged ties to al-Qaeda. Of the 25, 14 are entities owned or controlled by Ahmed Idris Nasreddin and Youssef Nada. The US government describes both Bank al-Taqwa and Akida bank as shell companies, and they’re right. Both are cogs in a much larger, complicated, and critical machine in funding the radical Islamist and far-rightist movements across the globe. Creating a financial institution can be as easy as filling out some paper work and a paying the government fee in some parts of the globe and its done all the time, for reasons ranging from fraud and terror and simple tax avoidance (3). And in a sense, “shells” aren’t limited to companies. Nada’s partner, Ahmed Huber, can be seen as a representative of a man who has played a vital role in building the ideological and postwar financial alliance between radical Islam and international fascism: Francois Genoud, the godfather of the Al-Taqwa network that committed suicide during the Swiss bank/Nazi gold revelations of 1996.

Continuing …

“

…

Others are Sante (Abdulwahab) Ciccarello, director of the Islamic Cultural Center in Milan, and Kaldoun Dia Eddine, president of the Committee to Aid Refugees of Bosnia-Herzegovina and secretary of the Islamic Community of Ticino.

In 1996 DIGOS became suspicious that humanitarian help to Bosnia organized by Nasreddin in Milan was being skimmed. The amount the charity sent didn't coincide with what it raised. According to the U.S. investigations into the 1998 attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Milan center was also a gathering place for recruits to an alQaida training camp in Afghanistan.

According to Facts, a 1996 DIGOS report said Al Taqwa handled financing for a number of Arab and Islamic political and militant groups, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the Egyptian Gama'a al-Islamiya, as well as former Afghan mujahedin in bin Laden's camps. It said the network aided terrorist groups in Kuwait, Yemen, Libya, Jordan, Lebanon and Sudan.

…

“

Just a note that the involvement of Khaldoun Dia Eddine (also spelled “Khaldoun”) in Bosnia goes far his being president of the committee to Aid Reguees of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which we’ll have much more to say on in Part 8.

Continuing…

“

…

The weekly Facts also reported that in 1997 DIGOS asked for Swiss help. Del Ponte (who is now leading the U.N.'s prosecution of former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes) started questioning Al Taqwa officials. Nada's attorney, Pier Felice Barchi, in whose law firm Del Ponte had worked, recalled to Facts how he ended the investigation. Barchi said, "When I learned about the Italian inquiry, I immediately called Del Ponte and said to her, 'Hey, Carlotta, stop this shit.' A few hours later, the nonsense was off the table."

Barchi told Salon his true remark was, "Please, Mrs. Del Ponte, make an inquiry." He said, "After 20 or 30 days, Mrs. Del Ponte said it's not necessary to make an inquiry; there's no evidence against Mr. Nada." He said he hadn't asked Facts for a correction because "I have other things to do." Del Ponte's press spokesman declined to respond to a detailed query.

…

“

Yes, that’s right: Youssef Nada’s Swiss attorney, Pier Felice Barchi, worked in the same law firm as Carla Del Ponte, the Swiss Attorney General at the time. Perhaps that had something to do with Swiss disinterest in investigating Al-Taqwa.

Carla Del Ponte, whose career has included being the chief prosecutor in Slobodan Milosevic’s war-crimes tribunal, is one of many political connected people we’re going to come across when investigating the area of terror financing. The al-Taqwa network does not lack in the influence department.

Finishing off Lucy Komisar’s Salon article …

“

…

Al Taqwa has for years enjoyed protection in Switzerland, where it moves money through correspondent accounts in the politically influential Banca del Gottardo, also in Lugano. Gottardo president Claudio Generali is a local vice president of the ruling Liberal Radical Party and a former finance minister of Ticino. Gottardo has New York correspondent accounts in Citibank and the Bank of New York, which gave Al Taqwa entry into the U.S. Replying to numerous queries about Gottardo activities, spokesman Franco Rogantini sent an e-mail declining to answer queries, then or in the future.

About the writer
Lucy Komisar is a New York journalist who is writing a book about how the offshore bank and corporate secrecy system is used by terrorists, criminals, corrupt officials, fraudsters and others worldwide.

“

Banca del Gottardo is an important institution to understand in this network, because unlike the al-Taqwa network, which was a series of shell banks and companies scattered across the world, Banca del Gottardo is a real, major financial institution. Owned by Swiss Life, the oldest and largest insurance company in Switzerland, its president, Claudio Generali (now former president), is the former finance minster of Ticino, the Swiss province where Lugano resides. And with Claudio Generali’s status as a local vice president of the Liberal Radical Party (PLR) (the ethnic-Italian component of the center-right Free Democratic Party of Switzerland), Al-Taqwa’s apparent political protection is understandable.

More on al-Taqwa’s far-right foundations…

Ok, there’s a few more unexpected twists to related to Al-Taqwa’s world of politics and finance. First, let’s turn to Kevin Coogan, an expert on the far-Right and author of Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, one of the most important books for understanding the evolution of the far-right after WWII. Amongst the many fascinating tidbits in his “Report on Islamists, the Far Right, and Al Taqwa”, Coogan writes of Nada’s attorney Pier Felice Barchi:

“

…

The Akida Bank of Nasreddin was also supposed to be concerned with the spreading of Islamic banking practices. The Lugano-registered affiliate of the bank listed along with its founder Nasreddin, the Tessino-based Pier Felice Barchi. This attorney had great experience with rich and influential foreign customers. Barchi was also concerned with the Tessino financial interests of Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi and the Saudi minority partner in Berlusconi’s media group Mediaset, Prince al-Waleed al Talal.

…

“

So Pier Felice Barchi, attorney for the director of the Muslim Brotherhood’s bank, is not only a partner at the same firm that the Swiss Attorney General who called off the al-Taqwa investigation, but he’s also a financial advisor for both former Italian right-wing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (who’s connections to the far-Right are extensive and will be covered in detail later) and Prince al-Waleed al Talal. Prince al-Waleed al Talal is the 5^th richest man in the world and a major shareholder in AOL TimeWarner, Apple, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, and the largest shareholder in Citibank.

Turning again to Kevin Coogan’s “Report on Islamists, the Far Right, and Al Taqwa, let’s take another quick look at the people involved with the founding of al-Taqwa and see if we can’t get a better sense of the kind of folks we’re looking at here:

“

…

On July 21, 1988, at the bureau of a Lugano-based notary named Gianluca Boscaro gathered Huber, the Swiss professor (Hochschulleher) Mohammed Mansour and his wife Zeinab Mansour Fattouh as well as the Tunisian Youssef Nada and Ali Ghaleb Himmat, who both live in the Italian enclave of Campione d’Italia in Switzerland. Himmat had come from Damascus in 1958 and first settled down in Germany and then in Austria. The Alexandrian-born Egyptian Nada two years later came first to Austria and then to Germany. Nada’s oldest daughter married the son of the director of the Islamist center in Aachen, al-Attar Issam, who is considered by the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsklpoll0chutz) one of the most dangerous Islamists in Germany. Nada later settled down in Ticino (Tessin). Both Nada and Himmat are members of the Muslim Brotherhood and in the 1990s both took Italian citizenship.

…

“

So Nada’s daughter is married to Issam al-Attar (also spelled “al-Attar Issam”), considered one of the most dangerous Islamists in Germany. A leader-in-exile of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Issam is also the brother of Najah al-Attar, who recently became Syria’s first female vice president. And relating to 9/11, recall that the Hamburg Cell of 9/11 hijackers, led by lead-hijacker Mohammed Atta (who joined the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled “Engineers Syndicate”), were also members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. This raises interesting questions about how the ascension of the sister of a Syrian Muslim Brotherhood leader to the vice presidency of Syria might complicate an already-complicated relationship between the CIA and the secular Syrian government on matters pertaining to tracking the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda (matters that include the Syrian government reversing a long-standing ban on the Brotherhood and now allowing it to operate within Syria).

Continuing with Coogan’s report on the founding members of of al-Taqwa and their far-right brethren…

“

…

The goal of the meeting with the notary was the founding of "al-Taqwa Management Organization SA" that said it would be concerned with importing and exporting various goods around the world. 333 of the 1000 shares (at 100 Swiss Francs a share) went to Mohammed Mansour and his wife. 332 went to Huber. Nada and Himmet took the rest. Mansour was named the president but rarely was it mentioned the clause in the contract papers that each decision must be co-signed by the minority holders Nada and Himmat. Meanwhile Nada became associated with such prestigious groups as the Pio Manzu think tank, which is located on the Adriatic Coast and includes the likes of Gianni Agnelli and Henry Kissinger.

