The Supranational Suspects Behind 9/11: White House, CIA, Saudis, Pakistanis, a Russian GRU firm, and the Israelis

"Ba-boom! ... like an earthquake... a giant, giant explosion. ... massive explosion ... huge explosion... huge, gigantic explosions... loud blast... secondary explosions... secondary device... flashes... bombs... shockwave... detonators... controlled demolition... pools of molten steel [...] at the bottom of the elevator shafts... vaporized [steel] ... lava ... [underground] fires of hell... more than 2,800 degrees F [1540°C]..."

Typical terms used by witnesses, mainly firefighters and other rescue personnel, to describe their experiences during the WTC collapses and the clean up of the site. Little of it fits the attack as it was devised by Osama bin Laden and cohorts. See Part 1 for full details on this aspect.

"We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (...Inaudible...) due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the fuel in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for. ...

"We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day. ... The brothers, who conducted the operation, all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation and we asked each of them to go to America but they didn't know anything about the operation, not even one letter. But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes. ... Mohammed [Atta] ... was in charge of the group."

November 1, 2001, Osama bin Laden privately discussing details of the attack. A videotape of the conversation was found by U.S. forces on November 9 and released in December. Apart from 19 hijackers running around in the United States, from this it seems clear that Al Qaeda, whoever is behind them in terms of financing and control, plotted the attack, but also that even a very optimistic Osama did not expect a full collapse of the towers - not to mention

One of the most disturbing moments of our time in South West Florida came when we sat down with two local law enforcement officials who could be considered fairly typical Southern Sheriffs, both of whom ventured the opinion that -- based on what they had witnessed of a 40-year long history of CIA-connected covert operations in their area -- they believed that the CIA was somehow involved in, if not responsible for, the World Trade Center attacks."

2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Welcome to Terror Land: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida'.

"Henry Kissinger, former You Know What, brought out an international pack of political swells this evening, gathered together at a private dinner-dance at the Pierre Hotel to celebrate his day of birth. David Rockefeller was there. A host of other Formers, including Helmut Schmidt, Peter G. Peterson, Lady Bird Johnson, Happy Rockefeller, Jihan Sadat and Richard Helms were there. ... The highest ranking Present present, from the political point of view, was probably George Shultz."

As the reader will find out, important names when it comes to the events of 9/11, not to mention an earlier event from 1963. (May 27, 1983, Washington Post, 'Presents and Formers For Kissinger's Birthday').

This article takes a look at the ownership, access and security of the World Trade Center complex and the ties these owners, tenants and security firms have. Next the article looks at the backgrounds of the official 9/11 investigators, Al Qaeda, the hijackers, the sources of financial and logistical support of these hijackers, and to what extent the CIA's Counter-Terrorist Center (CTC) under Cofer Black, as well as the FBI, let these would-be terrorists run free while living in the United States.

Ultimately the theory is put forward that key members of the Trilateral Commission (pretty much all suspects here happen to be members), combined with old guard/old boy CIA officers in organizations as the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), the OSS Society and Le Cercle manipulated, possibly ordered, through intermediaries, Osama bin Laden's plot against the United States. Not only did they allow the attack to happen, they made sure it was devastating enough to receive a carte blanche on rearranging the entire Middle East. Crucial help in manipulating and/or running Al Qaeda's hijackers was provided by top level persons in Saudi Arabia, who not only are key sponsors of terrorism but also major allies of the CIA's old guard and the Bush family in particular. A role in the destruction of the towers may have been delegated to Israel, with certain key neoconservatives in the Bush administration fully supporting the plot.

Some of the suspected plotters in this article include building owners Lewis Eisenberg, Larry Silverstein - with his bizarre "pull" comment 1 - and Frank Lowy; AIG and Blackstone heads Henry Kissinger, Maurice Greenberg and Peter Peterson, who had access to WTC security and owned WTC 7; veteran CIA officers John Deutch, David Cohen, Richard Helms, Ted Shackley and CIA/Carlyle partners George H. W. Bush and Frank Carlucci.

Among the major Saudi suspects, often partners in Carlyle, are Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al Faisal, Osama's old mentor and repeatedly tied to terrorist networks; Prince Turki in-law Bandar bin Sultan, who, together with his wife 2, funneled money to a Saudi intelligence handler of two 9/11 hijackers residing in the U.S. 3; Adnan Khashoggi; Shafig bin Laden, an Osama half brother who met with George H. W. Bush and Frank Carlucci, two former CIA officers, on the morning of 9/11 at a Carlyle meeting; and Yeslam bin Laden, another half brother of Osama who had sent one or more employees to the same tiny Venice Airport in Florida where 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta and others would end up training 4 with CIA-tied owners and instructors as Wally Hilliard, Rudi Dekkers and Arne Kruithof.

If it turns out that cooperation of the tenants of the impact and collapse floors was crucial (and that's not certain), then additional suspects include Jeffrey Greenberg, Vernon Jordan, James Wolfensohn, Jacob Rothschild, Paul Volcker, Joseph Kasputys, Joseph Nye, Toru Hashimoto and Toru Kusukawa. Many of the suspects have already been familiar to readers of this site through ISGP's Superclass Index and various other articles, with most being members of the Trilateral Commission - an interesting coincidence, even more so because most other floors in the tower had less clear such a connection.

There's also evidence that President Bill Clinton, with his history that includes suspicions that he helped cover up CIA drug trafficking as a governor in Mena and his brother later lobbying for the related Gambino crime family in New York, knew about Mohammed Atta from the moment he took flying lessons at a Florida flight school owned by a cocaine importer, while the CIA's Cofer Black from the very beginning was aware that Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar had entered the United States on the other side of the country, straight from an Al Qaeda conference. Black subsequently became a key player in all the blackest operations of the War on Terror: extraordinary rendition, torture, JSOC assassinations, Blackwater and the drone program. Another suspect is one of Black's closest allies in the hunt for Osama bin Laden since 1996 as his subordinate at both the CIA's Counter-Terrorist Center and Blackwater, Enrique 'Ricky' Prado, who in 2012 was exposed as a major government drug dealer and hit man for Florida mafia boss Alberto San Pedro. The latter is known to have been protected by Senator Bob Graham of the later 9/11 Joint Intelligence Inquiry, which he co-chaired with the CIA's Porter Goss. On the morning of 9/11 Graham and Goss were having breakfast with Pakistani intelligence (ISI) chief General Mahmud Ahmed, an alleged financier of 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta.

President Bush, the FAA's General Mike Canavan, a former JSOC commander and Osama bin Laden hunter; and secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld should all have been arrested on charges of criminal negligence on 9/11. Bush was stalling relentlessly while the planes were on their way to their targets, even holding off his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice to have a chat with the teacher of the year. Rumsfeld locked himself in his office after the first attack and joined the Pentagon rescue efforts after the Pentagon impact. Considering Rumsfeld and Bush were the only ones in the nation with the authority to issue shoot down orders, their irrational decisions on the morning of 9/11 are more than a little curious. Things get even more curious when one considers Bush's father, George H. W. Bush, and Rumsfeld best friend and political protege, Frank Carlucci, were key players in the old CIA-Saudi Safari Club network and partners with the same terror-sponsoring Saudis through the Carlyle Group.

Other suspects are secretary of transportation Norman Mineta, whose bizarre account to the 9/11 Commission about Cheney's alleged shoot-down orders simply cannot be true, with no one seemingly interested in getting to the bottom of the discrepancies in his account. While theories about vice president Dick Cheney's shoot-down and certainly stand-down orders appear to be incorrect, he is most definitely a suspect in the 9/11 event. Cheney's firm KBR Halliburton and its (founding) partnership with the Russian military intelligence firm Far West since 1998 seems to have been of incredible importance in the managing of international terrorist networks, in partnership with top level and already familiar CIA officers, Saudi intelligence heads and the Pakistani ISI. Far West also stands at the root of Shamil Basayev's terrorist campaigns in Russia, in which in part Putin's KGB/FSB was suspected. There is also evidence that this partnership, with cooperation of CIA front firm Diligence LLC, was trying to set up Iran for a future invasion by boosting its (nuclear) cruise missile capabilities, not to mention that there is also every indication that Far West was among those companies shipping Afghan opium towards the West via KBR-built Bagram Air Base.

As for Al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorists, their backbone seems to have been foundations as the Mercy International Relief Agency, Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), the Muwafaq Foundation (Blessed Relief), the Al Haramain Foundation, the SAAR Foundation and others, all at one time or another with top level backing of Saudi intelligence, the CIA and U.S. government in general, as well as Russian GRU elements as Far West. The United States has used these extremists in Afghanistan, the Balkans and seemingly later on in Syria. With Saudi intelligence and financiers clearly on board, it would have been relatively easy to steer Osama bin Laden into carrying out a major terrorist attack in the United States without anyone in the Al Qaeda ranks knowing about any manipulation.

The motives of these establishment interests behind 9/11 appear to be a mix of the following:

1. An existing clear and present danger of Muslim terrorism that was there to exploit. The idea of any conspiracy is to keep the lie as close to the truth as possible to prevent exposure. In ISGP's scenario, Osama bin Laden remains at the core of the 9/11 conspiracy and is the one bringing credibility to the lie. If there was a conspiracy, then at the very least the international security services, with their vastly bigger budgets and resources than Osama and his 300 robbers, infiltrated Al Qaeda, stepped aside, and kept close watch on the progression of what would become the 9/11 conspiracy. As the Iraq War demonstrates, manufacturing evidence from nothing is next to impossible; manipulating Al Qaeda was basically the only way to go. The militia movement or ecological "terrorists" wouldn't have been particularly credible nor desirable.


2. Carte blanche on reshaping the entire Middle East in order to push China and Putin's emerging Russia out of the oil, gas and mineral markets in Eurasia.


3. Bush himself wanted to go after Saddam Hussein to finish what his father had started and for a 1993 attempt to assassinate his father. The pro-Israel neoconservatives would be applauding this, as well as any action against the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas state terrorist axis.


4. Or, much more likely, Bush, with his oil industry background, and the oil companies backing his presidency, schemed to take over Iraq's nationally-owned oil reserves, the second largest in the world behind Saudi Arabia. In fact, they did. As Bush's treasury secretary Paul O'Neill revealed in the 2004 book The Price of Loyalty, just 10 days into Bush's presidency on January 30, 2001, Bush, his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice (a key George Shultz protege), CIA director George Tenet, Donald Rumsfeld (a best friend of former CIA deputy director and Carlyle chairman Frank Carlucci) and Dick Cheney presented a carefully scripted plan to other national security council members and staffers, including a highly surprised secretary of state Colin Powell and Joint Chiefs chair General Hugh Shelton, that Hussein needed to be overthrown because it appeared he was developing weapons of mass destruction. Right from the start Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were talking about a "post-Saddam Iraq", how tensions could be escalated, and were having maps drawn up of western oil companies that would take over Iraq's oil fields.
   
   With this agenda, the Bush clique immediately hijacked any War on Terror or War on WMDs for personal gain. While the Iraq War provided U.S. citizens with a multi-trillion dollar debt to pay, American and other western oil companies have been making multi-billions a year since the take over of Iraq's oil reserves. This appears to be one of the more obvious reasons behind the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War (oil pipelines from the Caspian Sea, although predicted oil reserves here have been a let down) and maybe even 9/11.


5. The United States and Israel, were looking to destroy Iraq, Iran and Syria in particular, because these "Axis of Evil" states (which they most certainly are), apart from their sponsoring of Hezbollah and Hamas (not Iraq), have been trying to build nuclear weapons - which simply cannot be allowed. It's entirely possible that elites worried about the spread of Middle Eastern weapons of mass destruction and ICBM technology, do not have faith in the masses to allow them to intervene with devastating force when a Middle Eastern dictatorship is at the brink of developing a nuclear weapon, because the masess cannot see the disastrous long-term ramifications of this and may not be willing to fight any wars over it. If this is the case, it also makes sense why a Sunni-dominated state as Saudi Arabia - a mortal enemy of Shiite Iran and Assad of Syria - would be involved in the 9/11 plot and shielded from involvement by the United States.


6. After the fall of the USSR, a new enemy, in this case a militia leader with 300 followers that was hardly welcome anywhere, was needed to prevent the military and intelligence agencies from withering away.


7. It's the ultimate argument to build up the corporate police state (Homeland Security), complete with the reining in of civil liberties (Patriot Acts and on), and the reemergence of large-scale domestic datamining programs, once quietly set up by the Iran Contra crowd during the Reagan administration, but halted with the end of the Cold War and the arrival of Clinton. We're talking NSA programs as PRISM, Boundless Informant and Stellar Wind.


8. Defense industry greed: ultraconservatives of the Bush 43 administration, basically all regurgitated from the Reagan years, are deeply tied to the Pentagon, CIA and defense corporations. These people stood to make large amounts of money as private defense contractors for the government - if only there was an enemy out there to protect civilians against. Cost overruns for defense systems build for the U.S. government and the Pentagon's inability to account for its spending are notorious, pointing to high-level corruption.


9. The continuation of the opium trade, which the Taliban had almost completely wiped out the year before 9/11, in order to finance illegal covert operations. The CIA has been in the heroin and cocaine business throughout the Cold War in order to finance some its more secretive covert operations and bypass congress. Cheney's KBR Halliburton, Far West, Saudi Intelligence, the Pakistani ISI, Afghan/CIA warlord General Rashid Dostum, former Turkish prime minister Tansu Ciller, and the Zionist Mikhail Fridman of the Russian Alfa Group and the CFR have all been linked to the Afghan opium trade. So, potentially, there is a tie-in her.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the grand strategist of the liberal and the non-neocon conservative establishment, summarized various of the above-mentioned points when he stated in the late 1990s: "America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad ... democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization". But everyone at the top layer of society benefited from the attack. The (neo)conservatives surrounding the Pentagon primarily for self-serving reasons (business) and to help out foreign interests (Israel). The liberal establishment surrounding the State Department for more strategic geopolitical reasons. This is also the reason behind the bickering which country to invade. The liberal establishment primarily preferred to deal with Afghanistan, keeping Iraq under a United Nations embargo. Syria was another major target of this group. The neoconservatives in the Bush administration, however, preferred to attack Iraq first, soon followed by Iran. Some, like the CIA's top-"neocon" James Woolsey, didn't even want to deal with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda at all.

Of course, the actual key suspects in the 9/11 attack, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, were left alone, most likely blackmailed into cooperation. Because of the blatant manipulation and the liberal establishment's influence on the media, the Iraq War has been heavily demonized in recent years. This has nothing to do with freedom of the press.

A final note: As for the suspects mentioned in this article, they are not considered absolutely guilty. It simply means that if ISGP was asked to do the work of the FBI, these men most likely would find themselves quickly subpoenaed. In fact, if Osama bin Laden truly did carry out the attack all by himself, he would be the one under criminal investigation. Afghanistan and Pakistan would have been economically squeezed until they gave up the Al Qaeda leader for trial in the U.S. or The Hague - and we would go from there. There wouldn't be any trillion dollar wars with over 100,000 innocent deaths that only help to inflame Muslim fundamentalism. There would be no reining in of civil liberties, no torture, and no executing of suspects as Osama bin Laden. And alternative energy devices (thorium, helium 3, etc.) discussed elsewhere on ISGP would have long been introduced, leaving us primarily to worry about minerals.

In Part 1 and also ISGP's article specifically on WTC 7 all the available evidence is discussed pointing towards the use of explosives and thermate at the World Trade Center during 9/11. Or, alternately, the truly staggering amount of holes in the NIST investigation, which, bizarrely, not one newspaper has ever dared to address. The basic conclusion simply has to be that the evidence is overwhelmingly pointing in the direction of controlled demolition. This brings us to logical follow-up questions, if only for the sake of argument. Questions such as:

1. who planted the materials inside the buildings?
2. was there help from the inside?

Considering that the evidence shows it is entirely possible that many tons of thermate and explosives were placed inside WTC 1 and 2, as well as a lesser amount in WTC 7, the question of inside help seems answered instantly. There must have been, even with much lower amounts (which wouldn't explain the hyper-intense "more than 2,800 degrees F [1,540°C]" temperatures below Ground Zero).

Common sense would dictate that a small group of people would have looked at the floor plans of the towers - locked away at the Port Authority - to inspect the buildings from top to bottom. Most likely various walls and ceilings were opened up to see where and how shaped charges and thermite could best be attached to girders, H-beams, I-beams or placed inside box columns. The only way to bring up the materials to various parts of the buildings would be through the underground parking lot and by using the elevators. Bomb sniffing dogs, present in the basements, would have to be evaded. Although most likely the dogs would have had trouble smelling thermitic compounds and most of the more irregular explosives, it would probably have been wise to transport everything in when as little security as possible was present in the towers - which would have been in the dead of night. Whatever the details of the plot were, one would expect that either the building owners, the security detail, or some of the tenants could be relied on to not expose the operation. It would have taken only one mistake, one suspicious guard or employee, one accidental discovery, and the materials would have had to be rapidly removed from the building under the guise of a cover story. Even if the absolute top NYFD and NYPD officials working under mayor Giuliani were compromised, there's the risk that too many people would be in the know of suspicious behavior at the WTC, leading to a forced abort of the operation.

Strangely, while basically not a fan of anyone in the 9/11 Truth movement, I fully agree that a scenario painted by Susan Lindauer in 2004 is the most likely, even though I'm not going to vouch for any of the details:

"Both things happened: They knew the airplanes were going to be hijacked, so they used it as a cover to guarantee maximum destruction [of the WTC towers]. ...

"All the things I've told are things that I did directly. I'm not relating what somebody else did or a conversation that somebody else had that has been reported to me. ... But what I'm going to tell you now is from somebody else, okay? ...

"I have been told by someone who saw the videos that at the World Trade Center from approximately August 23rd ... until approximately September 3rd... my friend says that between approximately 3 o'clock in the morning strange vans - the way he put it is "a couple of vans". ... A couple of vans arrived at 3 o'clock in the morning, after the janitorial trucks had left the building. That's very important, because they were able to identify the vans according to make, model, color - and there were no markings on the vans. But the janitorial vans did have markings. So they were able to distinguish that these are not the same vans. They know how janitorial trucks left the building and they actually tracked the paths the janitorial trucks took to drive home. Like the janitorial workers were driving down certain roads to get over to their houses and the CIA and the FBI and the NSA folks tracked those people home. And he was quite convinced that these were the same trucks. And between the hours of 3 o'clock and 5 o'clock these trucks had never been in this building before.

"It was an anomaly, definitely. It wasn't like it was going on for months and months and continued. They showed up for 10 days, 10 or 11 days approximately; then they were never seen again. And that's when they believe they wired the building. And they do believe, my friend absolutely believes it was a thermate bomb. A thermite bomb with potential sulfur in it. ....

"I do believe that that helps to explain some of the missing pieces and I believe this is what happened: They had known about the terrorist attack for months. There was long-term advance knowledge. Assets are being watched. ... Mohammed Atta was an asset, trained by the United States government, supervised by the United States government, and I can assure you that assets are - and I'm speaking from personal experience - heavily controlled individuals. I was never dealing with Iraq and Libya without somebody paying extremely close attention to me at every stage. My phones were tapped and at one point they had wired my house. When they had the handover of the two Libyan men, I went to my basement the same day that they handed over the men, and the ceiling of my basement had been torn out and there were cable wires dangling from the ceiling, about a dozen cable wires. And they had a contractor come over to my house and he said: Wow, somebody really put a kick ass stereo system in your house! That's amazing, you have these wires going to every single room of your house, even in your bathroom. ...

"But the point is, there's no way these assets could have functioned without somebody knowing every single detail of what they were doing. There is no way they could have hidden. They could not have disguised their actions from their handlers, even if they tried to disguise it, it would not work. Believe me, it wouldn't work. ... So it's more likely that they were using Mohammed Atta to guide the conspiracy, to track the conspiracy...

"The 1993 World Trade Center attack killed five people. The bombing of the USS Cole killed 12 people. And once the smoke clears and the catastrophy, the chaos is over, and the noise is done, it's pretty - you know, there's not a lot of damage. Certainly not enough that would allow a government, a pro-war cabal, to throw itself into a new war with Iraq. ... It's not that they spontaneously wired the World Trade Center. They knew it was coming. They wanted to make sure that it had maximum damage when it hit. They knew they were gonna use the airplanes as a cover to demolish the buildings." 5

Lindauer is unique in the 9/11 Truth movement in the sense that a second cousin of her, Andrew Card, was George Bush's chief of staff on 9/11, and also that she was a relatively high-level intelligence insider who worked under the auspices of Dr. Richard Fuisz. Lindauer liaised for him with the Libyans since 1995 and the Iraqis since 1996. Fuisz has confirmed this. And anybody who looks at the biography of Fuisz, can quickly tell that he indeed has been a CIA asset of some significance. I'm not going to vouch for Lindauer or her intentions, however. She's been invited once for 30 minutes to Coast to Coast AM (see her bio there and of Fuisz) and hangs out with a number of truthers who can't be trusted. Still, I found the scenario she painted interesting enough to share.

One thing that I can say is that Lindauer is part of a trend in which seemingly independent whistleblowers are attacking the neocons, Cheney's Halliburton, and the Iraq War in particular. Gwenyth Todd, from a major eastern establishment and diplomat family, is another such whistleblower. She exposed the neocon agenda to attack Iran (with questionable accusations, however) and as a result apparently was forced to emigrate to Australia. The traditionally liberal-oriented Washington Post is about the only newspaper who did a major story on her, apart from her little anti-Israel, fascist, and 9/11 disinformation clique over at Veteran's Today. CNN's Amber Lyon also exposed the Bahrain angle. She received support from super-liberal easten establishment circles and today is a psychedelic guru with Facebook friends as Alexander Soros, a son of George Soros; and Wyatt Rockefeller, a grandson of Laurance Rockefeller. The dissenting 9/11 Commission member, Senator Max Cleland, questioned little about 9/11 itself. He was primarily backing Richard Clark against the neocon agenda. Clark himself used to be a major anti-neocon whistleblower, but then, without anybody reporting on it, joined the Paladin Group of arch-neocon James Woolsey. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the Osama bin Laden Task Force and Bin Laden Station, is another whistleblower who also prominently attacked the Israeli "fifth column" in the United States around AIPAC and related organizations.

Anyway, in this article we are going to take a look at who owned the buildings, who ran the security and who the tenants of the impact and collapse floors were. To a large extent this article has been inspired by Kevin Ryan's four part series Demolition Access to the WTC Towers, published in 2009 and 2010. Already back in 2005 I was wondering who the tenants at the impact floors were, because anyone trying to realistically simulate a collapse would have to know at approximately which floors the planes would hit in order to move thermate and explosives to that location. Right? Well, that was my thinking at the time, having a hard time accepting that it would be possible to rig the building from top to bottom. Even though there's no evidence for any kind of remote control technology, Osama or Saudi intelligence assets could directly or indirectly have instructed the hijackers to hit certain floors or certain portions of the buildings. This adds additional risk, of course. Not only do the hijackers need to hit the buildings, if they don't hit it in the right spot, the (real) perpetrators couldn't have detonated the charges. However, with more research, as discussed in Part 1, it appears we don't need to worry about this scenario, as it appears there's evidence that the buildings were rigged from at least the first sky lobby at floor 44 and up. Looking at the floor plans and other information, almost the entire core from top to bottom could be accessed without help from the tenants. Combined with sky lobby and maintenance floors, one can get quite far without having to involve any of the tenants. Sure, who knows, the hijackers may still have been under instructions to hit certain floors, but it's not essential in explaining a collapse by controlled demolition. One would also think that any ''superclass'' 9/11 plotters would prefer to keep the lie as close to the truth as possible and just get out of the way and let the hijackers do their thing.

Despite this estimate that the building was rigged as a whole, it doesn't hurt to figure out who exactly occupied these floors. Who knows what we'll come across - an investigation has to start somewhere. Smoke puffs and even sequential flashes seem to be (clearly) visible in corners of floors that consist of tenant spaces. Maybe certain floors did contain more explosives than others. In addition, if there happen to be any elite tenants in the building, they may have been given assurances or warnings beforehand. It's hard to imagine if, let's say, a Henry Kissinger has an office close to the top of the North Tower, that such a person would not been made aware of a plot. There are only so many people who can get away with a conspiracy of the magnitude of 9/11 and looking at ISGP's Superclass Index, they would have to be pretty close to Kissinger. Also, what if a friend or family of the president is located in the towers the moment of the attack? Plotters would have to keep these things in mind, as there might be unexpected backlash if people like that die. Even if a country as Israel would be behind the controlled demolition of the towers, it's hard to imagine that they would regard persons like this simply as collateral damage. There's no way they would and no way they would completely work on their own. Most likely we would see evidence of certain insurance/economic arrangements being made or, immediately before the plot, see high level people with last minute excuses to stay away.

Once again, for those reading the article, keep in mind that originally a lot of importance was attached to the ownership of the impact and collapse floors. While this remains an interesting angle, today it is seen as something that might well be a coincidence. Ownership of the buildings and security access are considered more important indicators at this point. The reader also needs to keep in mind that Kevin Ryan has never put links to any ISGP material, despite being made aware of these articles from the moment they were first published. That's not unusual though: nobody in the 9/11 Truth movement has done so. Ryan is also backing way too much obvious disinformation and his ''demolition access'' material might well be part of that. No, that's right, I've very few good words left for Ryan, as well as his hero Peter Dale Scott, who has been publicly backing Craig Ranke's manipulative and bizarre plane-flyover-at-Pentagon National Security Alert video. Then again, to my surprise, on February 15, 2014 during an interview with The Mind Renewed podcast, Ryan specifically mentioned the Safari Club and even Ted Shackley as key suspects behind 9/11. Gee, I wonder where he got that inspiration from all of a sudden... But I guess he's going in the right direction.

In any case, back in the 2004-2005 period I couldn't figure out that quick who the WTC tenants were, even though, as it turns out, the information had been available from the very beginning through the CoStar Group. A lack of time and experience was probably responsible for that.