When Nada was questioned in October 2001 first by the Italian and later by the Swiss public prosecutors he said he was innocent of any involvement in terrorism. Nor could he remember where all the "Zakat" money went. This got a friendly laugh from the officials who could fill his memory lapse with a huge amount of documentation. Youssef Nada and his friends had also founded al-Taqwa Bank in Nassau in the Bahamas. As the "purpose of the enterprise" they listed the care of private investments of the shareholders as well as expected clients in the carrying out of Scharia Law given in the Islamic banking world. Among the 500 shareholders besides Huber, Himmat and Nada were "also a notorious right extremist from Italy" [not further identified but this is Alessandro Karim Abdul Ghe - KC] and three members of the bin Laden family.
…

“

If that’s not enough references to far-rightist ties to the Muslim Brotherhood’s european bank, take look at the final section of Coogan’s report about an Swiss news article (a copy of which can apparently be found here) detailing a particularly chilling meeting Ahmed Huber had in April 2002…

“

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Huber and the Mount Pelerin Meeting
Perhaps the most recent remarkable story concerning Huber comes from a brief item in the Swiss tabloid Blick that in an April 26, 2002 article by Alexander Sautter that Huber was involved in a meeting of far-right leaders from Europe. A photo showing Huber with Jean Marie Le Pen accompanies the article. The Blick story (available on the web) is as follows:

Mont Pelerin VD: Christian Cambuzat, the promoter (Scharfmacher) of the right extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen (73): The guru assembles together some of the top leaders of the European right. On the idyllic Mont Pelerin, they debate their crude ideas.

At his secret visit to a spa in Switzerland Le Pen hardly remained alone. Rightist leaders from all over Europe traveled to meet the extremist presidential candidate who was hosted by Cambuzat. Franz Schonhuber (79). Founder of the Republican Party in Germany and a former member of the SS. He talked with Le Pen who constitutes together with Schonhuber the "Front National" Fraction in the European parliament.

Gianfranco Fini (50). Italian post-fascist, Mussolini admirer, and founder of the Allenza National. He also was at the meeting with Le Pen and Schonhuber.

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Gianfranco Fini’s party, Alleanza Nazionale, is the modern-day successor to Mussolini’s party, and was the second largest bloc of Berlucsoni’s coalition government. Fini was made Italy’s Foreign Minister in November, 2004.

Continuing…

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Ahmed Huber (74). The Swiss is on the Bush Administration blacklist... "I met le Pen at Mont Pelerin as he went to Christian Cambuzat’s spa," Huber told Blick yesterday. At the extremist rendezvous an American far right politician was also supposed to have taken part. [Note: The American is not further identified. – KC] Christian Cambuzat said that Le Pen (after the elections) had again become the sharpest weapon of the "Front National" because Le Pen changed his image from a venomous old man to a "kindly U.S. TV evangelist." Proudly Cambuzat brags, "With me Le Pen can relax well" [from his political endeavors – KC]. And openly link up with new contacts.

[Although the Blick story does not give details, Cambuzat runs a spa for very rich, the Lemanique de Revitalisation, inside a hotel on the famous Mont Pelerin.]

…

“

Ahmed Huber’s attendance at a meeting of european far-rightists that include Jean-Marie Le Pen, Gianfranco Fini, and an unnamed American far-rightist highlights both the kind international coordination enjoyed between the far-rightist throughout world, and their ties to radical Islamists. Who was the American far-rightists? Who knows, perhaps it was David Duke, whose global travels included a November 2005 trip to Damascus, where he expressed his support for Syria’s government and their mutual fight against Zionism. It’s the kind of trip Ahmed is no stranger to, so let’s take a closer look at fine fellow, Ahmed Huber.

Ahmed Huber, a bridge between radical Islam, the New Right, and your next headache …

So who is Ahmed Huber? Well, on top of managing the Muslim Brotherhood’s international financial network, he travels the “far-Right” speaking circuit, carrying a message of unity between radical Islamists, far-rightists, and even White Separatists (yes, unity with the White Separatists):

“

Unlikely Allies Bound by a Common Hatred
Neo-Nazis Find They Share Views of Militant Muslim Groups on U.S., Israel

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 29, 2002; Page A13

BERN, Switzerland -- A portrait of Adolf Hitler has long adorned the study of Ahmed Huber, a 74-year-old Swiss convert to Islam who lives outside this small capital city. After Sept. 11, he twinned the picture with one of Osama bin Laden.

"A provocation," said Huber, the voluble proponent of a strange alliance, one apparently strengthened in the aftermath of Sept. 11: Muslim fundamentalists and neo-Nazis, who share a hatred of the United States, Israel and Jews.

For years, Huber has been barnstorming the far-right circuit, speaking to a European congress of neo-Nazi youth organizations and Germany's far-right National Democratic Party. He has taken the same message to Aryan youth meetings in the United States.

And then there's his other identity. Huber works frequently with militant Islamic groups. He is a director of Nada Management, a Swiss company described by the U.S. Treasury Department as a financial adviser to bin Laden's terrorist network. He acknowledges having met al Qaeda operatives, but denies any financial role in the organization.

In an interview here, Huber said his role is to build a bridge between radical Muslims and what he calls the New Right in Europe and the United States.

"The alliance has come," Huber said. "The 11th of September has brought together [the two sides] because the New Right has reacted positively in a big majority. They say, and I agree with them 100 percent, what happened on the 11th of September, if it is the Muslims who did it, it is not an act of terrorism but an act of counterterrorism."

Other members of far-right groups and people who study the movements agree that the September attacks pushed some members of the groups together. "There is a sense of sympathy, [a sense] that there is common ground," Horst Mahler, a member of the National Democratic Party, said in an interview at his home outside Berlin. "There are contacts with political groups, in particular in the Arab world, also with Palestinians. That's a fact that is not being concealed."

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If anyone would be familiar with the alliance between Arab militants and extremists, it’s Horst Mahler. Mr. Mahler has been part of extremist alliances with militant Middle Eastern groups during his tenures on both the extreme right and extreme left. Mahler was a key member of, and one of the brains behind, the far-left Red Army Faction (RAF) in the early 70’s. The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, waged a terrorist campaign in Germany throughout the 70’s and 80’s (The RAF disbanded in 1998, although questions remain). In the early 70’s RAF members, including Mahler, received urban warfare training at Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) training camps in Lebanon. This alliance between the RAF and militant Palestinians gained international attention during the German Autumn of 1977 when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 in coordination with the RAF’s kidnapping of Hanns Martin Schleyer.

Mahler, who was in prison during this period, had been kicked out of the RAF. It was during this time in prison that he befriended a couple of now-prominent politicians: ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroder and Schoder’s interior minister Otto Schily. He was released from prison in the early 80s and regained his law licensed with the support of Schroder. Mahler re-emerged in the public sphere in the late 90’s with a far-Right anti-semitic ideology, eventually becoming the lawyer of the Germany’s neo-nazi National Democratic Party (NPD).

Another example of far-Right cooperation with the PFLP took place in September of 1972, when PFLP members hijacked a Lufthansa flight that happened to include the late Robert F. Kennedy’s son, Joseph Kennedy. That operation was orchestrated in part by Francois Genoud(4), a friend and associate the PFLP co-founders George Habash and Wadie Haddad (5)

Continuing…

“

…

How many of Germany's estimated 58,000 neo-Nazis are taking part in the alliance is unclear; to date there is no evidence that neo-Nazi violence against Muslim immigrants, a recurring problem in Germany, has declined.

Alfred Schobert, a researcher at the Information Service Against Right-Wing Extremism in Duisburg, Germany, sees divisions among neo-Nazis on the issue. "Some of them, particularly the grass roots, are traditional racists and they want to have nothing to do with Muslims," he said. "But some of the leaders see potential in this."

Certainly the events of Sept. 11 produced fits of joy among some members of the European far right, according to groups that monitor hate speech.

Young supporters of the National Front in France drank champagne on the evening of Sept. 11, according to groups opposing neo-Nazis. A Czech far-rightist, Jan Kopul, proclaimed bin Laden "an example for our children." At a fascist youth rally in Switzerland, activists wore bin Laden badges.

German neo-Nazi Mario Schulz burned a U.S. flag at a post-Sept. 11 rally, exclaiming in front of skinheads wearing Palestinian scarves, "This is what it looks like, the symbol of terror."

In the same period, the writings of William L. Pierce, the American whose novel "The Turner Diaries" inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh, have appeared on the Web site of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim group linked to Iran. Pierce also has been interviewed regularly on Radio Iran by telephone from his compound in West Virginia.

"We have a common cause: getting the U.S. government off the back of the rest of the world and getting the Jews off the back of the U.S. government," Pierce said in a telephone interview. "There is ground for joint action." He ruled out violence on the grounds that "we're so outgunned by the government."

Authorities in the United States and Europe are skeptical of an enduring alliance. "It's an unnatural bond," said an FBI official in Washington. A German official offered a similar assessment: "I don't see it. They both hate the Jews, but in the end, they also dislike each other."

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To say William Pierce rules out violence is a bit of a stretch considering his book is widely considered to be an inspiration and a manual for such a violent overthrow by the far-Right underground. His 1978 work, The Turner Diaries, recounts a joint fascist global takeover by a guerrilla underground movement that succeeds, partially through the use of biological weapons. Dr. Larry Ford, a California doctor who committed suicide in 2000 after being charged with murder, appears to have been part of such an underground, and one connected to the apartheid-era South African government. Dr. Ford was found to have worked with the South African government on Project Coast, which sought to create black-specific biological weapons. Dr. Ford once told a girlfriend that if she wants to understand him, she should read the Turner Diaries.

At the same time, for FBI officials to voice skepticism over the durability of such a far-Right/Islamist alliance is also a bit of a stretch (just ask Hezbollah). As we’re going to see in a part 5, the alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Third Reich back in the 30’s and 40’s was quite strong.

Continuing…

“

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The outlines of cooperation were visible before Sept. 11. In 1991, German neo-Nazis tried to form a "Condor Legion" to fight alongside Iraqis against the U.S.-led international coalition. More recently, members of the European far right have journeyed to Baghdad to express solidarity with President Saddam Hussein.

In late 1997, a German neo-Nazi and convert to Islam, Steven Smyrek, who allegedly trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, was arrested in Israel for planning a suicide attack, according to the Duisburg center.

Also that year, a Holocaust denial conference planned for Beirut would have brought together Pierce, Mahler of Germany's National Democratic Party, who planned to speak on "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question," and representatives of Hezbollah and other radical Muslim groups. The conference was canceled by Lebanon's government.

According to Huber, some Nazi veterans also feel common cause with Islamic militants.

By his account, a group of aging SS officers and members of Hitler's personal guard who meet every few weeks in the German state of Bavaria for beer and conversation recently bestowed the title "honorary Prussian" on bin Laden. They praised his "valiant fight" against the United States, Huber said.

One of the members called Huber after the meeting to tell him that henceforth they had decided to call the al Qaeda leader "Herr von Laden," Huber said.

“

That’s Ahmed Huber: when he’s not managing the Muslim Brotherhood’s financial network he’s networking with Islamist militants, barnstorming the US far-right speaking circuit, and meeting with aging SS officers who praise “Herr von Laden”. And Huber doesn’t have to travel to Bavaria for these kinds of SS get-togethers. He just has to go camping.

Ahmed Huber and the Avalon Society: woody retreats for anti-Enlightenment elites …

Back home in Switzerland there’s the Avalon Society, a group of aging Swiss SS volunteers that meets to embrace their Celtic past and reject modern society. Since 1998 Ahmed Huber, the devout Islamist, has been leading it. Let’s briefly explore the Avalon Society and get a better sense of the shared ideologies between the far-Right and Islamist extremists in another article by Kevin Coogen, Achmed Huber, The Avalon Gemeinschaft, and the Swiss "New Right" :

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Achmed Huber, The Avalon Gemeinschaft, and the Swiss "New Right"

Achmed Huber is not only a devout Muslim and supporter of political Islam; he also a leading member of the avowedly pagan Swiss-based Avalon Gemeinschaft ("Avalon Society" also known as the Avalon Kreis or Avalon Circle). Avalon's estimated 150 members include aging Swiss SS volunteers, youthful far right fanatics, and died-in-the wool Holocaust deniers. Each summer solstice this motley mélange of characters journeys deep into the Swiss woods to ritually worship the pre-Christian Celtic gods of ancient Europe. They then spend the rest of the year bemoaning the Enlightenment and denying the Holocaust.

Although Huber is one of Avalon's leading members, he was not involved in founding the group. Avalon began as a curious mixture of Old Right and New Right currents that reflected its founding members involvement in a far right youth group known as the Wiking-Jugend Schweiz (WJS) as well as their later rejection of cadre-based politics for the creation of Avalon as a self-proclaimed elite society. Besides being steeped in mystical imagery, Avalon's founders also embraced "New Right" jargon most frequently associated with the French theorist Alain de Benoist, his Paris-based think-tank, GRECE (the Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes pour la Civilisation Européene), and GRECE's German counterpart, Pierre Krebs‚ Thule Seminar.

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Ahmed Huber is apparently a very busy man. So might the purpose be for this Swiss society?

Skipping down in the Kevin Coogan’s article…

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Avalon functions as a kind of umbrella organization for the Holocaust denial movement in Switzerland. Under the cover name of the Studiengruppe für Geschichte (History Study Group), for example, Avalon sponsored a 1993 presentation by leading French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson at a hotel conference room in Bern. Some 70 people, including the NEO's Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, attended the gathering. Huber's close friend Jürgen Graf, a leading Swiss Holocaust denier who is now living in Tehran, provided the simultaneous translation from French to German when Faurisson spoke. Robert H. Countess, an American editor of the Institute for Historical Review, also addressed an Avalon gathering in April 1995. Huber's later participation (along with Graf and the German NPD's Horst Mahler) in an IHR conference that was to have occurred in Beirut in the spring of 2001 can be seen as a logical extension of the kind of Holocaust denial activity that both Huber and Avalon have been involved with for years.

Finally, it seems particularly ironic that a self-proclaimed Muslim like Huber would be associated at all with any "New Right" grouping, even with a pale parody of the New Right, as Avalon appears to be. Huber, after all, is a self-proclaimed devotee of Islam, an utterly monotheistic religion. In the New Right canon, monotheism has always been portrayed as the original sin. This has been so ever since de Benoist identified the Enlightenmen’s universalistic values as a secular extension of a monotheist worldview; namely the Judeo-Christian tradition which Islam claims to complete.

New Right theorists insist that they embrace paganism and the pagan notion of a universe of pluralistic gods precisely out of their desire to dethrone monotheistic thought structures which they see as essential to the future elimination of American "monoculture." That a fanatical Islamic monotheist like Huber could spend each summer solstice out in the woods worshiping Celtic gods is one more bizarre twist to his already bizarre life.

“

Bizarre indeed. A bizarre, surreal, and very real alliance between the far-Right Christians, pagans, and radical Islam. Real and not particularly new. What are we to make of this? Who knows, and compared to what we’re about to look at in our next chapter of disturbing facts, the bizarro-world life of the Muslim Brotherhood’s bankers are are going to seem almost quaint. So what’s the topic going to be of our next essay? The Saudi/Musim Brotherhood’s US-based network of institutions and foundation. There are lots more names and places to absorb, but they’re important for understanding some of the powerful forces at work in out world, so keep reading!!!

Offline References:

(2) ibid p140-141

(3) ibid p213-214

(4) Philadelphia Inquirer; “Hitler’s Swiss Connection;” David Lee Preston; Jan 5, 1997

2006-11-11T16:50:00.000-08:00

Part 4:

An American Brotherhood

We just saw how Bank Al-Taqwa in the Bahamas, and the larger al-Taqwa network of financial institutions, were founded and directed by an even more interesting network of Muslim Brotherhood and far-Rightist figures. In this essay we’re going to take a look at the Brotherhood’s presence in the United States because the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi wealth are the dominant forces shaping Islam across the globe Islam, including in America. With their network of mosques, institutes, foundations, and plenty of Saudi financial support, the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudis have successfully gained influence over the dominant Islamic institutions within the United States, even though their all-encompassing fundamentalist visions of Islam are practiced by only a minority of the American Muslim population. Not only that, but they’ve done it quietly, largely hiding from mainstream American Muslims the profound influence the groups wield over US Islamic religious institutions and thought. So let’s take start our look at that infrastructure, with an excerpt from this excellent September 2004 piece in the Washington Post on the Muslim Brotherhood in America:

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In the 1950s, Brotherhood activists -- reeling from their suppression in Egypt, Iraq and Syria -- found a refuge in Saudi Arabia, newly awash in oil money. Thousands of Ikhwanis became teachers, lawyers and engineers there, staffing government agencies, establishing Saudi universities and banks, and rewriting curricula.

With royal family approval, Brotherhood activists also launched the largest Saudi charities, including the Muslim World League in 1963 and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth in 1973. Funded by petro dollars, they became global missionaries spreading the Saudis' austere and rigid Wahhabi school of Islam, whose adherents at times describe all non-Wahhabis as infidels.

…

“

The Muslim World League (MWL) is an important component of the Saudis global network of religious institutions and foundations seeking to promote fundamentalist Islamic practices in Muslim Communities across the globe as a counter to Nasser’s Arab Nationalism. Founded in Mecca and set up by the Saudi Monarchy and Muslim Brotherhood activists around 1962-63, the Muslim World League (also known as the “World Islamic League” or “Rabita”) is always directed by a Saudi (who enjoys diplomatic status), meets once a year, and chooses the executive council of 53 members representing the different countries it operates in. The council assigns annual objectives for the representatives that are focused on both spreading Islam in general and increasing control over the Islamic institutions in the individual countries, especially in non-Muslim countries(1).

Interestingly, the President and Treasurer of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) is Abdullah bin Laden, Osama’s brother. Another brother, Omar bin Laden, is also tied to WAMY. Both brothers were reportedly investigated by the FBI in the mid 90’s, an exception to a general policy of not actively keeping tabs on Saudi activities inside the US. Both brothers were also allowed to leave the country with a minimal investigation on the infamous Saudi flights in the wake of the 9/11 attacks(2).

Continuing…

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The missionary work morphed into armed struggle in Afghanistan, where in the 1980s Saudi-financed Brotherhood activists helped repel the Soviet invasion, with support from the CIA and Pakistan. As Islamic radicalism spread with the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan in 1989, many Ikhwanis laboring for the Saudis embraced worldwide jihad and were at al Qaeda's inception.

The Brotherhood began to fall out of favor with the Saudis in 1990, when the Ikhwan backed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Kuwait. The Saudis slowly cut off funding.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Saudi leaders began describing the transnational Brotherhood as the germ of al Qaeda while playing down the role of its government-backed clergy. Recently, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef repeatedly denounced the Brotherhood, saying it is guilty of "betrayal of pledges and ingratitude" and is "the source of all problems in the Islamic world."