Not a whole lot can be added to Ryan's work on the North Tower. He convincingly tied the impact floors to Henry Kissinger and some of his closest friends. However, he was not able to do this in case of the South Tower. For obvious reasons this bothered me, but, as it turns out, the impact floors of both towers can be linked to the same powerful interests. In fact, the evidence is overwhelming that a small group already appearing near the top of ISGP's Superclass Index would have had total access to the impact and collapse floors of both building. In addition to that, this group was responsible for the building's security, was close to the owners of the complex, and would also come to dominate the official inquiries into 9/11. These are important coincidences, because the persons listed in the Superclass Index can already be tied to virtually every other controversial conspiracy of the last few decades. And this group certainly is the only one with the power and influence to cover up something of the magnitude of 9/11.

The World Trade Center Complex, with its Twin Towers, was a project initiated in the mid 1960s by David Rockefeller and his brother Nelson through the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Development Association. The project was a financial disaster for the first three decades of its existence and even during most of the 1990s it was a considerable challenge to attract enough tenants for the complex to be profitable. In 1998 the tower finally reached a 95% occupancy rate. In early 2001 this had increased to 98%, basically the maximum achievable. 6

Manager of the World Trade Center complex since the very beginning was the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Port Authority chairman on 9/11 was Lewis Eisenberg, who had been appointed to the position in 1995 primarily by governor of New Jersey, Christine Todd Whitman, with support of the governor of New York, George Pataki. 7

Post-9/11 both governors were invited to join the notorious American Security Council Foundation, where Henry Kissinger could also be found at that point. 8 Maybe things changed a little, but certainly during the Cold War every person involved in the American Security Council could be considered a CIA asset, with innumerable of them having been involved in highly illegal and immoral black operations. In addition, Whitman was married into an eastern establishment Pilgrims Society family reasonably close to the Rockefellers 9 and was the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official who immediately in the aftermath of 9/11 falsely claimed that the air close to Ground Zero was safe to breathe. Whitman claimed she had been ordered to do so by Dick Cheney.

In 2008 Lewis Eisenberg was national co-chairman of Senator John McCain's presidential campaign, with three men who are close friends and have very strong ties to the impact floors of both towers appointed as honorary co-chairmen of the New York area: Henry Kissinger (Pilgrims), John Whitehead (Pilgrims) and Peter Peterson (Pilgrims) (all in the Superclass Index). Among the directors of McCain's campaign was former 9/11 Commission member John Lehman. 14 Jacob Rothschild, whom we will discuss in relation to the South Tower impact zone, was another of McCain's campaign supporters 15, as well as Lynn Forester de Rothschild. 16 Others were Israeli prime ministers Netanyahu and Barak 17, whose relations to 9/11 will be explained in a minute. The ultra-connected James Woolsey was an advisor to McCain's campaign.

Interestingly, McCain himself wrote the foreword of a 2006 book entitled Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts. The authors of the book were two editors of Popular Mechanics, a magazine that had already sparked controversy in March 2005 for producing the article Debunking 9/11 Lies: Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand up to the Hard Facts. The authors denied the massive evidence for molten steel at the World Trade Center site, denied there was evidence that WTC7 was a controlled demolition and brought up many "conspiracy theories" that have quite clearly been introduced into the conspiracy community with the exact purpose of later discrediting them. In August 2007 the History Channel released a documentary based on the arguments made by Popular Mechanics. Interestingly, the publisher of the magazine, as well as a one-third owner of the History Channel, is the Hearst Corporation. 18 Chairman George R. Hearst, Jr., who has held this position since 1996 19, used to be one of 18 members of the American Security Council's industrial relations committee 20 - meaning that he has been very close to the CIA's black operations crowd. Yeah, just leave it to the Hearst Corporation to inform the public about the truth behind 9/11.

In July 2001 Larry Silverstein, with Frank Lowy as a minor partner, leased the World Trade Center from the Port Authority for a period of 99 years. 21 Two other candidates financially were considered more reliable partners by the Port Authority, but ultimately Silverstein was able to gain control over the WTC complex. There isn't any evidence that Silverstein received a favorable treatment though, although it is known that he was a friend of Pataki and knew some other people at the Port Authority. 22 That doesn't rule out, of course, that there wasn't any manipulation.

There's no doubt that Silverstein and Lowy were part of an extensive international Zionist network. Silverstein was friends with Israeli prime ministers Netanyahu, Sharon and Barak, who all contacted him soon after the attacks to express their sympathies. 23 He has been a chairman of the UJA-Federation 24 and in more recent years hosted a meeting of the B'nai B'rith in the new WTC 7 building. 25 Lowy was a friend of Rupert Murdoch. 26 Both from Australia, Lowy and Murdoch were involved with the American-Australian Association, along with Maurice Greenberg, James Wolfensohn and David Rockefeller - all with close links to the impact floors or the WTC towers. The father of Rupert Murdoch had been a primary founder of the association in 1948, along with representatives of the Morgan bank. 27 Lowy used to be active in the Haganah, the old Zionist intelligence and covert operations network from which Israel's Mossad and covert operations community sprang. It appears Lowy never lost these connections and seems to have maintained contacts at the very highest level, as in 2006 he was the founding chairman of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. Founding vice chairman was Dan Meridor, a former political associate of the ultraright Menachem Begin in the Irgun and Herut. Among the nine founding directors also were Peter Lowy, one of Frank's sons, and Martin Indyk, an early AIPAC employee, a founding executive director of the Zionist-dominated Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), and a member of the international advisory council of the Israel Democracy Institute. 28 How national assets can be sold off to clearly very radical foreign interests without any media scrutiny is a mystery to me.

Indyk appears to be a major liaison between the Israeli and American national security establishments. At WINEP could be found over the years: Henry Kissinger (Pilgrims; Le Cercle), George Shultz (Pilgrims), Alexander Haig (Pilgrims), Lawrence Eagleburger (Kissinger Associates), Paul Wolfowitz (Center for Security Policy; Bilderberg), Richard Perle (Le Cercle; Bilderberg) and James Woolsey (Center for Security Policy). All of them just happen to be discussed in this article about 9/11 and all of them appear high in ISGP's Superclass Index. As for the Israel Democracy Institute, founded in 1991, Shultz was honorary chairman in the years before 9/11. 29 In more recent times James Wolfensohn, his JASON scientist associate Sidney Drell, Henry Kissinger and Senator Joseph Lieberman (a close John McCain ally) also joined the international council, along with Indyk. 30

WINEP and the Israel Democracy Institute are among the tiny few Israel-linked groups the U.S. liberal establishment surrounding the Pilgrims, Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations has been involved with. The America-Israel Friendship League (AIFL), founded in 1971 by Nelson Rockefeller (Pilgrims) and Senator Henry Jackson (American Security Council and founder Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; employed numerous future neocons in his office; largely responsible for the creation of the (Zionist) Russia mafia monster 31 [15]), is another such institute. Again Shultz (knew the tenants of the North and South Tower impact and collapse floors) and Kissinger (closely linked to South Tower impact and collapse floors) were involved, along with Mortimer Zuckerman, Vernon Jordan (linked to South Tower impact floor), John Brademas (Pilgrim; Rockefeller man; knew the tenant of the South Tower collapse floors), New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani (who led the WTC privatization effort and was mayor on 9/11), General Paul Vallely (Center for Security Policy; close to Woolsey and the allegedly pedophile Satanist Col. Michael Aquino), CPMAJO executive vice chairman Malcolm Hoenlein and the ADL's national director Abraham Foxman. 32

Getting back to Silverstein, there's no clear evidence of it, but it can be assumed that he was a friend of most of the major Jewish names, including the Rothschilds. Silverstein would have known the Bronfmans and Edmond Safra through the UJA-Federation. 33 Chairman of the board of overseers of B'nai B'rith used to be Edgar Bronfman, where he was flanked by Safra and Max Fisher. 34 All these men were known to have top level connections to the Israeli government.

This Zionist ownership of the World Trade Center in the months before 9/11 has been one of two main reasons for accusations that Israel was behind the attacks. The other important reason has been the arrest of several Israeli "tourists" who appeared to be cheering as the World Trade Center towers collapsed. After their arrest police officers suspected they were involved in the 9/11 plot, because they carried a map with them with certain places highlighted while dogs indicated that at one point explosives were located in the van. 35 To make matters more suspicious, the owner of the company the men were working for fled to Israel soon after 9/11. 36 Later, on Israeli television, the men denied any ties to the Mossad and said they were simply documenting the event. The reason they were happy appears to have been the same as all their other Israeli colleagues: they immediately knew the United States would now strongly ally themselves with Israel, a state regularly confronted with Arab terrorism.

There really isn't much additional evidence for Israel's involvement than this, but it always remains a possibility that Zionists somehow played a role in bringing down the towers. Israel's involvement could potentially undermine any blackmail operations against the U.S. government regarding the event while anyone discussing leads pointing to Israel could be labeled antisemitic. At the same time Israel would greatly benefit with a United States intent on taking down Middle Eastern dictatorships and terrorist networks. Doing things this way may have been a win-win situation for both countries - but in the end it all remains speculation, of course.

In addition to Lewis Eisenberg, Larry Silverstein and Frank Lowy, Peter Peterson also played a role in the ownership of the World Trade Center. His Blackstone Group, which in the years prior to 9/11 failed to gain full ownership over the primary security consultant to the WTC (more on that later), did succeed in buying the debt on World Trade Center 7 from the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association. In November 2000 Blackstone announced to be pleased "to be a lender to Larry Silverstein, a seasoned real estate veteran, on one of Manhattan's trophy properties." 37 Nothing changed about this arrangement when Silverstein leased the entire World Trade Complex a year later from Eisenberg's Port Authority. Blackstone still held the mortgage on Building 7 in 2002, when the question arose when and how to build a new building and if not first an agreement with Blackstone should be made. 38 This should make one think. If Silverstein did indeed give permission for the building to be demolished on 9/11 - a reference to the bizarre "pull it" comment 39 - the question can be asked to what extent Peter Peterson of Blackstone had to be consulted. If bombs were located at WTC 7 before 9/11 took place, as seems to have been the case 40, both Silverstein and Peterson would have to be put under investigation.

On 8:46 AM Flight 77 impacted floors 93 to 99 of the North Tower. All these floors were leased by the insurance firm Marsh and McLennan. It's interesting to note that this was the most elite - not to mention "notoriously secretive" - firm in the entire tower. 41 Morgan Stanley, the only other firm that exclusively controlled a similar number of floors, was headed at the time by establishment "outsider" Phil Purcell, involved in a power struggle with the east coast liberal establishment - or "WASP" elite. 42 As could be expected, the effort to oust Purcell was headed by a member of the Pilgrims Society. In addition to this, the head of Marsh and McLennan, Jeffrey Greenberg, was far more intimately connected to the Kissinger group and the CIA than almost any former chairman of Morgan Stanley. It was definitely the most interesting firm in the building.

Jeffrey's father, the already twice-mentioned Maurice Greenberg, was recruited by a high level OSS officer who was the founder of AIG. 43 Greenberg maintained a working relationship with the CIA throughout his life and is known to have been close to the late CIA director William Casey. 44 In fact, Maurice has been considered in the past for a position as CIA deputy director, as well as CIA director 45, obviously making him one of the top outside CIA assets.

Greenberg is close to the top of ISGP's Superclass Index and among the closest friends of Henry Kissinger, the undisputed number 1 in this index. Greenberg's firm AIG has been in a strategic partnership with Kissinger Associates and Peter Peterson's Blackstone Group (the mortgage owner on WTC7) since the early 1980s. 46 Kissinger actually served as advisory board chairman of AIG from 1987 until many years beyond 9/11, effectively co-running the firm with Maurice. 47 In addition, it was Paul Bremer, managing director of Kissinger Associates from 1989 to October 2001, who joined Marsh in November 2000 as a security and terrorism consultant. 48 Bremer drew some attention for appearing on television hours after the attack, explaining that "bin Laden was involved in the first attack on the World Trade Center. ... and there are at least two states, Iran and Iraq, who at least remain on the potential list of suspects." 49 He also played a role in the creation of Homeland Security through the Heritage Foundation 50 and served as an ambassador to Iraq. He additionally drew some attention for having been on the advisory board of Komatsu 51, a Trilateral Commission firm 52 mentioned in Part 1 for having patented a quiet thermite device. It's not really possible, however, to argue that this device was used on 9/11 or has ever even been built.

Tenants of the South Tower impact floors (and ties to Carlyle)

Almost 20 minutes after the impact of Flight 11, Flight 175 hit the South Tower at floors 77 to 85. In contrast to the North Tower, these floors were not controlled by a single corporation. Floors 77-78 were leased by Baseline International Services, Fuji Bank rented floors 79 to 82, and various other companies were located on floors 83 to 85. 53

Baseline and Fuji Bank are the most significant, because it is at these floors that pre-collapse smoke puffs were observed while molten metal was seen flowing from Fuji Bank's 80th or 81st floor. The collapse ensued from floors 77 and 78 where Baseline was located.

As Kevin Ryan had already figured out, in 1996 Baseline had been bought by the Primark Corporation of Joseph Kasputys. Kasputys became chairman of Baseline, but actually lived in Waltham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. 54 Ryan primarily linked Kasputys to the Logistics Management Institute and noted it had links to the defense industry. Overall ties of Kasputys, as well as those described for Fuji Bank, were not particularly strongly linked to the same network that controlled the North Tower impact floors. However, after a bit of digging it turns out that it can be shown that this was indeed the case.