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Oh my, so the Saudis slowly started to distance themselves from the Muslim Brotherhood in 1990, after the Saudi-financed Muslim Brotherhood Mujaheddeen helped repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And now the Saudis publicly declare the Muslim Brotherhood as “the source of all problems in the Islamic world”. Hmm…one has to wonder if is this actually the case or merely a public relations ploy? Well, as we’re going to see in Parts 8, 9, 12, and 13, yeah, it’s pretty much a PR ploy.

Continuing…

“

…

Coming to America

In the 1960s, Brotherhood activists started arriving in the United States. Most embraced modernism and American culture, people who sympathize with them said. Many also ended a formal tie to the Cairo-based Ikhwan headquarters even as they hewed to Ikhwan principles. Among their main goals were carving out havens for Muslims, propagating Islam in America and backing Israel's destruction, said Ali Ahmed, a Saudi activist in Washington close to many Ikhwanis.

"In this country the Ikhwan is mostly not a formal membership organization but a set of ideas people subscribe to," Ahmed said. "A lot of Brotherhood people who came here became more moderate and interested in democracy, while others became more radical."

A U.S. official familiar with federal investigations of former Brotherhood members said some developed "a disciplined strategy, specific goals" to act on their plan to convert Americans, starting with U.S. military personnel, prison inmates and black people.

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So the Brotherhood wanted to infiltrate the military and prison systems, eh? As we’re going to see when we look at Abdurahman Alamoudi they can declare Mission Accomplished on both of those goals. Seriously.

Continuing…

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…

Many Brotherhood leaders advocate patience in promoting their goals. In a 1995 speech to an Islamic conference in Ohio, a top Brotherhood official, Youssef Qaradawi, said victory will come through dawah -- Islamic renewal and outreach -- according to a transcript provided by the Investigative Project, a Washington terrorism research group. "Conquest through dawah, that is what we hope for," said Qaradawi, an influential Qatari imam who pens some of the religious edicts justifying Hamas suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. "We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America, not through the sword but through dawah," said the imam, who has condemned the Sept. 11 attacks but is now barred from the United States.

In his speech, Qaradawi said the dawah would work through Islamic groups set up by Brotherhood supporters in this country. He praised supporters who were jailed by Arab governments in 1950s and then came to the United States to "fight the seculars and the Westernized" by founding this country's leading Islamic groups.

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Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, you’ll recall, was a shareholder in Bank Al-Taqwa. He also endorses suicide bombings, the killing of US civilians in Iraq, and recently issued a fatwa against statues depicting living things.

Continuing…

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…

He named the Muslim Students Association (MSA), which was founded in 1963. Twenty years later, the MSA -- using $21 million raised in part from Qaradawi, banker Nada and the emir of Qatar -- opened a headquarters complex built on former farmland in suburban Indianapolis. With 150 chapters, the MSA is one of the nation's largest college groups.

The MSA Web site said the group's essential task "was always dawah." Nowadays, Muslim activists say, its members represent all schools of Islam and political leanings -- many are moderates, while others express anti-U.S. views or support violence against Israelis.

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“

Note that it was al-Taqwa director Youssef Nada that helped financer the MSA headquarters. It’s all one big happy family, isn’t it?

And finishing our look at the Washington Post article…

“

…

Some of the same Brotherhood people who started the MSA also launched the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) in 1971. The trust is a financing arm that holds title to hundreds of U.S. mosques and manages bank accounts for Muslim groups using Islamic principles.

In 1981, some of the same people launched the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which was also cited in Qaradawi's speech. It is an umbrella organization for Islamic groups that holds annual conventions drawing more than 25,000 people. Some U.S. officials praise its moderation, and its Islamic Horizons magazine covers such topics as Muslim Boy Scouts and Islamic investing principles.

People who helped set up the MSA, NAIT, ISNA and related groups say they are in no way anti-American -- they say they embrace American values while trying to strengthen their Muslim identities. They say their goal is not converting all Americans to Islam but constructing a vibrant Muslim community here.

The MSA, NAIT and ISNA did not respond to requests for comment. Officials from those organizations have said elsewhere they are not connected to foreign groups, such as the Brotherhood. But because the Brotherhood is a secret society, its precise links around the world are hard to determine, U.S. officials said.

In addition to the first generation of groups aimed at consolidating the U.S. Islamic community, a second generation arose to wield political and business clout.

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“

A Political Brotherhood…

Ok, we’re going to move on now and look at just how much of political clout the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi institutions have acquired. You just may be unpleasantly not surprised. Let’s turn, now, to an excellent March 2003 in the St. Petersburg Times:

“

Friends in high places

Sami Al-Arian isn't the only prominent Muslim leader who posed for chummy pictures with President Bush. Many conservative Republicans are uneasy at the way GOP power broker Grover Norquist curries support from the Muslim community.

By MARY JACOBY, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- The rumpled, balding figure was spotted darting into the offices of Republican power broker Grover Norquist last July. When Sami Al-Arian emerged more than two hours later, someone was waiting for him.

Conservative activist Frank Gaffney, whose think tank on national security issues has offices on the same floor, was eager to confirm a tip that the suspected Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative was next door.

Best known for his high-profile campaign for a "Star Wars" national missile defense system, Gaffney for months had been quietly pursuing another project: trying to convince the Bush administration to more closely scrutinize the Muslim activists whom Norquist was bringing into the president's orbit.

As part of Norquist's well publicized strategy to mine the Muslim community for GOP votes, Al-Arian had campaigned for Bush in 2000, posed for a photo with the candidate at Plant City's Strawberry Festival and boasted publicly that Muslims in Florida may have tipped the close presidential election to Bush.

Now, Al-Arian was visiting the Islamic Institute, a Muslim outreach group cofounded by Norquist and housed within his office suite.

And so Gaffney found a reason to be in the hallway when Islamic Institute chairman Khaled Saffuri walked a man Gaffney recognized as Al-Arian to the elevator. Saffuri said goodbye, then headed for the bathroom.

Gaffney followed. Taking a place at the next urinal, he said, "So, Khaled, was that Sami Al-Arian getting on the elevator?"

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A brief overview of the Sami Al-Arian trial:

Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida (USF) Computer Science professor, was at the center of one of the highest profile post-9/11 terrorist investigations. High profile and controversial. The charges against Al-Arian essentially come down to the assertion that he was secretly using his thinktank, World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), along with USF facilities to run a terrorist cell inside the United States that both funneled charitable contributions to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and sought to work with Hamas. Both the PIJ and Hamas are Muslim Brotherhood offshoots, and hold the Muslim Brotherhood’s long-terms goals of creating an Islamic State comprising the territories of Jordan, Israel, and Palestinian occupied territories. Hamas comprises of militant, charitable, and political wings (with the political wing sweeping Palestinian elections in early 2006), while the smaller and more radical PIJ is solely focused on military attacks, most notably large-scale waves of suicide bombings.

Much of the controversy over Al-Arian’s indictment came down to the notions that it is based on his activities in the early 90s, that it lacks evidence, and that it was was part of a post-9/11 witch hunt designed to demonize the Arab American community. The case also took on a free-speech aspect, with his defenders saying Al-Arian’s trackrecord of incendiary comments regarding Israel (and boy are they ever incendiary) were taken out of context.

In the end, the case didn’t simply come down to whether Al-Arian and his co-defendents knew they were raising money for an organization that claimed responsibility for terrorist acts. Instead the prosecutors had to demonstrate that Al-Arian raised that money with the specific intent of it being used for terrorist acts.

In December of 2005 Al-Arian was acquitted on eight of 17 counts against him, based heavily on a lack of evidence (which may have had something to do with the accidently shredded evidence), and was deadlocked on the remaining charges and the trial continued. On April 14, 2006 Al-Arian pled guilty on the single count of conspiring to assist the PIJ in a plea bargain that will allow him to be deported after finishing a 4 ½ year jail sentence.

While the case of Sami Al-Arian is a politically charged one, and the web of evidence against him demonstrating specific laying out the terrorist network is not readily available to the public (although some of it was Al-Arian’s own websites), what is available is the evidence illustrating the much larger network of thinktanks, charities, and political and religious institutions working in the United States that are headed by close associates of Sami Al-Arian with extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi largess….and some shockingly high-up political connections. It’s a small world at the top.

Continuing…

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Saffuri made a gagging sound, Gaffney said, then fell into a long silence. "No, I don't think so," Saffuri finally answered, according to Gaffney.

Saffuri was not available for comment. But in a written statement, he called Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy, "bitter for his lack of access to some important 'political circles,' particularly the White House."

Saffuri added: "I believe that Mr. Gaffney is very irritated by the fact that a Muslim group has better access than he does. However, I truly believe that he dislikes Muslims and Islam because of religious bigotry."

Norquist, chairman of the GOP interest group, Americans for Tax Reform, declined to comment.

Squat, bearded and famous for his temper, Norquist's power derives from his partnership in the early 1990s with then-Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

In 1994, Norquist helped his friend become Speaker of the House by assembling a coalition of libertarians, gun rights activists, business groups and religious conservatives who helped provide the votes and money for the GOP's historic takeover of Congress.