First of all, Logistics Management Institute was founded in 1961 by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara 55, one of the top level internationalists on ISGP's Superclass Index. Already in the beginning period LMI was considered secretive and part of the military-industrial complex. Various military officers and defense-linked individuals underscore the institute's ties to military and intelligence. Among them has been Paul Kaminsky, a CIA asset in the field of high technology who joined LMI in early 2002. 56 The Logistics Management Institute is far from a top level institute, however. Kasputys joined LMI in 1999. He actually may have been invited by Joseph Nye, Jr., another person who coincidentally can be found in ISGP's top 100 or so Superclass Index. Nye had joined the institute in 1997, with both men leaving the board in 2009. 57

Certainly post-9/11, Nye and Kasputys also knew each other through the board of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Others involved over the years with Nye and Kasputys here include John Brademas (Pilgrims), Edward M. Lamont, Jr. (Pilgrims), George W. Mallinckrodt (Pilgrims), Peter G. Peterson (Pilgrims), Nathaniel "Nat" Rothschild, Carlyle's David M. Rubenstein, David Gergen and former CIA director John Deutch. 58 The latter, quite possibly a very significant person in the 9/11 World Trade Center operation, has been a good friend of Nye since the 1970s. 59

This is just where things get started. Kasputys knew Brademas, Peterson, Patrick W. Gross (another Pilgrim), Carlyle's Frank Carlucci (CIA), John Diebold and George Shultz (Pilgrims) for years before and after 9/11 through the board of the Committee for Economic Development (CED). 60 These connections are very important for a number of reasons.

ISGP's index of institutes lists many influential names from past decades, including Stephen Bechtel, Harold Geneen of IT&T, and CIA director John McCone, three close associates notorious for involvement in Latin American coups. Later Bechtel employee Shultz was already onboard with these men in the 1960s.

Focusing on more recent times, Diebold voting machines have been accused of having played a role in swaying the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections in favor of George W. Bush. 61 John Diebold had top level connections to the CIA and liberal elements of the national security establishment since at least the 1970s. Among them was Trilateral Commission founder and liberal establishment geopolitical strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is close to the top of ISGP's Superclass Index. 62

Shultz, a lifetime trustee of the CED, largely put together the Bush administration through the Vulcan team. Himself a major representative of the Rockefeller and Bechtel interests 63, Shultz's primary protege has been Condoleezza Rice 64, secretary of state during the second half of the Bush administration, while also having served as a political mentor to Paul Wolfowitz 65, the deputy secretary of defense on 9/11. In the late 1990s, along with Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld (secretary of defense on 9/11) and Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Shultz was also a colleague of Colin Powell - the secretary of state on 9/11 - at the Gulfstream Corporation. 66

The CED's Frank Carlucci, like Peterson and Shultz high up in ISGP's Superclass Index, was the Princeton roommate, wrestling teammate and later political mentor of Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense on 9/11. Carlucci was a senior CIA officer deeply involved in illegal covert operations, along with the notorious Ted Shackley, George H. W. Bush and General Vernon Walters. 67 Carlucci has also been very close to the Rockefeller group through the Trilateral Commission 68 and the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association. David Rockefeller, John Whitehead, Paul Volcker, former CIA director James Schlesinger and Carlucci were among the founding members of the association in 1998 and remained on the board for over a decade. 69

Also on the board since the beginning was none other than Oliver Stone, director of the 1991 pro-Jim Garrison conspiracy movie JFK and the 2006 anti-conspiracy movie World Trade Center - although, the WTC collapse in Stone's movie does sound a lot like controlled demolition. In line with his involvement in the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association, Stone produced the pro-Castro movie Comandante in 2003 in an effort to bring the U.S. and Cuba closer together. In a 2010 speech Stone claimed that the Right has now dominant control over the news media - which is false - and promoted Robert Parry and his alternative Consortium News website. 70 Like Parry, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn and Greg Palast, Stone is a left-wing activist who becomes highly irrational when asked to support 9/11 Truth. 71 What a coincidence that Stone has been hanging out with some of the leading 9/11 suspects, including Carlucci. And that Greg Palast's associate, Joseph Stiglitz, has the exact same connections: the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, Resources for the Future, the Eurasia Foundation - Stiglitz couldn't be more connected to the absolute elite.

Besides the ties already mentioned, probably the main reason why Carlucci should be put on the 9/11 suspects list is for meeting with Shafig bin Laden, an older half brother of Osama bin Laden, on the morning of 9/11. This meeting was held under the auspices of the Carlyle Group, of which Carlucci was chairman. Others present at the meeting were Carlyle senior counselors George H. W. Bush, an old CIA buddy of Carlucci (both men were friends with the notorious Ted Shackley); and James Baker, a secretary of state under the elder Bush. Shafig bin Laden had been invited as a honorary guest. 72

As one can see, Kasputys knowing Carlucci and Peter Peterson - both before 9/11 - might be very significant. Peterson is closely connected to the North Tower impact and collapse floors, the tower's security and owned the mortgage on World Trade Center 7; Kasputys controlled the collapse floors of the South Tower. As for Carlucci, it should at least be considered that he may have been a CIA handler of Kasputys, as Kasputys' close associate, Patrick W. Gross, was an employee of Carlucci's Carlyle Group 73, close to Carlucci wife 74, and at least since 1990 a very close associate of ultimate defense insider Philip Odeen 75, another employee of the Carlyle Group at the BDM Corporation and later Booz Allen Hamilton 76, who, as still needs to be discussed, appears to have had a degree of foreknowledge about the 9/11 event. 77

That's not all. One BDM veteran, General Albert Stubblebine, has been spreading disinformation about the Pentagon impact. 78 Another very long-time BDM veteran, Michael Stolarik, who stayed close Stubblebine 79, ended up as executive vice president of the Titan Corporation's Technical Resources Sector in the 2002-2003 period. 80 At that point Titan employed U.S. resident Makram Majid Chams, who knew the Florida-based 9/11 hijackers, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, and who fled to - you will never guess - Saudi Arabia after 9/11. 81 After 9/11 Titan was linked to large scale drug trafficking 82 and seemingly illegal intelligence activities 83, while also employing the guards that caused the Abu Graib prison scandal in Iraq. 84 Stolarik remained close to Carlyle over the years. In 2007 he joined the Carlyle-financed QinetiQ North America, where he became president and COO in 2009. 85 9/11's CIA director George Tenet was a director here in this period 86, followed up by the influential Admiral Edmund Giambastiani 87, who was present at Rumsfeld's side on 9/11. That morning Rumsfeld and Giambastiani were at a breakfast meeting in the Pentagon with members of Congress and numerous top level military officers to discuss the new Quadrennial Defense Review 88, whose previous elite panel in 1997, coincidentally, had been chaired by Carlyle's/BDM's Philip Odeen. 89 It's a small world at the top. Gross, Odeen, Carlucci, Rumsfeld and Giambastiani can all be found in ISGP's Superclass Index.

Giambastiani's 2006 account of his own and Rumsfeld's actions after the first plane hit the World Trade Center expands a little on what the 9/11 Commission had trouble figuring out the details of: what Rumsfeld was exactly doing in his office between the impact of the second WTC plane at 9:03 AM and the impact at the Pentagon at 9:37 AM. He should have been at the National Military Command Center (NMCC), finding out if there were any other hijacked planes, cooperate with the FAA's hijack coordinator, General Mike Canavan (also missing from his post on 9/11), and NORAD in the scrambling of jets, and ask President Bush for permission to shoot down any planes. This has already been discussed in Part 1 of this series. From the Commission report we learn that the NMCC's lead officer that day, General Montague Winfield, said that "for 30 minutes we couldn't find [Rumsfeld]," with Rumsfeld stating he was "out of the loop". 90 The commission only established that Rumsfeld was in his office. As Giambastiani explained it in 2006: After being informed of the second impact at the WTC and the conclusion that this was a terrorist attack, both men went to their respective offices "to work, keeping their eyes on television sets that showed the World Trade Center in flames." Neither came out again until the Pentagon was hit 30 minutes later. At that point Rumsfeld decided to go out and help the victims while it was Giambastiani who went to the National Military Command Center (NMCC) to "[find] out if there were any potential further attacks." 91 Here he should have found out that the NMCC was not kept properly informed by the FAA at all, quite possibly because its security head and hijack coordinator, General Mike Canavan, was out of the country. Also, by the time time the leadership at the center was still in doubt whether or not to scramble planes towards Flight 93. 92 But the person who should be in charge here and should be talking to the president was strolling outside on the Pentagon lawn, playing the hero, while potentially exposing himself to bacteriological agents, dirty nuclear waste, or secondary explosions. After about half an hour he comes back into the Pentagon, goes towards his office, briefly talks to the president about the Pentagon damage without any mention of shoot-down orders, and finally goes down to the NMCC, well after the crash of the last plane, Flight 93, at 10:03. Only now is he advised that it might be wise to scramble jets. But minutes later Rumsfeld is called by Dick Cheney, who, outside of the chain of command, has launched planes to intercept incoming airliners. 93 Much too late, of course.

So what do we have here? We have Carlyle with its ties to Shafig bin Laden. Not discussed yet are the other Saudi investors in Carlyle in the late 1990s, some with clear ties to the Bush family, the CIA's Safari Club, the financing of terrorism and even the 9/11 hijackers. We have a secretary of defense that conveniently disappeared on 9/11, who also is among the closest friends of Frank Carlucci of Carlyle. His assistant that day, Admiral Giambastiani, later ends up working for Carlyle-financed Qinetiq. Michael Stolarik, who for years served on the board of Carlyle-owned BDM, under Frank Carlucci, can also be found at Qinetiq. Through Titan and Stubblebine, Stolarik may have some of his own peculiar ties to the events surrounding 9/11. We also know that Kasputys' close friend, Patrick Gross, was a Carlyle employee, and since 1990 close to fellow-Carlyle employee Philip Odeen, whose company has been suspected of foreknowledge of 9/11. Most of these people just happen to appear in ISGP's unrelated Superclass Index. Two expressions come to mind: 1) where there's smoke, there is fire; and 2) birds of a feather flock together. Do not be surprised if terrorist flight school owner Wally Hilliard one day also turns out to have a connection to either Carlyle or Frank Carlucci. Forgetting the drug business for a moment, at the very least both seem to take an interest in doing trade with Cuba, albeit each in their own way. Hilliard still needs to be discussed later in this article.

We are far from done with Kasputys. Since at least 1991 he served as a trustee and later treasurer of the Council for Excellence in Government. Already back in 1991 he shared the board with Suzanne Woolsey, wife of former CIA director James Woolsey, who happens to be the number 2 on ISGP's Superclass Index, right behind Henry Kissinger. Suzanne stayed on the board of the Council for Excellence in Government until 2007. Kasputys term ended around the time the Council ceased its operations in 2009. Others on the board pre-9/11 with Kasputys were John Macomber (Pilgrims), William H. Draper III (son of a Pilgrim), the earlier-mentioned Patrick W. Gross (Pilgrims), Elliot L. Richardson (Pilgrims), John C. Whitehead (Pilgrims) and future 9/11 Commission vice chairman Lee H. Hamilton. Presidents Ford, Carter, Bush and Clinton were honorary co-chairmen. Paul Volcker (Pilgrims) was among the principals (an important function) of the Council in the 1980s and 1990s. George Shultz (Pilgrims), whom Kasputys had known for over a decade at the CED, joined in more recent years. 94

If we go back further in Kasputys' history, we find that he had come to know a lot of these persons in earlier decades. Kasputys started out his career with the Lockheed Aircraft Service Corporation in 1955-1956, after which he joined the Navy and ended up becoming chief of the Computer Training Division of the United States Navy Corps School from 1963 to 1965. He graduated from Harvard with a MBA in 1967. Five years later he received his Ph.D. He was Deputy Director for Data Automation at the DOD 1967-1969. In 1969 and 1970, during the Nixon administration, he was assistant to the assistant secretary of defense (comptroller). 95

Kasputys public career reached a peak in the 1976-1977 period when he was assistant secretary of commerce under Elliot L. Richardson (Pilgrims; foreign policy advisor to Nelson Rockefeller; Trilateral Commission exec.). In this capacity he was sitting in on White House meetings with men as Nelson Rockefeller (Pilgrims), Henry Kissinger (Pilgrims), William Simon (Pilgrims), Brent Scowcroft, Alan Greenspan and Dick Cheney, the latter, of course, being the U.S. vice president on 9/11. 96

Richardson remained one of Kasputys' patrons it appears. In 1989 Richardson, who was a founding executive member of the Trilateral Commission, recruited Kasputys for his newly-established Hitachi Foundation. In 1998 Kasputys took over the chairmanship of the foundation from Richardson. 97Post 9/11 he personally bestowed the foundation's awards on such men as 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean, 9/11 Commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton, secretary of defense on 9/11 Colin Powell, former CIA director and defense secretary Robert Gates and others. 98 Patrick Gross, whom he also knew from the CED and the Council for Excellence in Government, joined the foundation in 2003.