Once the leader of a cranky cabal of out-of-power Republicans, Norquist after 1994 became a political gatekeeper. Candidates sought his advice, and dark-suited lobbyists clamored to attend weekly strategy meetings Norquist held for Capitol Hill aides and GOP activists in his offices each Wednesday.

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When Mr Saffuri speaks about “important ‘political circles’”, he isn’t kidding. On top of his access to Grover Norquist (a top GOP power-broker) and Al-Arian’s photo with President Bush in March 2000, Al-Arian met with Karl Rove in June of 2001. But really, it’s those close ties to Norquist that are the most meaningful. Grover Norquist, who been called the most powerful man in Washington not to hold a public office, is a field marshall of the Bush agenda. He’s also notorious for expressing a desire to shrink the government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub” and such catchy lines as “bipartisanship is another name for date rape…We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals – and turn them towards bitter nastiness and partisanship” (which he later attributed to former House Majority leader Dick Army).

Norquist’s weekly “Wednesday Meetings”, which were started to wage political war on the Clinton Administration, is like a “who’s who” right-wing weekly get together. These weekly meeting bring together prominent figures from conservative advocacy groups, GOP congressional leadership, right-leaning think tanks, and the big money of K-Street. As an informal umbrella group and organizational force that fuses the big-money of K-Street lobbyists with the ideological warriors of the American Right, Norquist’s “Wednesday Meetings” have been an invaluable tool in keeping the GOP’s campaign coffers full.

More recently, Norquist’s close connections with criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff, brought scrutiny to Norquist’s well-oiled political machine.

Continuing…

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Those in Norquist's favor sit at the conference table in the middle of the room. The others stand, packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Among those with a regular seat at the table, participants say, is the Islamic Institute's Saffuri.

Norquist and Saffuri founded the Islamic Institute in 1999 with seed money from Qatar, Kuwait and other Middle Eastern sources. Among the contributors, records show, was Saffuri's former boss, a Muslim charity director and founder of the American Muslim Council, Abdurahman Alamoudi.

The records show Alamoudi gave at least $35,000 to the institute, although Alamoudi said in a written statement he did "not recollect having been quite that generous."

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Abdurahman Alamoudi is a colorful character indeed. His American Muslim Council is an important institution in understanding both the evolution of the GOP’s Muslim-American ethnic outreach campaign strategy and the growth of the Saudi’s and Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in the US politics and Islamic community. Back in the 80’s, when the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudis were working closely with the US on the Afghan Mujahedeen effort, the Saudis saw an opportunity to gain influence over a growing US Muslim community, and went about doing just that by creating what has been dubbed as the “Wahhabi Lobby”. Saudi money flowed in and Muslim Brotherhood leaders built up institutions and lobbying groups modeled after the Jewish community’s already established lobbying powerhouses: The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and the American Muslim Council (AMC) emerging and mirroring the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the American Jewish Committee (AJC)(3).

The American Muslim Council, co-founded by Alamoudi and Mahmoud Abu Saud, was founded in 1990 and urged Muslims to get involved in politics and other civic activities. Mahmoud Abu Saud helped Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna expand the Brotherhood nearly 60 years ago. He also became a top financial advisor to the governments of Morocco and Kuwait, and also happens to be the father Imam Ahmed Elkad, leader of the US branch of the Muslim Brotherhood from 1984-1994. While the AMC was closed in 2003 and replaced with a more moderate group, in 2002 FBI Director Robert Mueller called the AMC the “most mainstream Muslim group in America” and this Saudi-built “Wahhabi-lobby” remains a dominant political force for a the Muslim community in the US.

Continuing…

“

…

Also funding the institute were two Virginia-based nonprofit organizations. The Safa Trust donated at least $35,000, and the International Institute of Islamic Thought gave $11,000, the records show.

Last March, federal authorities raided those groups and others in Operation Greenquest, a major assault on suspected terrorist financial networks.

Among the more than 50 targets of the raid were people and organizations connected to Norquist and the Islamic Institute. They included Sami Al-Arian, a charity associated with Alamoudi, Safa Trust and the International Institute for Islamic Thought, or IIIT.

In addition to financially supporting Norquist's institute, the IIIT also had funded Al-Arian's think tank at USF, which the FBI shut down in a 1995 raid, and the school Al-Arian founded, the Islamic Academy of Florida.

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“

Ah yes, it’s worth mentioning that the whole kerfuffle between Gaffney and Norquist took place about a year following the massive raid of the Safa Trust (aka SAAR network) and International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). They’re central parts of an overlapping network of over 100 Saudi-funded Islamic institutions and charities operating in the US. As we’re going to see repeatedly throughout the essay, the figures behind the SAAR network are closely aligned with the al-Taqwa network, and are apparently politically untouchable here in the US. It’s pretty frightening.

Continuing

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The American Muslim Council had long been viewed with suspicion by federal investigators, terrorism experts and Jewish groups.

Although it preached tolerance, its co-founder, Alamoudi, had been videotaped at a pro-Palestinian rally outside the White House in 2000 exhorting the crowd: "We are all supporters of Hamas ... I am also a supporter of Hezbollah."

In his written response, Alamoudi said: "I regret that I made an emotional statement in the heat of the moment and I retract it."

Still, a few months after the rally in Washington, Alamoudi was photographed in Beirut at a conference attended by representatives of the terror groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and al-Qaida.

Today, Alamoudi is under investigation for his role in another Virginia charity, the International Relief Organization, suspected of being part of a Saudi-connected terror money laundering operation.

Alamoudi said he is cooperating fully with investigators. "I expect the investigation will end favorably," he said.

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Alas, things did not end so favorably for Abdurahman Alamoudi. In October of 2003 he was charged with terrorist financing and illegally accepting money from Libya to influence US policy and also came under scrutiny for his deep involvement in helping establish both the Pentagon’s Muslim chaplain program and the US Bureau of Prisons, having met dozens of times with senior government officials in the decade leading up to his arrest. A year later Alamoudi was sentenced to 23 years for his involvement in orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot with the Libyan government to assassinate then-Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (and now King Abdullah) and make it look like an al-Qaeda operation. It’s one of those interesting examples that demonstrates the risk of the Saudis’ long-standing strategy of funding Islamist groups in part with the hope that those groups won’t turn around and bite the oily-hand that feeds them.

Continuing…

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After Norquist's Islamic Institute began trying to woo Muslims to the GOP in 1999, then-candidate Bush began popping up in photographs with various politically connected Muslims.

The only problem was, many of these same prominent Muslims were also under scrutiny by federal investigators for links to terrorism.

"In some ways he's very naive about people," conservative activist Paul Weyrich said of his friend and some-time political rival, Norquist. "I don't blame him for pushing whomever he thinks is going to help him with his political objectives. But somebody on the inside (of the administration) has to say no."

In 2000, then-candidate Bush was photographed at the governor's mansion in Austin, Texas, with Alamoudi, Saffuri, and American Muslim Alliance founder Agha Saeed.

Saeed appeared often on panels with Al-Arian at conferences of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a group Al-Arian cofounded that federal investigators have linked to Hamas.

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In the 1996 presidential race US muslim groups were split between Clinton and Dole and the roughly 7 million-strong US Muslims voted two-to-one for Clinton over Dole. Norquist’s logic behind starting the Islamic Institute and mining the Muslim population for votes was based on the simple notion that Muslims could easily be won over to the GOP. According to pollster John Zogby, In 1999, then-candidate George W. Bush’s was positively received by playing up his close ties to the oil lobby and his father’s relatively tough stance with regard to Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories (4).

It’s also worth noting that Paul Weyrich, a co-founder of the immensely influential Heritage Foundation and its sister Free Congress Foundation, is one of the primary architects of the rise of the New Right. While Norquist comes from much more of the business libertarian/small government (although it’s closer to “no government”) wing of the GOP and Weyrich represents much more the Religious Right strain of US politics, Norquist and Weyrich have played similar roles in many respects. Weyrich own “Conservative Working Group”, started back in 1974, was a kind of predecessor to Norquist’s “Wednesday Morning Meetings”, bringing together business interests, social conservatives, and other members the New Right conservative coalition that came to power with the Reagan Revolution and continues to dominate the GOP to this day.

Continuing…

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At an IAP conference in Chicago on Dec. 29, 1996, Alamoudi said: "I think if we were outside this country, we can say, 'Oh, Allah, destroy America,' but once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it ... You can be violent anywhere else but in America."

In June 2001, Al-Arian was among members of the American Muslim Council invited to the White House complex for a briefing by Bush political adviser Karl Rove.

The next month, the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom -- a civil liberties group headed by Al-Arian -- gave Norquist an award for his work to abolish the use of secret intelligence evidence in terrorism cases, a position Bush had adopted in the 2000 campaign.

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The story of Bush’s position on the use of secret intelligence in terrorism cases is both ironic and important in understanding how he clinched the critical votes in Florida’s Arab-American community: During the second presidential debate in 2000 President Bush was asked a question about African Americans and racial profiling. Bush answered the question by voicing his opposition to the racial profiling Arab-Americans at airports and the use of secret evidence against alleged terrorists. This was a reverse of his earlier position on the issue of secret evidence, and just happened to be the answer which he had been told by advisors was a hot-button issue for Muslim voters in the crucial swing state of Florida. This was such an important issue to Florida’s Arab-American community at the time (and after the election) in large part because of the trial of Sami al-Arian’s brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar, over Mr al-Najjar’s ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

It was also a trial during which Mr Al-Arian took the 5^th Amendment 99 times in one sitting in relation to his association to alleged terrorists.