***

The U.S. branch of Fuji Bank rented floors 79 to 82, immediately above Baseline Financial Services. It had two primary managers for many years up until the World Trade Center attack: Toru Hashimoto and Toru Kusukawa. Both men were members of the Trilateral Commission since the mid-1990s 99, some years after they had negotiated a strategic partnership with James Wolfensohn 100, who in turn also established a strategic partnership with Jacob Rothschild. 101Appointed as chairman of both Wolfensohn & Co. and J. Rothschild Wolfensohn & Co. was Paul Volcker, whom we just ran across as Kasputys' associate at the Council for Excellence in Government. Volcker, a former North American Trilateral Commission chairman (and Pilgrim), has been among the closest friends of David Rockefeller for decades - along with James Wolfensohn actually. Appointed to the board of Fuji Bank was Vernon E. Jordan 102, a long-time representative of Rockefeller and Rothschild interests 103 who at the same time was one of the closest confidantes of President Bill Clinton. Wolfensohn and Jordan appear in ISGP's Superclass Index.

We shouldn't forget that pre-9/11 Wolfensohn was a patron of the American-Australian Association, along with Maurice Greenberg of AIG and Rupert Murdoch. Frank Lowy, owner of the WTC's underground mall and a billionaire Zionist intelligence asset, had been among the ordinary members.

Jacob Rothschild is known to be particularly close to Henry Kissinger 104, a friend of all the men just mentioned. Coincidentally, in 2007, Jacob joined the board of Peter Peterson's Blackstone Group 105, the firm since the early 1980s in a strategic partnership with Greenberg's AIG and Kissinger Associates.

Knowing that Baseline and Fuji Bank occupied the South Tower floors is additionally important because pre-collapse "pressure pulses" were spotted at these floors, with large amounts of very hot metal (most likely steel) falling from the offices of Fuji Bank in the minutes before the collapse.

The more one reads about the tower's security improvement program after the first 1993 bombing the more one becomes aware that under normal circumstances it would have been totally impossible for an unauthorized person to gain access to the underground parking lot - and certainly not with a van packed with thermate and explosives. A report from 1997:

"Now, only monthly tenant parking is allowed in the underground garages, and drivers must "register" along with their vehicles. ... The system is meant to be "failsafe," ensuring that both the driver and the vehicle together are authorized to gain entry to the parking garage, a feature about which Karpiloff is particularly excited. ... They can enter and exit the parking lots at six strictly controlled access points, where their presence is:

* recorded by surveillance cameras;
* detected by vehicle ground loop detectors;
* controlled by manned, bullet-resistant guard booths, motorized gate arms and anti-ram barriers; and
* read by proximity card and electronic vehicle identification (EVI) tag readers.

"And that's just for starters. If a vehicle stalls, or fails to arrive at its assigned parking space within a predetermined amount of time, a special program will alert the main security command station as well as satellite command centers.

"If the vehicle proceeds right to its assigned parking area, it will pass still a third security station and another EVI reader..." 106

Since it was concluded in Part 1 of this article that most likely many tons of thermate and explosives were brought into the towers, the question arises how this would have been achieved. If this was indeed the case it should be clear at this point that the security of the tower was compromised. Cameras and people were everywhere. Even bomb sniffing dogs were present, although it has to be said, heightened security, including additional bomb sniffing dogs, was removed six days before the attack. It also appears that the vast majority of bomb sniffing dogs aren't trained to pick up on thermite or 90 percent of unconventional explosives. 107 Anyway, why not theorize a bit more about the possibilities:

1. The tenants at the impact floors provided the alibis for the vans to enter the building and transport the materials upstairs.
2. Temporary fake IDs were created in the database and later on removed from the logs (or simply destroyed in the attacks).
3. The security system was overridden or temporarily shut off.
4. A combination of the above.

Whatever tactic was used, most likely the material was not brought in during the day. There would have been too much security and all kinds of other personnel around. Also, getting the materials inside the building is one thing; taking it up in an elevator and hiding everything in the walls, floors and ceilings is another. If building owners, tenants and aspects of security were in on the conspiracy, most likely everything was brought in in the dead of night, or possibly in the weekend.

One person clearly not involved was FBI counter-terrorism expert John O'Neill, the newly appointed chief of security for the World Trade Center. He died on 9/11; his third week on the job. Whoever his immediate predecessor was is a really good question.

Besides O'Neill, it is also highly unlikely that Douglas G. Karpiloff, mentioned in the cited article above, was involved in the conspiracy - he also died on 9/11. Karpiloff held various positions in the World Trade Center, from program manager of the security systems to security and life safety director. In the 1990s he was "responsible for the overall facility management of the $50 million security improvement program" at the World Trade Center. 108

A more likely candidate for (limited) inside knowledge might have been World Trade Center director ("mayor"), Alan Reiss. He managed to survive the day, although Kevin Ryan has highlighted some potential inconsistencies in his story. It's unlikely Reiss would have cooperated in the plot without being compensated or intimidated though and it is always possible that he was only given a few last minute clues that something was about to happen.

If we stop bothering with the lesser minions, the tower's security system was ultimately ran by the building owner, the Port Authority, chaired by Lewis Eisenberg; and leasers Larry Silverstein and Frank Lowy. One would expect Peter Peterson of the Blackstone Group, the mortgage holder on WTC 7, to have a say about security at that building also.

Certainly post-9/11 Eisenberg and Silverstein were close to Henry Kissinger's circle of friends (which included Peterson), although virtually nothing is available about the pre-9/11 period. After the 1993 World Trade Center attack, the Port Authority hired Kroll, Inc., Wall Street's famous private security firm, as its primary security consultant. It was under the guidance of Kroll that the entire World Trade Center's security system was overhauled. 109 These upgrades and the maintenance thereof continued until 9/11 110, so one would expect certain Kroll personnel to have had continued access to all parts of the building.

Third largest shareholder in Kroll since at least December 1997, right behind chairman Jules Kroll and his partner in vehicle armoring, Thomas M. O'Gara, was none other than AIG, with an interest of 7 percent. 111 Maybe the reader remembers that AIG was ran by Maurice Greenberg, whose son, Jeffrey, was head of Marsh and McLennan, tenant of all the impact floors of the North Tower. Henry Kissinger had been AIG's advisory board chairman from 1987 to many years post-9/11. In addition, Maurice Greenberg had top level CIA ties.

AIG partner firm Blackstone, under the leadership of Peter Peterson, actually tried to buy 90 percent of Kroll's shares in late 1999 and turn it into a private company. 112 The idea was that Jules Kroll would remain chairman with a 10 percent stake; O'Gara would be bought out. Various deals fell through and in 2001 both Blackstone and AIG were accused of aiding and abetting "the directors' and officers' alleged breaches of fiduciary duties". 113 During the entire period, Kroll continued to do all of AIG's detective work, a partnership publicly reaffirmed by AIG in 2001. 114 In 2004 Marsh bought Kroll while later that year Kroll's COO and later CEO and president, Michael G. Cherkasky, succeeded Greenberg as chairman and CEO of Marsh. 115 After a brief period of losing control of Kroll, Cherkasky still controlled the firm for a while through a company with the name Altegrity. 116

Kroll is often suspected of having CIA ties or being involved in questionable private intelligence operations. Marsh & McLennan did reportedly use the firm to spy on former employees 117, and CEO Jeffrey Greenberg, who bought the firm in 2004, did have a history at the CIA-asset firm AIG, ran by his father. However, older, more direct ties to the CIA have never really surfaced, although... there certainly is one major exception. This exception has been brought to light by Irish journalist Kevin Dowling, who in 2008 - three months before his death - provided ISGP with photocopies of membership lists of the 1001 Club. In one of his interviews, Dowling stated:

"Because I had so many contacts in Africa by that time, I was being overwhelmed with information about Project Lock. I discovered that very heavy-duty guys were involved in the operation. The military branch of the operation was under the command of Colonel Ian Crooke [KAS Enterprises], the second man of the special forces in England, the SAS. ... Furthermore, in the Lock network I found the name of Gordon Shepard. That is a kind of dirty tricks [specialist of MI6 who used to work in Northern Ireland] ... There were people of Kroll Associates, a kind of private intelligence service of Wall Street. ... The civilian side of the operation was headed by John Hanks, Prince Bernhard's right-hand man in Africa." 118

To explain what Dowling spoke about here, in the late 1980s this group was trying to prevent South Africa from moving beyond apartheid, because it feared the overwhelming black majority in the country would ally themselves with the Soviet Union and in any case would commit the sin of introducing socialist policies. Elements tied to the American Security Council and Le Cercle created violent opposition groups to Mandela's ANC which carried out murders and terrorist attacks in the black townships. The idea was to destabilize the situation to such an extent that the white South African government and military would be able to introduce martial law under the pretence of trying to prevent a civil war among blacks. The end of the Cold War put a stop to these tactics.

Kroll appears to have maintained these SAS ties. First we take a look at the four-man board of the British firm Arlington Associates, which describes itself as "an independent and entrepreneurial company, backed by and closely allied to Lonrho Plc". Chairman and CEO of Arlington Associates, Aldwin J. G. Wight, is a a retired commander of the SAS, formerly employed as "commander of the Sultan's Special Force, Oman." In addition, he used to be "deputy CEO of Kroll Security Group". Mark Blagbrough works under Wight as chief operating officer. He used to be "director of strategic planning in the Ministry of Defense" and "a senior security consultant in Kroll Security Group." 119 Both Wight and Blagbrough used to work for retired SAS commander Alastair Morrison, who was hired to head Kroll Security International in 2004 120, after Marsh and McLennan had bought Kroll. Aldwin Wight became head of Kroll's operations in Iraq. 121

Morrison isn't exactly an uncontroversial individual. Generally the British aristocrat David Stirling, once involved in the South African operations against black majority rule, 122 is considered the father of the SAS, although in reality a pro-Nazi fascist with the name Jock Lewes was. 123 Morrison, in turn, became a founder of Delta Force, the elite U.S. special operations group modeled after the SAS. Morrison was also a founder of Defense Systems Limited (DSL), which "defended gold and diamond mines in Africa from thieves,.. oil pipelines in Latin America from guerrillas [and] guarded US and British embassies in the Middle East and elsewhere". 124 In 1997, retired SAS personnel working for DSL were alleged to have trained a Colombian military unit linked to past atrocities and to have provided them with names of local citizens opposed to a project of British Petroleum. In 1997 Morrison sold DSL to Armor Holdings. He also helped set up Hart Group and Erinys, two other mercenary companies. Before becoming head of the Kroll Security Group, Morrison was director of Erinys, which had an $80 million contract to guard Iraqi oilfields and installations. Morrison has at least two questionable friends. The first is Tim Spicer 125, the CEO of the controversial firm Sandline International and the later founder of Aegis Defence Services. Spicer is known to have visited the tiny, elite and secretive Cercle group in 2003, along with Sir Ronald Grierson of the Blackstone Group. 126 Another friend of Morrison is Stephan Kock, the SAS veteran reported to have been head of Group 13, a secretive team that carried out assassinations for the British government. 127 Whatever exactly happened on 9/11, Kroll's Michael Cherkasky, who played a major role in the first World Trade Center investigation and the overhaul of the WTC's security system, certainly knew who to hire.

Getting back to Arlington Associates, headed by SAS veterans and Kroll Security Group men Aldwin Wight and Mark Blagbrough, the two other directors on the four-man board are Frances Cook and Geoffrey White, respectively non-executive chairman and CEO of Lonrho. This historically Pilgrims Society-linked mining firm has long been associated with exploiting the mineral riches of Africa by rather unscrupulous means. It appears these practices haven't stopped either. In addition, Cook, an ambassador to all the dark corners in Africa (as well as Oman), in the same period served as a director of Neil Livingstone's GlobalOptions, LLC, a major Anglo-American spook firm with his friend James Woolsey on the board, as well as former FBI director, CIA director and future Homeland Security Advisory Council chairman William Webster. Livingstone was a protege of CIA counter-intelligence chief James Angleton, with whom he served on the American Security Council strategy board. Webster can be found at the AFIO and OSS Society, historically along with Carlucci, Bush, Sr., Shackley, Helms, Woolsey, Inman, Schlesinger, Gates, etc. Cook's unofficial credentials as a top level spook seem rather obvious.

Maybe more relevant to 9/11, in the 2000-2001 period Ambassador Frances Cook was a director of the Omanian company Oryx National Resources, with Geoffrey White - as with Lonrho and Arlington Associates - serving as managing director. 128 In 2000 this mining firm was linked to trade in blood diamonds in cooperation with Robert Mugabe. This accusation appears to be relatively reliable, not the least because a company linked to Mugabe had a 20 percent stake in Oryx. Perhaps less reliable were accusations that some of the revenues generated by these diamonds were diverted to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda group. Apparently there had been an ridiculously unprofessional mix up of identities (disinformation from rivals has been suspected), leading to the accusations being withdrawn. The lead United Nations investigator seemed very sure of his case, however, that Oryx was involved in some sordid business - but possibly not with Al Qaeda. 129

One investigator to whom these reports did not go unnoticed was Daniel Hopsicker, who looked into the network of the 9/11 hijackers for the period 1999-2001 in Venice, Florida. Here Mohammed Atta and some of his closest associates received flight training from two questionable Dutch flight instructors: Rudi Dekkers and Arne Kruithof. The major backer of Dekkers was Wally Hilliard, another person with rather obvious spook credentials. Hopsicker had found out that one of Hilliard's ventures was named Oryx, LLC. To make matters more suspicious, Hilliard refused to give any information about the company. Hopsicker:

"All of this might be of nothing more than anecdotal or even prurient interest, but for the fact that there were so many important and unanswered questions about the man who financed Rudi Dekkers' terror flight school. One of Hilliard's ventures, for example, is called Oryx, LLC.  An "Oryx" is a kind of African gazelle, we learned. And a British mining company in Africa named Oryx was accused by the BBC of having links to Al Qaeda and trading blood diamonds. We asked Hilliard to tell us how he had come to name a company Oryx. He declined. "There is a company called Oryx," said Hilliard. "If I thought it was germane to anything I would tell you, but I don't see it is germane to anything." We persisted. "It is a strange name, I just wanted to know why you named the company Oryx?" "I didn't," replied Hilliard. "There's no relationship. My relationship with them is small, there are other people involved and therefore I'm not going to talk about a company that is owned by others." Whoever Oryx is, and whatever it was incorporated to do, Wallace J. Hilliard most assuredly owns the company, according to filings with the Florida Department of Corporations and FAA. We always get intrigued when we discover we've been lied to. When people lie, its always for a reason. Did diamonds fit into Wally's South African dealings? Was that where the name Oryx comes from?" 130

Hopsicker's investigation of Wally Hilliard revealed a bizarre list of seemingly contradictional connections to the Bahamas, Cuba, South Africa and through a charity called West African Children's Lifeline, Inc. also to other parts of Africa. Oddly, the charity's website listed no officers and no contact information 131, but information at the Florida State Division of Corporations reveals half a dozen men were involved in the foundation. Hilliard's vice president, Dan Morrison, was also involved in Hilliard's inactive "Badger Air, Inc." More about Hilliard later in this article.

It might be important to note at this point that the Sultan of Oman and some of this private advisors were visitors of Le Cercle. For decades his country's military has been overseen by American and especially British advisors (like Wight of Arlington Associates and later Kroll). It's possible that the Omanian company Oryx Natural Resources or some of its board members have visited Le Cercle or had close ties to the Sultan and some of his advisors.

Not mentioned yet is that in the same 2000-2001 period a person with the name Justin Longley was appointed to the board of Oryx Natural Resources as deputy managing director under Lonrho's/Arlington Associates' Geoffrey White. 132 Longley was a friend and business associate of SAS veteran Simon Mann. He worked for Mann's company Logo Logistics on African projects involving gold mining, forestry and engineering. Another associate of Longley (and Mann) is the wealthy SAS or SBS veteran Tony Buckingham, who appears to be using a false identity (as did the previously-mentioned alleged Group 13 head Stephan Kock). Buckingham owned two companies at the same address as Logo Logistics. All three men had previously been involved with DiamondWorks. 133 Buckingham used to be a partner in the British mercenary firm Executive Outcomes and served as the "inspiration" for the mercenary firm Sandline International 134, founded by his good friend, Colonel Tim Spicer, in turn a friend of Alastair Morrison of the Kroll Security Group.

In 2004, Longley and Mann were named among those involved in a failed Equatorial Guinea coup, several years after major oil reserves were discovered in that country. This was far from the first plot these men were involved with, but this one made headlines became Sir Mark Thatcher, son of Margaret Thatcher, was held in South Africa while Mann ended up in the notorious prison personally ran by president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, an apparent cannibal who promised he would "sodomise him, skin him alive and drag him through the streets". 135 Media reports about the coup stated that Longley was also a close friend of a certain Greg Wales, another major financier of the coup, whom Longley described in one of his private papers as a "spook" who "worked for the CIA and the commercial wing of the Republican party." It is known that Wales had been in contact with "a senior Pentagon official in the Africa department" and a CIA "analyst" in February of 2004. 136 We can all take an educated guess at who is part of the "commercial wing of the Republican party", but they're likely to include both liberal and conservative elements. To illustrate to what extent this network means business, according to the wife of coup plotter Nick du Toit, her husband was threatened by Mann: "If he doesn't do what Simon and the others want, his life would be worth nothing, so would his family". 137 Nice folks.

So, besides Oryx's connection to the SAS and Kroll, why else is this information important? Well, Longley had "uncles from both sides of his family in MI6." 138 One of these uncles was Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 from 1999 to 2004 (thus during the 9/11 event). After Dearlove's retirement, he was almost immediately invited to join the international advisory board of AIG, the major outside shareholder in Kroll. During his career Dearlove, a MI6 agent since 1966, had served in Kenya, Czechoslovakia, Paris and Geneva. From 1991 to 1994 he was MI6 station chief in Washington, D.C., followed by an appointment as MI6 director of operations from 1994 to apparently 1999. In other words, AIG brought on board the most senior covert operations expert in Great Britain of the period 1994 to 2004.

Apart from the elite Anglo-American Pilgrims Society, close U.S.-British ties in politics and intelligence can be found in various places. Tim Spicer's mercenary firm Aegis Defence Services had Robert McFarlane on the board. 139 The U.S. spook firm GlobalOptions invited Sir Richard Needham to the board. 140 Another spook firm founded by Neil Livingstone, again counting the involvement of James Woolsey (to be discussed later), was ExecutiveAction, LLC - named after the CIA's inside term for assassinations. Sir Richard Needham and Celia Sandys, a granddaughter of Winston Churchill, are still sitting on the board today. 141 Tony Blair, the prime minister of Great Britain from 1997 to 2007 who joined the United States in the new War on Terror without asking questions, was appointed to the international council of JPMorgan Chase in 2008. Two years later he became chairman, thus following in the footsteps of George Shultz. Henry Kissinger was on the board all these years. David Rockefeller, Gianni Agnelli, Riley Bechtel and top level representatives of Blackstone, Carlyle, ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil have all been represented on various boards. 142

So, with the British prime minister and the head of MI6 so close to some of the persons most likely involved in plotting 9/11, and that explains why no awkward questions about 9/11 or the Middle East invasions came from Great Britain.

To recap: Maurice Greenberg, chairman of AIG, had been one of the closest allies of the CIA for decades and had even been considered as deputy director and later director of the CIA. By the late 1990s AIG was a close partner of Kroll, the primary security consultant to the WTC since the 1993 bombing. Kroll had many ties to British special operations veterans and therefore, most likely, also to U.S. colleagues. From 1999 to early 2001 AIG and Peter Peterson's Blackstone failed in their efforts to buy up Kroll, but in 2000 Blackstone did manage to acquire the mortgage on WTC 7. AIG had full access to the North Tower impact floors, because these floors were occupied by Marsh and McLennan, ran by the son of Maurice Greenberg, the decades long head of AIG. Henry Kissinger was advisory chairman of AIG since 1987. Kissinger, Greenberg and Peterson have been great friends for decades. All of them visited the Trilateral Commission and were great friends with men as Paul Volcker, John Whitehead and David Rockefeller.

Whitehead, Peterson and Volcker had known Joseph Kasputys, the tenant of impact and collapse floors 77 and 78 of the South Tower for years, as had CIA man Frank Carlucci, another Trilateral Commission participant with his own peculiar ties to 9/11. The leadership of Fuji Bank, the company which occupied impact floors 79- 82 of the South Tower, was part of the same Trilateral Commission network, as well as some their friends as James Wolfensohn and Jacob Rothschild. In other words, if thermate and explosives were placed inside the towers, how big is the chance that this group would have known nothing about it? Besides the fact that they are so closely linked to the destruction of the World Trade Center, they are also the only group with the power to cover up an event of this magnitude. There's absolutely no one else who can get away with this.

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but in November 2000 AIG announced that CIA covert operations expert David Cohen had been appointed vice president of AIG's Global Trade & Political Risk Insurance Company, whose duties seem to have overlapped with the work Kroll was doing for AIG: risk assessment through background checks. 143 In 1995, Cohen, who was the CIA's associate deputy director for intelligence, had been picked by CIA director John Deutch as his deputy director of operations 144 - making him the U.S. counterpart to Sir Richard Dearlove, who would be invited to join AIG in 2004. In January 2002, after little over a year with AIG, Cohen was already looking for a new challenge and was assigned to the New York Police Department as "deputy commissioner for intelligence, a new position that was created to help steer the department through the post-Sept. 11 world". 145 Cohen apparently liked this position better than the one at AIG, as he still occupies it today. In August 2011 his New York intelligence agency was actually attacked by an Associated Press reporter for its aggressive intelligence gathering and the dispatching of "undercover officers to keep tabs on ethnic neighborhoods — sometimes in areas far outside their jurisdiction". 146

Also involved in setting up and running the New York Police Department's intelligence bureau was Larry Sanchez, another veteran CIA operations officer. He later went back to working for the CIA and was sent to the Persian Gulf. 147 Amazingly, today Sanchez is also a director of Jefferson Waterman International (JWI) subsidiary Crosshatch International. 148 Executive vice president and CFO of JWI is Samuel M. Hoskinson, a senior intelligence officer who held a speech at Le Cercle in 1998 promoting the geopolitical strategies of Brzezinski. In 2005, along with Frank Carlucci and another person from JWI, Hoskinson set up the private group Alliance for a New Kosovo. Daniel C. Arnold, accused of opium trafficking along with the CIA's Ted Shackley (and apparently still involved in recent times) 149, is a director of JWI. Then we have Enrique "Ricky" Prado, alleged mafia hitman, former Contra drug trafficker and key Porter Goss aide at CIA Counter-Terrorism Center and later Blackwater USA, who also found his way to the board of Crosshatch International. More on Black and Prado later, but these ties are absolutely incredible.

David Cohen received his MA in political Science from Boston University in 1966, joined the CIA and became an intelligence analyst in Vietnam, where he was accused of manipulating data to please his superiors. In the mid 1980s CIA director William Casey and his deputy Robert Gates made Cohen senior project manager of a report that had to make it look as if the Soviets were behind the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II (which was actually CIA/NATO/Stay Behind/Gray Wolves linked). In 1991 he testified in favor of Robert Gates being nominated director of the CIA, which soon resulted in Cohen being appointed as deputy director for intelligence. In 1995 another CIA chief, John Deutch, appointed him deputy director of operations. 150 Cohen's assistant deputy for covert operations was the low profile Army General David J. Barrato, a former commander of the equally low profile JFK Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg. 151 The school primarily trains personnel for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) and U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Here one finds the experts in psychological operations and who knows what else. Also, in 1995, Cohen was able to put his own candidate in as deputy director of the Office of Technical Service in the Directorate of Science and Technology. This department is involved in developing "secret writing, ... subminiature cameras, ... satellite communications, ... audio bugs, telephone taps, ... visual surveillance systems ... tracking devices and sensors, ... operational psychological assessments, ... counterfeit travel documents." 152 Among the associates of Cohen in the private/government sector was Leo Cherne, the longtime chairman of CIA fronts/assets the International Rescue Committee and Freedom House. 153

Looking at the biography above, if we assume that thermate and explosives were placed inside the towers, then Cohen should definitely be on the list of suspects (although it could have been some kind of completely private team ran by a retired senior CIA covert operations chief). He is used to setting up covert operations and has access to the people with the expertise. Maurice Greenberg would probably have known Cohen already through his old friend William Casey. While writing down this segment I also finally found what Cohen had been doing in between his term as deputy director of operations, which ended in 1997, and him being hired by Maurice Greenberg to AIG in November 2000. George Tenet had appointed him CIA station chief of New York City. 154 Amazing, isn't it? That means Cohen was probably very familiar with World Trade Center 7, where the CIA had its largest domestic CIA office outside of Washington. The New York Times actually asked if Cohen had ever worked in the World Trade Center during his term as CIA chief of New York. Cohen's only answer was: "You're going to have to ask C.I.A. where their offices were." 155 Notice his use of past tense. Reportedly spying on the United Nations and corporations in the World Trade Center were among the activities of this station. 156

John Deutch and Robert Gates - Cohen's patrons at the CIA - were both long term trustees of the Forum for International Policy, founded in 1993. Gates, along with Kissinger men Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, were among the founders. Deutch joined soon after his resignation as CIA director in 1997. Curiously, Condoleezza Rice was among the founders, with Colin Powell joining in the late 1990s. 157 Both served as secretaries of State in the future Bush administration. A coincidence? Probably not. Rice was a protege of George Shultz. Powell, secretary of state on 9/11, knew Shultz also and at the same time was involved with the Bush family, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Lawrence Eagleburger in AmeriCares, the Catholic charity organization linked to an international child trafficking and pedophile ring. 158 Gates and Deutch both were also affiliated with the Bush School of Government and Public Service, at Texas A&M University. Gates served as interim dean of the school in the 1999-2001 period. As for Deutch, in 2007 he became a trustee of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, located at the Bush School, along with Henry Kissinger, Lawrence Eagleburger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bobby Ray Inman, Marine Corps General James L. Jones and Marine Corps General Bernard Trainor. 159 Clearly we are dealing here with the absolute insider crowd, with many of the names appearing high up in ISGP's Superclass Index.

Deutch and Gates also knew each other from the Catastrophic Terrorism Study Group, a project of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in the 1996-1997 period. Deutch and Philip Zelikow, the future 9/11 Commission executive director, wrote the final report of the study group while Gates and Joseph Nye were among the study group's members. 160 As already reported, Nye and Deutch had known each other for decades through the Kennedy School. And no later than 1999 did Nye become a colleague of Joseph Kasputys, tenant of the South Tower's impact and collapse floors. Post 9/11 Kasputys, a Harvard graduate, served on the dean's council of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, with Deutch sitting on the visiting committee. Quite possibly Kasputys had also known Deutch before 9/11, but this isn't certain..