Continuing…

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For a time, the point person at the White House arranging the Muslim groups' access was Suhail Khan, a former director of the Islamic Institute.

Conservatives were suspicious of Khan because his late father had been imam at a mosque in Santa Clara, Calif., which once hosted Osama bin Laden's second in command, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Former White House speechwriter David Frum, in his best-selling book, The Right Man, said Norquist's aggressive courting of suspected radicals like Al-Arian was making many conservatives uneasy.

"That outreach campaign opened relationships between the Bush campaign and some very disturbing persons in the Muslim-American community. Many of those disturbing persons were invited to stand beside the president at post-9/11 events," Frum wrote.

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While these cozy ties to people like Al-Arian triggered outrage amongst some Bush staffers, Bush’s received little criticism from the Democrats, prompting Bush speechwriter David Frum to comment, “There is one way that we Republicans are very lucky -- we face political opponents too crippled by political correctness to make an issue of these kinds of security lapses.”

Continuing…

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One example of the White House's poor judgment, conservatives say, was inviting an imam named Muzammil Siddiqi to preside over an interfaith prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington, three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Twelve days after the service, Bush was photographed in the White House with Siddiqi, apparently unaware that the imam is a key figure in Saudi-funded organizations that have spread the harsh fundamentalist brand of Saudi Islam known as Wahhabism.

Agha Jafri, a Shia Muslim leader in New York, called Siddiqi part of a Saudi-backed "mafia" intent on crushing moderate Sufi and Shiite Muslims in the United States. "They hate us," Jafri said of Siddiqi's ideological compatriots.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

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One of the Saudi-funded organizations that Mr. Saddiqi helps lead is the Muslim World League (MWL). He also the chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, that evolved out of the Muslim Students Association and included Mr Alamoudi on its board.

And finishing off the St. Petersburgh Times article…

“

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At a meeting of the Conservative Action Political Conference last month, Gaffney gave his view that radical Islamists were trying to penetrate Washington political circles.

Norquist responded on Feb. 6 by dropping a letter in Gaffney's office formally barring him from Norquist's prestigious Wednesday meetings. "The conservative movement cannot be associated with racism or bigotry," the letter said.

Gaffney and American Conservative Union President David Keene, the conference organizer, accused Norquist of employing "Stalinist tactics."

Writing in the congressional newspaper The Hill, Keene said: "The problem is that moderate Muslims control few organizations and have virtually no voice. Most of them, in fact, know better than to challenge the Wahhabis."

Conservative leader Weyrich agreed.

"I do think the White House needs to be more sensitive to who gets invited there, because these people turn around and use that access to boast that they have influence. Their ability to collect money is greater if George Bush has his arm around them," Weyrich said.

“

The SAAR Network…

Remember that reference in the above article to the Operation Greenquest raids in March of 2002 on the Safa Trust (aka SAAR Foundation) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought? And recall how al-Taqwa director Youssef Nada helped set up some of these early Saudi-backed institutions like the Muslim Student Association (MSA)? What we’re going to take a look at now is who’s running these foundations, which are central components of the Saudi influence over Islam in America, and how much overlap there there really is between the the folks and the Al-Taqwa. So let’s begin this confusing flood of names and connection with a look at this excellent Washington Post article from October 2002:

“

U.S. Trails Va. Muslim Money, Ties

Clues Raise Questions About Terror Funding

By Douglas Farah and John Mintz

Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 7, 2002; Page A01

Six months after they raided the Northern Virginia headquarters of some of the nation's most respected Muslim leaders, federal agents say they are pursuing a trail of intriguing clues in a top-priority search for evidence of tax evasion and financial ties to terrorists.

Federal and European investigators say that several lines of inquiry have emerged from their review of documents and computer files they carted off in a dozen panel trucks from offices and homes affiliated with the Herndon-based SAAR Foundation, a tight-knit cluster of prominent Muslim groups funded by wealthy Saudis.

One avenue of investigation is the alleged transfer of millions of dollars from the SAAR network to two overseas bankers who have been designated by the U.S. government as terrorist financiers. Another is the network officials' history of ties to the militant Muslim Brotherhood.

A third part of the investigation concerns a key mystery: whether an astonishing $1.8 billion in gifts passed through the SAAR Foundation in a single year, 1998. SAAR leaders reported that sum on a tax form, but later said it was a clerical error.

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Oh my! A $1.8 billion clerical error! The stars really aligned against these guys.

Continuing…

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Agents are struggling to sort through and translate rooms full of documents -- many in Arabic -- and chasing leads in 17 countries. U.S. officials call the investigation one of the highest priorities of Operation Green Quest, the U.S. Customs Service task force formed after the Sept. 11 attacks to wage a financial war on terror.

The probe is part of a global crackdown the U.S. government has launched to stem the funding of terror groups since Sept. 11, 2001. That crackdown has targeted a number of large Muslim charities here and abroad.

The investigation of the SAAR officials, most of whom live and work around Herndon, infuriates some members of the Muslim community, who insist that the men are among the most moderate and progressive figures in American Islam. One of the raided institutions, for example, was denounced by Islamic radicals for issuing a fatwa, or Islamic ruling, that allowed Muslims in the U.S. military to fight in Afghanistan. Several people whose homes were raided advise the Defense and State departments on Islamic matters.

"My clients are absolutely not involved in any way in supporting terrorism," said Washington attorney Nancy Luque, who represents most of the individuals and groups raided. "It's a smearing."

Taha Jabir Alalwani, a stocky man in a flowing brown robe who has been part of the Herndon groups for years, said the searches of his home and the Leesburg-based Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences that he runs reminded him of the tactics of the secret police in his native Iraq.

"I'm moderate, I'm serving this country and I'm innocent of these suspicions," said Alalwani, whose institute trained 10 of the U.S. military's 14 Muslim chaplains. "I'm trying to convince Muslims in the U.S. this is our home, we must defend this country."

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Keep in mind that it was Mr Alamoudi that also involved the military’s Muslim chaplain program along with Taha Jabir Alalwani. Both Alamoudi and Alalwani also served on the board of the Fiqh Council of North American. Alawani also helped set up the International Islamic Institute of Thought. It’s pretty amazing how a relatively how much influence a relatively small number of people can wield when well financed.

Continuing…

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The SAAR network consists of more than 100 Muslim think tanks, charities and companies, many of which are linked by overlapping boards of directors, shared offices and the circular movement of money, according to tax forms and federal investigators. The network, named for Sulaiman Abdul Aziz Rajhi, the patriarch of the Saudi family that funded it, gives to charities, invests in companies and sponsors research, all with a goal of fostering the growth of Islam.

The SAAR Foundation officially dissolved in December 2000, and many of its functions were taken over by another group, Safa Trust, run by many of the same people.

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The Al-Rajhi family is a Saudi banking dynasty, and a name we’re going to see pop up elsewhere in terms of terror financing, and in particular as an early (circa 1988-89) funder of Osama bin Laden’s organizations.

Continuing…

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Government officials say the investigation of the SAAR groups, which began with a probe of anti-Israel activists in Florida in 1996 and intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks, has not traced money from the SAAR entities to the al Qaeda terrorist network. But U.S. and European investigators say they have uncovered information in the Bahamas and Europe that in recent years some SAAR entities' funds have moved to two men, Youssef Nada and Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, designated by the United States as terrorist financiers. The funds moved through two offshore banks in the Bahamas that the pair controlled, officials said.

The institutions, Bank al Taqwa and Akida Bank Private Ltd., have been designated conduits for terrorist funds by the U.S. Treasury Department. In recent months they were shut down by Bahamian authorities under U.S. pressure. In an August report, Treasury said that the banks "have been involved in financing radical groups" including Hamas and al Qaeda, both before and after the Sept. 11 attacks. Bank al Taqwa and Akida Bank were described by the Treasury Department on Aug. 29 as "shell companies" that were "not functional banking institutions."

Nada and Nasreddin said they have done nothing wrong and pointed out that thousands of businesses use offshore havens like the Bahamas. In March, Nada told reporters he is a legitimate businessman and has never funded terror. Nasreddin could not be reached for comment, but his Geneva-based lawyer, P.F. Barchi, said in May that his client has no links to terror and abhors violence.

SAAR representatives say they have had no transactions with the banks and that the SAAR network's financial ties to Nada are limited to a single loan to him. Early last year, an individual connected to SAAR arranged for funds to be moved from a joint account of several SAAR executives to Nada as a loan, they said.

U.S. officials say they believe that the SAAR network moved a total of about $20 million to offshore accounts, much of it through Bank al Taqwa and Akida Bank to Nada and Nasreddin firms.

But because of the complex nature of the wire transfers, which sent money through myriad accounts, officials say they have had difficulty tracking SAAR entities' money around the world. In 1998, for example, SAAR moved $9 million to the Humana Charitable Trust, which a SAAR tax form said was based in the tax haven of the Isle of Man. U.S. investigators said they found no evidence the trust existed. Panama, another tax haven, was also the destination of millions of dollars.

"Looking at their finances," one U.S. official involved in the probe said, "is like looking into a black hole."

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When Nada and Nasreddin pointed out that thousands of businesses use offshore havens like the Bahamas they were quite right. Thousands do, and it’s obscenely easy for them to move move through them untraceably, whether its for terror financing or tax avoidance. That’s the topic we’re going to be looking in depth in Part 10. It’s a pretty horrific situation.

Continuing…

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Much about the SAAR entities remains in dispute, including the reported $1.8 billion in gifts in 1998.

For years, the foundation operated on annual budgets of about $1.5 million. Then it reported on its 2000 tax form that it had taken in $1.8 billion in contributions two years earlier.

SAAR representatives said that nothing like $1.8 billion has passed through the foundation over its 16-year life. They assert that investigators are chasing a simple clerical error on a tax form. They have filed an amended document stating that SAAR received no contributions in 1998.

U.S. officials say that they believe the reference to $1.8 billion was no mistake. "We are still looking at it as a real transaction," a U.S. official said. But investigators acknowledge that they haven't found evidence that sums of that size coursed through the network.

…

“

While the question of the $1.8 billion is a tricky one indeed, especially given the ease with which one can quietly move vast sums of money through the international financial system these days, including in the US, maybe this little fun-fact from regarding the clerical error will help: In Douglas Farah’s “Blood from Stones” (Farah the author of this article and many of the most revealing articles written by the Washington Post), he points out that the ten-digit number, $1,783,545,883, was repeated at least seven times on the tax form SAAR’s Treasurer, Charif Sedky, said that he ‘did not recall’ that amount flowing through the foundation (5).

Continuing…

“

…

Another focus of the probe is the SAAR leaders' links to the Muslim Brotherhood, a 74-year-old group which is under investigation by European and Middle Eastern governments for its alleged support of radical Islamic and terrorist groups. For decades the brotherhood has been a wellspring of radical Islamic activity; Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, is an offshoot of it. European officials are particularly interested in the brotherhood's ties to leading neo- Nazis, including the Swiss Holocaust denier Ahmed Huber.

A number of central figures in the SAAR network, including Rajhi, were for decades involved in the brotherhood, where they befriended Nada, said representatives and friends of the SAAR officials. The one-time radicalism of SAAR network members has mellowed since they moved to the United States, SAAR associates said.

Nada, 73, a native of Egypt, has been one of the brotherhood's leading figures for years, and European officials say his network of banks and companies, including Bank al Taqwa and Akida Bank, are intimately tied to the brotherhood. European officials say the two banks handled tens of millions of dollars for the brotherhood over the years.

A wealthy construction magnate, Nada controls firms across Europe and the Arab world. Nasreddin, of Ethiopian descent, operates a business empire intertwined with Nada's out of Milan.

Founded in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has over the decades helped stir a revival in Islamic pride and militant opposition to secular Arab regimes. Governments in Egypt, Syria and Iraq have harshly cracked down on the group since the 1950s. The organization, viewed as heroic in much of the Arab world, has recently moderated some of its radical stances. The brotherhood has not been deemed a terrorist group by U.S. officials.

SAAR's defenders say it is guilt by association to accuse SAAR leaders of terrorist ties because they have connections to people like Nada.

"It's alarming that the government criticizes people for old associations that pre-date by years any questions being raised about those people," said SAAR attorney Luque. "They're being investigated for friendships formed 30 years ago."

…

“

It’s worth repeating here that rare is the extremist or radical that admits to being anything but a moderate, at least in public. This is not to say that all members of the Muslim Brotherhood are radicals, but their moderation appears to have been a relatively recent shift, based heavily on the testimony of their fellow Brothers and associates, and is quite often in conflict with their own less-public statements. In the end, they are somewhat correct in that it is guilty by association…an incredibly close association with a number of characters like Nada that are high up in the international terrorist-funding structure.

As far as the US government not designating them a terrorist organization, well…let’s just say it partly goes back deeper than the now-obvious modern-day political ties. We’ll get to that part of the story later (and it ain’t pretty either).

Continuing…

“

…

Investigators said they have also uncovered numerous ties between SAAR entities and Bank al Taqwa. Samir Salah -- a founder of the Safa Trust, SAAR's successor, and an officer of other SAAR companies -- helped establish Bank al Taqwa in the Bahamas in the mid-1980s, according to a Treasury document. In a letter to The Washington Post, Salah said he had no role with the bank.

Ibrahim Hassaballa, another officer of some SAAR-related companies, also helped set up Bank al Taqwa in the Bahamas, according to the document. Hassaballa did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

Terrorism specialists say the significance of the SAAR network is that it could offer wealthy Persian Gulf financiers a circuitous route for money they don't want traced.

"A rich Saudi who wants to fund radical ideas or terrorists like Hamas and al Qaeda knows he can't send the money directly, so he filters it through companies and charities, often in the U.S. or Europe," said Rita Katz, a terrorism expert at the private SITE Institute in Washington.

…

“

Actually, according to Rita Katz’s book “Terrorist Hunter”, The web of connections between Bank Al-Taqwa, the SAAR, IIIT, and the larger Saudi global network are even more confusing. Now who’s Rita Katz? Basically, she’s Iraqi Jew that went undercover, infiltrated this network, and helped unravel this web of connections. One of the many interesting connections she found was that, back in 1976, one of the IIIT leaders and SAAR co-founders, Jamal Barzinji, helped found a bank in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. They named it Nada International, and Youssef Nada became its director. Nada, who also directed the aformentioned Akida bank, also employed one of the Al-Rajhi brothers, Sulaiman Adbul Aziz al-Rajhi. So Nada worked for Barzinji at Nada International, and Barzinji, in turn, worked for Al-Rajhi at the SAAR network, and Al-Rajhi worked for Nada at Akida Bank. As Katz points out, you’re supposed to be confused by this (6). It’s like that by design and it’s just part of the world of clandestine financing where overlap of ownership, interlocked directorship, and the myriad of front groups used to obscure the root sources of funding.

Continuing…

“

…

The SAAR organizations are run by approximately 15 Middle Eastern and Pakistani men, a number of whom live in two-story homes on adjoining lots in Herndon that were developed by one of their affiliated firms in 1987. SAAR representatives say most were born into devout Muslim families and some fell under the sway of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the 1960s and 1970s, funded largely by Persian Gulf and particularly Saudi money, the men who would later form the SAAR network fled their homelands amid crackdowns on the brotherhood. In Saudi Arabia and the United States, they helped launch groups that would evolve into some of the nation's and the world's leading Islamic organizations, including the Muslim Students Association, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the Islamic Society of North America.

…

“

So the guys that set up SAAR are the same guys that set up the MSA, ISNA, and WAMY. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Interestingly, Rita Katz characterized WAMY as the youth wing of the IIIT: once someone involved in WAMY’s programs get old enough they move on into the IIIT. Also of note, not only did WAMY publish Bin Laden’s biography ‘river of Jihad’, but the head of WAMY in the early 90’s, Abdel Batterjee, was named one of Osama bin Laden financiers (we’ll have much more to say about Abdel Batterjee, and his role in financing the Jihadist groups that emerged from the Afghan Mujaheddin, in in Part 8) (7).

And finishing our look at the Washington Post article…

“

…

In 1984, Yaqub Mirza, a Pakistani native who received a PhD in physics from the University of Texas in Dallas, used money from the Rajhis to start SAAR in Virginia, with the goal of spreading Islam and doing charitable work.

Mirza also sought out business ventures for SAAR. By investing the Rajhis' money with Washington real estate developer Mohamed Hadid, he made SAAR one of the region's biggest landlords in the 1980s. The SAAR network also became one of South America's biggest apple growers and the owner of one of America's top poultry firms, Mar-Jac Poultry in Georgia.

"The funds came very easily," said a businessman who dealt with SAAR. "If they wanted a few million dollars, they called the al- Rajhis, who would send it along."

But while SAAR enjoyed the largess of some of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest families, it didn't hew to the Saudis' austere fundamentalism. Instead it promoted a more progressive Islam.

Ali Ahmed, a Saudi activist in Washington who denounces the Saudi regime as repressive, said he admires the Herndon group for its moderation. He said the officials engaged in a decades-long act of opportunism by taking Saudi cash and using it to promote their more tolerant agenda -- for example, allowing women to work.

"They got private Saudi money, but they weren't Saudi agents," Ahmed said.

In the mid-1990s, the Saudi government, upset with its inability to control the SAAR network, pressed contributors to stop giving money, several informed sources said.

…

“

So the Saudis apparently tried to pull the plug on the SAAR network’s financing in the mid-90’s. And how about after 9/11, have the Saudis cracked down on the use of Saudi charities for terrorist financing? Well, according to this excellent December 2002 Fox news article:

“

Saudi Split Personality Leaves Diplomacy Wanting

Thursday , December 05, 2002

Fox News

WASHINGTON — Some key senators have expressed skepticism about Saudi Arabia's claim it is redoubling its effort to prevent charity funds from ending up in the hands of terrorists, and suggest that the Saudis' latest public relations campaign belies their true feelings about the United States and the war on terror.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., told Fox News on Wednesday that he doubts comments made by Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel Al-Jubeir about Saudi cooperation in the war against terror financing would stand up to the congressional sniff test.