Going back to AIG, in addition to the CIA's David Cohen and the CIA's Maurice Greenberg, AIG's vice chairman for external affairs from 1997 until at least 2006 was Frank G. Wisner II 161, son of the famous CIA covert operations chief who worked under Allen Dulles. Wisner II joined AIG after a career at the State Department. After 9/11 he was appointed to the board of Partnership for a Secure America, together with John Whitehead, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George Shultz and four commissioners of the 9/11 Commission, including the chairman and vice chairman. 162

Two other directors of AIG joined Partnership for a Secure America. The first was Richard C. Holbrooke, appointed to the board of AIG early in 2001. 163 Holbrooke was an incredibly connected globalist with likely early CIA ties through USAID, the Peace Corps and later the International Rescue Committee. He went to Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission, used to be managing editor of the CFR's quarterly magazine Foreign Policy, and was deeply active in the national security field. Among his friends were General Wesley Clark, a presidential candidate in 2004; Henry Kissinger and John Whitehead. Immediately after 9/11 he became chairman of the CFR's Terrorism Task Force. He is also known to have held a speech to the Pilgrims Society in 2005.

AIG isn't Holbrooke's only potentially very interesting connection to the events of 9/11 actually. At the turn of the century he, Kissinger, Volcker, John McCloy II, Marie Warburg General Vernon Walters and various other establishmentarians were directors of the American Council on Germany 164, the sister organizations of Atlantik Brucke. 165 Both groups were completely intertwined with the Robert Bosch Foundation and the Carl Duisberg Society (CDS International). 166 For decades Kissinger has been the only American deeply involved in the Robert Bosch company and its foundation. 167 What is interesting about these German connections is that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta was a scholarship holder and tutor of the Carl Duisberg Society in the 1995-1997 period. Kissinger and Clinton are known to have given speeches to this society. 168

The other AIG director who joined Partnership for a Secure America is Carla A. Hills 169, who, like Greenberg and most of the others, also appears rather high in ISGP's Superclass Index. She joined AIG in 1993 and stayed with the company until years beyond 9/11. A brief list of her other associations includes Oxford, Yale, JPMorgan Chase, the Peterson Institute of International Economics, AIG, ChevronTexaco, the International Crisis Group, CSIS, the Trilateral Commission and Rolls Royce. Not unimportant, and something I hadn't noticed earlier, is that many years before and after 9/11 her husband, Roderick, served on the board of the Committee for Economic Development with South Tower impact and collapse floor owner Joseph Kasputys. 170Some of the others already mentioned were Peter Peterson and Frank Carlucci. Almost as intriguing, Carla herself could be found at the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association from its very inception in January 1998. Besides former CIA directors Carlucci and Schlesinger, bankers David Rockefeller, Paul Volcker and John Whitehead, World Trade Center (2006) movie director Oliver Stone served on the board with Hills. 171

AIG had two additional ties to the CIA not discussed yet. One was former CIA director Richard Helms, a leading suspect in the Kennedy assassination and MKULTRA type projects who was a good friend of Henry Kissinger. Ronald Shelp, a high level AIG employee in the 1970s and 1980s, stated about Helms that he was "available to us for advice and, I am confident, for other, more confidential matters as well." 172 How long after Shelp's leave in the mid 1980s Helms stayed available to AIG is impossible to say. What we do know is that Helms was a friend of Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller and Peter Peterson 173, and that he remained active in the Association of Former Intelligence Officers and the OSS Society until his death in 2002. In fact, on August 27, 2001, two weeks before 9/11, Helms was giving a speech at CIA headquarters where CIA director George Tenet and the OSS Society leadership were photographed standing behind him. Helms' words: "Today, however, the enemy is all haze. The economy has the day, not the enemy. But terrorism and other over-arching issues will be with us for a long time." 174 Things would change in his favor in about two weeks. Coincidence or not, as this site has documented, Helms and his protege Ted Shackley (who also died in 2002 and who was also involved in the AFIO), were deeply tied to the Kennedy assassination, drug trafficking, pedophile entrapment operations and many of the other deepest CIA secrets. As we shall see, Helms, Shackley and friends as Frank Carlucci and George H. W. Bush also played major roles in the covert CIA-Saudi relationship that began in the 1970s.

Another similarly sinister CIA link of AIG was in the form of Douglas MacArthur II, a director of the firm from the early 1980s until his death in 1997. 175 MacArthur was linked to extremely sadistic pedophile entrapment networks on both sides of the Atlantic. In Belgium he was involved with Baron de Bonvoisin and Paul vanden Boeynants (both implicated in these networks), who ran underground fascist militias that carried out the strategy of tension. 176

Speaking of these pedophile entrapment networks, AIG advisory board chairman Henry Kissinger was also close to them. The Belgian Etienne Davignon, chairman of Bilderberg and director of Kissinger Associates, was implicated in these networks. The Lippens brothers, close friends of Davignon with one of them a visitor of Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission, were implicated in these network by half a dozen witnesses. Like de Bonvoisin and vanden Boeynants the Lippens brothers were named in hunts on children at various castle domains. 177

We previously mentioned that since 2000 the Blackstone Group, ran by Peter G. Peterson, was the mortgage holder on WTC 7. That's an important fact considering WTC 7 with virtual certainty was a case of controlled demolition. Who allowed the explosives to be put in? Who allowed the building to be "pulled"? Silverstein alone? Doubtful, considering the building contained offices of the CIA, Secret Service, Department of Defense, the IRS, SEC and the New York City Office of Emergency Management. If Silverstein had made this decision on his own, most likely all these organizations would have been out to get him. Chances of Silverstein getting away with any demolition secrets on his own are slim to none.

Blackstone is about as connected as AIG. Peter Peterson, its chairman, is a member of the Pilgrims Society, a member of the Trilateral Commission, a former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and a very close friend of David Rockefeller. An advisory board chairman of the Blackstone Group since the 1990s, Sir Ronald Grierson, has been a member of the executive board of the Pilgrims of Great Britain since the 1970s. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, Grierson held senior positions in S. G. Warburg, General Electric, W. R. Grace & Co. (owned by the Pilgrim and Knight of Malta, J. Peter Grace), Chrysler, BAE Systems, the Daily Mail & General Trust and Globalstar Telecommunications. He has occasionally visited Bilderberg. Grierson has actually been invited to the secretive Cercle group. 178 This is a honor given only to the highest representatives of the liberal establishment, as Le Cercle has traditionally been a top secret private meeting place for predominantly Catholic CIA officers and senior Opus Dei and Knights of Malta members of the Vatican-Paneuropa network. In line with his invitation to Le Cercle, Grierson has been a trustee of the Prince of Liechtenstein Foundation since 1991 and served on the board of the British and Frankfurt branches of the Bank in Liechtenstein, owned by the Liechtenstein family - whom we shall meet a bit later.

Even anno 2012 it turns out to be tough to figure out who the board members were of Blackstone around the turn of the century. But certainly in later years there were a few interesting additions. In 2007 and 2008 Lord Jacob Rothschild, a close associate of Henry Kissinger, was a director of the company and thereafter moved to the industry advisory board and the international advisory board. 179 Few people are more connected than Jacob Rothschild and we've already met him in this article as a strategic partner of the South Tower firm from which molten metal was seen flowing. Jacob Wallenberg, a Swedish banking family well known from Bilderberg, also serves on both the industry advisory board and the international advisory board. So does Shaukat Aziz, a Pakistani Citibank executive who was the right-hand of President Musharraf and was prime minister in the period 2004-2007. 180 If anybody can inform the United States on the relationship between the ISI and Al Qaeda, Aziz should be a prime candidate.

An employee of Blackstone from 1989 to 1998 was Jonathan E. Colby, one of the sons of former CIA director William Colby, a deep insider to various illegal covert operations, including the drug trafficking and money laundering efforts of the Nugan Hand Bank. In 1998 Colby became one of several dozen managing partners of the Carlyle Group, ran by Frank Carlucci, David Rubenstein, George H. W. Bush and James Baker. 181 Colby was a member of the elite Pilgrims Society in the early 1990s. Colby's grandson, Elbridge Colby, also became a member of the Pilgrims in the 2000s or 2010s.

Warren Buffett and last minute warnings

Over the years considerable attention has been given to reports that various well-connected persons working in the World Trade Center towers managed to escape harm on 9/11. Some of Larry Silverstein's closest relatives and associates have been among those mentioned, as well as Paul Bremer. However, much of this can be attributed to coincidence without anybody ever being able to prove the contrary. Possibly the two most interesting examples were managers of Fiduciary Trust and AON. The offices of both companies were located high up in the South Tower: Fiduciary Trust at floors 90 and 94 to 97; AON at floors 92 and 98 to 105. As for AON, its manager was Jim Pierce, a nephew of George Bush. Barbara Bush explained how he was able to escape harm on 9/11:

"We later learned that Marvin [Bush of Securacom, a WTC security contractor] had been in New York on a subway under Wall Street, on his way to a meeting. The train came to a stop and they had no idea what had happened. ... I also learned later that my nephew Jim Pierce narrowly escaped injury or possible death. He was scheduled to attend a meeting on the 102nd floor of the South Tower, which was the second building hit. However, the night before, the meeting was moved to an adjacent building because the group had outgrown the conference room. Jim later learned that twelve people were in the room where he was supposed to be; eleven died." 182

The "night" before? That's very last minute. It might be nothing, but is it unreasonable to ask how many persons besides Pierce received word that the meeting had been moved?

Anne A. Tatlock, chairman and CEO of Fiduciary Trust, a company with a few officers in the Pilgrims Society, is another such example to consider. She also was not in her office on the morning of 9/11 because of an invitation to attend the annual golf charity event hosted by Warren Buffett in Omaha, Nebraska. While there, Tatlock learned of the attacks and apparently had to come to terms with the fact that "her entire office is gone, and she's here". 187 87 of her employees who were present that morning at the office were killed in the attack. In December 2004 Tatlock was selected as a trustee of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, together with questionable individuals as David Rockefeller, John Whitehead, Peter Peterson, Brian Mulroney (Blackstone board; close to Canadian-Belgian Desmarais conglomerate), Maurice Greenberg and Sir John Bond (Multinational Chairman's Group and a likely a Pilgrim). Presidents Bush, Clinton, Carter and Ford were invited to join also, just as mayor Rudolph Giuliani and governor of New York George Pataki. 188 Tatlock was also appointed to the board of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, named after a Pilgrims Society family, as well as to the board of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where James Baker could be found. It really doesn't matter whether or not the invitation of Tatlock constituted foreknowledge or not. These coincidences and connections may not prove much when it comes to 9/11, but they are nonetheless interesting, as they shed additional light on the old Franklin child abuse affair. Remember, that scandal from the late 1980s in which pedophile pimp Larry King (who basically worked for CIA director William Casey) played a central role? Buffett and his close friend Harold Anderson, described by one witness as "one of the sickest men whom I have been abused by", knew him well. There were also reports that King had free access to the local Offutt military base where child abuse/mind control research supposedly took place. 189

As everyone can see in ISGP's Superclass Index, Buffett is very close to the Rockefellers, Rothschilds and other members of the liberal elite. Although you won't find Buffett in the Pilgrims Society as long as he doesn't move to New York City, he and Harold Anderson form a small pro-liberal establishment hub in Omaha, Nebraska. Both men are CFR members with Anderson being chairman of the Nebraska Committee for Selection for the Rhodes Scholarships. 190 Both men were also members of the elite Augusta Golf Club, in which they shared membership with the Bechtels, George Shultz, Peter Peterson, Bill Gates and many other corporate executives around the country. 191

Buffett has organized his golf tournament annually in the late August to mid-September period since about 1992/1993. 192 Each year he invited dozens of executives from all over the country, but most of them are not particularly well known. What is really interesting is that the commanders of U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force, located about 15 miles from Omaha, have been taking part in these events. Commander Henry G. "Hank" Chiles, Jr., is known to have been present at the 1995 and 1996 golf tournaments. 193 In 1996 he was still on active duty. Colonel Bob Smith, at the time the general manager of the Officers Club at Offutt, was a participant in the 1995 event. 194 To a degree this explains why USSTRATCOM commander Admiral Richard Mies was hosting a breakfast for Buffet's entourage on the morning of 9/11 at Offutt Air Force Base. 195 Coincidence or not, it remains a little odd that wealthy private citizens are at a base in command of the United States' long-range nuclear weapons arsenal. In fact, that same morning Global Guardian, a full scale nuclear simulation exercise, was "in full swing" at the base. Three Boeing E-4B National Airborne Operations Center ("Doomsday") planes were part of the exercise. Interestingly, on board of one of the planes was Brent Scowcroft, who was reported to be chairman of the "federal advisory committee" - possibly a temporary committee specifically created for the exercise. 196 Considering Brent Scowcroft, a protege of Henry Kissinger, is listed at a shared 10th place in ISGP's Superclass Index, this is not an unimportant fact to mention. In fact, ideally we would know the exact whereabouts and activities of everyone on the Superclass Index for the days before and the morning of 9/11. In the early afternoon President Bush could be found for about 1,5 hours in the same command bunker as Warren Buffett and his entourage had been roughly five hours earlier. There's no indication, however, that Buffett was still around at that point, watching the screens with popcorn in his hands. 197

Does this mean that Buffett would have been completely unaware that 9/11 was about to happen. No, not necessarily. One of the more interesting positions Warren Buffett has held is a life trusteeship of the Urban Institute. Already in the 1970s Buffett could be found on the board, along with Robert McNamara, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post and Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. 199 For those who forgot, Jordan, a close friend and advisor to Bill Clinton, was a director of Fuji Bank, located at the South Tower floor from which molten metal was seen flowing. The wife of James Woolsey, Suzanne, a Stanford and Harvard educated psychologist specialized in social relationships (including children), was a research program director at the Urban Institute from 1975 to 1977. 200 Coincidentally, her husband, future CIA director James Woolsey, held a position at Offutt Air Force Base in the 1987-1988 period when the Franklin scandal broke. 201 By 1981 John Deutch, Carla Hills and Cyrus Vance (Pilgrims) had joined the Urban Institute. 202 Fast forward to 2003: Buffett, Deutch, McNamara, Hills and Jordan are still listed as trustees, meaning that they have come to known each other pretty well over the years. 203 Deutch, of course, was friends with Joseph Nye, who in turn was closely affiliated with Joseph Kasputys, tenant of the WTC's South Tower collapse floors. Deutch was also the CIA boss of David Cohen, the curious AIG employee who may have ran the operation to bring down the WTC towers. Carla Hills, of course, was a long time director of AIG by the time 9/11 happened. And I almost forgot, who else was a trustee of the Urban Institute from the 1980s until his death in 1999? That would be Elliot Richardson, the protege of Joseph Kasputys, tenant of the South Tower's collapse floors. 204 Suzanne Woolsey was also close to Richardson.