"Ask Jubeir if he'd be willing to testify before the Judiciary Committee, which is investigating funds going to terrorists," Specter said.

Al-Jubeir said he would not be willing to speak before a committee.

"We will not submit to questioning in terms of hearings because of diplomatic privilege we don't do that," he said.

…

He added that the Saudi government is beginning audits on domestic charities and that charities that donate to international causes will be required to register with the foreign ministry. He said a newly-organized commission will track donations to and from charities.

Money laundering experts say these steps are important, but will be exposed as a public relations sham unless the Saudi royal family enforces them.

"What's critical in a money laundering regime is enforcement mechanisms; you can write all the law you want but if you don't enforce those laws, then you have done nothing but write law," said former Justice Department official Michael Zeldin.

The Saudis are concerned that the whole terror financing issue has driven a wedge between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which have other issues on the agenda, including a possible war with Iraq and stable oil supplies. They say that destabilizing the relationship plays right into the hands of the Al Qaeda terror network.

…

“

Ok, that doesn’t sound too cooperative. Perhaps they just needed some time to get warmed up, which appears to be the case based on a March 2004 testimony by our ambassador to Saudi Arabia:

“

…

The Saudis are a strong ally and are taking unprecedented steps to address an al-Qaida menace that threatens us both. We believe that they are headed in the right direction, are committed to countering the threat of al-Qaida, and are giving us extremely strong cooperation in the War On Terrorism. There remains, of course, much work still to be done, both singly and jointly, but we are optimistic that our efforts are paying off.

…

”

Well that certainly sounds like improvement. So let’s see how they built upon these rerform with the a 2005 report, “International Affairs: Information on U.S. Agencies' Efforts to Address Islamic Extremism” by the Government Account Office (GAO):

“

…

A number of sources have reported that Saudi private entities and individuals, as well as sources from other countries, are allegedly financing or supporting Islamic extremism. However, U.S. agencies are still examining Saudi Arabia’s relationship, and that of other sources in other countries, to Islamic extremism. For example, in July 2005, a Treasury official testified before Congress that Saudi Arabia-based and - funded organizations remain a key source for the promotion of ideologies used by terrorists and violent extremists around the world to justify their agenda. In addition, according to State’s 2005 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Saudi donors and unregulated charities have been a major source of financing to extremist and terrorist groups over the past 25 years … The government of Saudi Arabia has announced and, in some cases, undertaken domestic educational and religious reforms; legal, regulatory, and institutional reforms with the assistance of State and Treasury; and political reforms. However, U.S. agencies do not know the extent of the Saudi government's efforts to limit the activities of Saudi individuals and entities that have allegedly propagated Islamic extremism outside of Saudi Arabia.

…

”

Oh. Ok, so it appears the answer is that we don’t know too much about what the Saudis have done since 9/11, and what we do know isn’t particularly exciting.

So what triggered this whole raid on SAAR/Safa network in the first place? Well, to answer that, we’re going to take a look at the concluding segment of a Washington Post March 24, 2002 article on the Operation Green Quest raids:

“

…

Huge sums of money zip among these firms and foundations, and some of the transactions can be traced on tax forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

For example, in 2000, a charity called the York Foundation -- whose president is Mirza and which is based in the same building on Grove Street in Herndon as SAAR and Safa Trust -- received $400,000 from Safa, tax forms showed. The same year, York dispatched $400,000 to a related entity called the York International Trust on the Isle of Man, where tax records are kept private.

In the two years before SAAR went defunct in December 2000, it sent two sums to an entity on the Isle of Man, the Humana Charitable Trust -- one for $168,000 and another for $9 million. Much of SAAR's work has been continued by its affiliate, Safa.

U.S. officials suspect that the ultimate recipients of the funds were linked to terrorists, but they are not sure. And the officials acknowledge that the participants could have engaged in subterfuge to avoid paying taxes.

…

“

Ok, so maybe it was all that money sloshing around between the foundations that triggered the raids. After all, it’s a classic sign of money-laundering and/or tax avoidance.

Continuing…

“

…

Government officials said that even if no crimes are proven, it might serve the counterterrorist cause to simply disrupt the flow of money.

Other federal officials said the probe is part of a much wider effort tracking funds flowing through Saudi charities and firms that end up being used by groups deemed by the United States to be terrorist, such as al Qaeda and Hamas. The U.S. government has seized the assets of several leading Saudi charities and asked Saudi authorities to keep tabs on others.

…

“

Hehe, yeah, good luck with the Saudis.

Continuing…

“

…

While the latest probe of these entities began years ago, U.S. officials say it heated up after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But sources said they had to plan their raids in a hurry starting two weeks ago because of a telephone call from a lawyer in Florida.

John Loftus, a former Nazi hunter for the Justice Department and more recently a lawyer for U.S. intelligence agency whistleblowers, contacted government officials March 11, saying he was about to file a lawsuit in Florida against Al-Arian that would lay out the ties among him, the International Institute, various of its affiliates and Saudi interests.

…

“

One has to wonder if maybe it was Loftus’s March 11 warning to the government about his impending lawsuit that led to the March 12 report on the Swiss investigations into an alliance between militant Islamists and neo-Nazis that President Bush requested.

Continuing…

…

Customs and Treasury officials hustled to prepare their raids for March 20, the day that Loftus filed his lawsuit claiming various frauds by Al-Arian, Loftus and government officials said.

"There was no coincidence," Loftus said.

Staff writer Brooke A. Masters and research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.

“

Here’s where things start getting extra complicated because there is much more to the Operation Greenquest raids. Much more extra complicated (See Parts 12 and 13). But to better appreciate the implication of those raids we need to first enter the twilight zone of the public record. That’s what happens when you stumble upon the life’s work of former Department of Justice Department Nazi hunter, John Loftus. You see, back in 1979, John Loftus was given above-top-secret access to the National Archives as part of the DOJ’s newly set up Office of Special Investigations (OSI), a Nazi-hunting team dedicated to learning what became of WWII war criminals involved in the holocaust that tried to settle in the US. Amongst the many disturbing facts he learned was that the National Archives review process – a process of looking over each and every document to determine what can and cannot be released to the public - hadn’t managed to make it past WWI. This meant that all the classified and potentially sensitive material about everything that happened during and after the War to End All Wars simply had not had a chance to go through the review process and be released to the public. This also meant that, as of 1979, our public history lacked large chunks of the classified side of the story.

That our National Archives review process was that far behind isn’t too surprising: Declassifying materially, especially exceptionally embarrassing material, has always been a sore subject, and these days are no exception. But what was surprising about what John Loftus found down in the archives, exceptionally surprising, was the extent to which the files documenting our use of the Nazi and Nazi collaborators had been mislabeled, misplace, and manipulated. This wasn’t a case a sensitive classified information being kept hidden from the public. It was an instance of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was up to…which in this case involved the right hand giving a big thumbs up and a helping hand to the secret use of “ex”-Nazis. This is what Loftus stumbled across: a paper trail maze left behind by a small, but highly influential, faction of the US intelligence community engaged in a secret policy of utilizing the vast capabilities of the former Third Reich. And we’re not just talking about rocket scientists here. Plenty of not so savory folks became our new anti-Communist “Freedom Fighter” friends. We’re talking about folks with a wide range of expertise in such areas as biological and chemical warfare, psychological warfare, propaganda, and most especially Eastern Front intelligence capabilities.

In yet another unsurprising twist, Loftus’s bosses on the DOJ had no intention of making such a discomforting disclosure to the public. Unable to get the government to release his findings, Loftus resigned from the Department of Justice in 1981. The following year he made a splash on CBS’s 60 Minutes with a segment on Nazis on the US government payroll won the Emmy, or as he puts it, "Congress opened investigative hearings. Mike Wallace won an Emmy award. My family got death threats…It was quite a deal."

So how on earth did a Nazi-hunter like Loftus end up as the lawyer crusading against Saudi-Charities? As we’ve seen, There are a lot of reasons. Because the roots of al-Qaeda flow through the very same hidden history, a hidden history involving the Saudis, Arab Nazis (yes, actual Arab Nazis, sound familiar yet?), Big Oil, and even the Bush family and it’s a hidden history that didn’t end with WWII. It’s a major part of the hidden history of 9/11.

And with the Operation Greenquest raids being triggered by a single lawyer willing to blow open a decades-long scandal, it’s an example of something we as a people seem to have forgotten these days: knowledge is power. Knowledge about whose shaping our world in dramatic ways, what they are doing, and why they are doing it. And to successfully navigate through this post-9/11 world, and lead ourselves as free people, it is vital that we empower ourselves.

And thus, in the spirit of empowering ourselves with knowledge (and triggering some good old fashioned head-spinning), let’s take a farther look back at the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, its early relationship with the CIA, and some of the historical roots of the Brotherhood and its founding ideology. Hopefully, by examining this history we’ll get a better idea of just what the Brotherhood and its Saudi backers are up to today, so keep reading!!!!

Offline References

(2) “Saving the Saudis” by Craig Unger. Vanity Fair 2003

(4) ibid p202

(7) ibid, p296