Also not mentioned yet is that a year after 9/11 Buffett sponsored the "European Economic Round Table" at the home of Jacob Rothschild. Prominent participants included Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Wolfensohn. Rothschild and Wolfensohn, of course, were partners of Fuji Bank ... the company in the South Tower from which molten metal was seen flowing. Not unlike Buffett's friend Harold Anderson, Jacob Rothschild and his French family members were extremely close to a child abuse affair of their own: the Haut de la Garenne case that broke in 2008. 205

While seldom reported on in the mainstream press, child abuse accusations against establishment figures seem to be relatively common. These accusations have been discussed in depth by ISGP. While not the focus of this article, they are not irrelevant either. There is great correlation between accusations of child abuse and persons suspected here of involvement in the 9/11 event. And if these accusations are true, it becomes very easy to imagine that these same elites have no problem killing a few thousand of their own citizens.

Closely related to pedophile entrapment networks is the MK-ULTRA type mind control research. For some time I contemplated discussing it in relation to the 9/11 hijackers, among many reasons because of Morse Allen's early CIA experiments 206, Sirhan Sirhan, who killed Robert Kennedy; and, in case of 9/11, some of the impressions left behind by Mohammed Atta that he was "brainwashed". 207 In fact, the 9/11 hijackers in Florida exhibited a curious mix of religious extremism, drug use and womanizing. 208 However, looking a little deeper at things: human nature is filled with contradictions, especially the minds of muslim extremists. For the time being, there's no need to go down this road.

Full 9/11 activities of the FDNY, OEM, Ace Elevator people, mayor, CDI

Maybe it's time we take a little step down from the superclass and analyze what exactly went down on the ground in and around the World Trade Center complex on 9/11 in terms of where everybody was at what point. It would be interesting to see if everything at the level of the average rescue worker and their immediate leadership does check out and at which level of authority anomalies begin to creep in.

On 9/11, Pete Ganci is the chief uniformed officer of the New York Fire Department. Daniel Nigro is his deputy; Steve Mosiello his best friend and executive assistant. Others working under these men at the fire department's citywide tour command center that morning include fire chiefs Joseph Callan, Salvatore Cassano, Albert Turi, Donald Burns, and Jerry Barbara. Also present are EMT special events coordinator Richard Zarrillo and FDNY captain Abdo Nahmod, whose boss, EMS division chief John Peruggia, is still on his way to work.

As soon as Ganci hears about the first impact into the Twin Towers around 8:50 a.m., he immediately sends everyone to the World Trade Center, including himself. He, Nigro and Mosiello together drive to Ground Zero and, before even the second plane has hit, establish a command center right in front of the North Tower. Field Command is actually already setting it up in the middle of West Street, but Nigro and Cassano order it to be moved farther back, in front of Winter Garden, lodged in between 2 and 3 World Financial Center. Around 9:25 a.m. Albert Turi is responsible for moving it north another 20 feet, right in front of the ramp of Winter Garden, which allows for faster escape if things go sideways. That may well have saved a few lives, including his own, as he watched the collapsing building a little too long before running. 209

The North Tower command center is in operation at this point for a good 30 minutes. It was set up by chief Joe Pfeifer, whose Manhattan-based crew was the first to arrive on the scene, minutes after the impact of the first plane. The now famous Naudet brothers are imbedded with him. The brothers are following a probie at Engine 7, located a 2 minute drive from the World Trade Center, when 9/11 happens. Fire chief Peter Hayden reports to the North Tower lobby a few minutes after Pfeifer. When Ganci and his crew arrive around 9:00 a.m., Joe Callan is put in charge of the North Tower lobby command center, with Pfeifer and Hayden delegated to supporting roles. 210 Also present in the North Tower lobby early on is OEM director Richard Sheirer. He immediately came down from his office a few blocks away upon learning of the first impact. 211 Fire commissioner Thomas van Essen is spotted, as is his deputy Billy Feehan. Reverent Mychal Judge is walking around in the lobby, looking extremely nervous. He apparently died of a heart attack during the first collapse; not from physical injuries. Rescue operations chief Ray Downey is present early on in the North Tower, but keeps moving between the North Tower, South Tower and West Street command posts. 212 Father John Delendick is also around somewhere, but by the time of the first collapse is near the West Street command center. WTC security director John O'Neill, the famous FBI Al Qaeda hunter, is present in the lobby of the North Tower around the time of the Pentagon crash. Sheirer briefly interacts with him, before O'Neill goes over the South Tower. It's the last anyone alive today sees of him. O'Neill began his job here three weeks before, on August 23. 213

When the South Tower is hit at 9:03 a.m. Ganci sends fire chiefs Donald Burns, Orio Palmer and Jerry Barbara to the South Tower. Burns is put in charge here. 214 Minutes later, fire chief Albert Turi arrives in the North Tower lobby, together with his aide Joseph Chiafari. After brief discussions with Hayden, Callan and the fire commissioners, Turi and Chiafari rush out again towards West Street in an effort to set up a combined command center for both towers. However, chief Ganci's people have already accomplished this task. 215

Rescue operations chief Ray Downey, a nationally-renowned building collapse expert, arrives at the West Street command center at some point around 9:00 a.m. He's trying to get firefighter teams safely into the towers and is spotted on at least two occasions in the North Tower lobby. 216 It's especially dangerous at this point to be near the North Tower, with not just debris falling, but people jumping every few seconds. Many firefighters witness up to 100 people falling to their deaths, some of them landing just a few feet away. One firefighter is hit by a jumper and dies instantly.

Around 9:20 a.m., John Peruggia, who has safely parked his car half a mile to the south, arrives at the external command center. He discusses strategy for some time with Ganci and Nigro, before moving to his OEM post at World Trade Center 7. He has already tasked Richard Zarrillo and Abdo Nahmod with activating the OEM bunker on WTC 7's 23rd floor. They accomplish this around 9:30. Upon Peruggia's arrival here, somewhere around the Pentagon impact of 9:37 a.m., Zarrillo, Nahmod and OEM deputy chief Richard Rotanz inform him that Building 7, including its OEM bunker, is being evacuated due to a report that a third plane might be inbound. 217 Rotanz also informs his boss, Richard Sheirer, telling him that there are "still planes unaccounted for that may [be] heading for New York." Sheirer will later be criticized for turning this rather unspecific warning into a very specific one by falsely telling everybody in the North Tower lobby "that another plane [is] on the way," leading to a temporary evacuation of a few minutes. It appears Sheirer panicked at this point, irrationally ordering the police's aviation unit to intercept any incoming planes, apparently asking them to commit suicide. 218 The third plane report soon turns out false, although not everybody is made aware of this and confusion among some groups of firefighters lasts for some time. 219 Sheirer goes looking for the mayor soon after and leaves the lobby. 220

After the evacuation order, the OEM bunker is not reactivated on the 23rd floor. Instead, the lobby of WTC 7, where the first wounded persons from the Twin Towers begin to arrive, is transformed into a combined command center and triage 221, with an OEM bus becoming active at the corner of West Broadway and Barclay Street, on the north-east street corner of Building 7. 222 Later in the day the OEM command center will be moved to Pier 92, where FEMA coincidentally was in its final preparations for a bio-terrorism drill. 223 While the lobby of World Trade Center 7 is transformed into a triage, Peruggia becomes involved in a discussion with Rotanz and a number of unknown individuals, specifically a "representative from the Department of Buildings, but I'm not sure. Some engineer type person", who informs them that the Twin Towers are in imminent danger of collapse, the first and primary worry being the North Tower. 224 Upon hearing this, Peruggia instructs Zarrillo to rush over to the FDNY chief Pete Ganci and warn him about this danger. 225 This meeting must have taken place just after 9:50 a.m., because literally 25-30 seconds after Zarrillo informs Ganci, the South Tower comes down, which happens at 9:59 a.m. 226 Luckily for them, the farther-removed South Tower comes down first, with Ganci's team having prepared for disaster by leaving two garage doors open underneath the World Financial Center in which they are able to flee. Others make it down the ramp of Winter Garden and into offices where the dust cloud can't reach very well. 227 Chiefs Barbara, Burns and Palmer die in the collapse, along with everybody else operating in the South Tower. All chiefs in the North Tower and the West Street command center survive the collapse. Deputy commander Daniel Nigro is circling the World Trade Center site at this point to observe damage from all different directions. He is slightly closer to the South Tower than the command post, but manages to survive as well.

While the specific prediction for a collapse reached chief Ganci just seconds before collapse, senior fire chiefs inside the North Tower had already ordered an evacuation of their personnel at least 10 minutes before the first collapse. According to chief Joseph Callan, the reason for the evacuation was that "the building [North Tower] was no longer safe. And that was based on the conditions in the lobby, large pieces of plaster falling, all the 20 foot high glass panels on the exterior of the lobby were breaking. There was obvious movement of the building." 236 Chiefs Peter Hayden and Joe Pfeifer were involved in these discussions. The chiefs had great trouble reaching their men in the mid and upper parts of the towers, however, because the repeater system and almost all other communication systems refused to work after the plane impacts. 237 Therefore they had to rely on a rather antiquated hand-held radio system, the same which failed them at the World Trade Center Complex after the 1993 bombing. Strangely, around 11:00 a.m. Turi told the media they had given the order to evacuate because of reports of additional bombs going off inside the building. 238 He later retracted this belief and assumed the floors were just pancaking. However, he wasn't the only one thinking live on 9/11 that there were bombs in the buildings. As a preceding ISGP article has already made clear, this belief was widespread. Certainly if one hears the sudden initial South Tower collapse noise from the location of the West Street command center, as an ABC-7 reporter captured (see the first image in this section), it's pretty much impossible to deny that it doesn't sound and look like a bomb going off. According to Father Delendick, even renowned building collapse expert Ray Downey was among those convinced after the first collapse that bombs had brought down the South Tower, despite the fact that something like that obviously seems completely impossible for terrorists to achieve. He also indicated that more firefighters at the time thought there had been an explosion:

"We heard a rumbling noise, and it appeared that that first tower, the South Tower, had exploded, the top of it. That's what I saw, what a lot of us saw. ... I remember asking Ray Downey was it the jet fuel that blew up. He said at that point he thought there were bombs up there because it was too even. As we've since learned, it was the jet fuel that was dropping down that caused all this. But he said it was too even. So his original thought was that he thought it was a bomb up there as well. ... I'm not sure where Ray Downey went. I understand Pete Ganci found a stairwell [and went] back to the command post." 239

Downey died in the second collapse when the North Tower came down. So did Pete Ganci and deputy fire commissioner Billy Feehan. They bravely stayed behind on West Street, where the command center had been in front of Winter Garden. They tried to direct firefighters coming out of the North Tower towards safety. All other surviving chiefs and firefighters were told to move north on West Street until reaching the intersection with Murray Street, which was still too close in case of a North Tower collapse. And indeed, when the North Tower collapsed, once again everybody had to run for their lives, many getting trapped for a second time in a dust cloud. 240 Downey, Ganci and Feehan didn't stand a chance, however. They were pretty much right underneath the North Tower when it came down. As far as we can tell, they never heard the warning of the police helicopter 20 minutes in advance that some of the perimeter columns were "glowing red" and that collapse might be imminent. 241 The question is if they would have left the area based on this information. Most likely they wouldn't have, not until all their men were out.

As for mayor Rudy Giuliani, there has been a prominent media report that he was at the West Street command center across the North Tower until roughly 10 minutes before the first collapse. 244 While he most certainly was present at the command center, it appears he left much sooner than this.

Giuliani and his police commissioner Bernard Kerik arrive at West Broadway right next to WTC 7 around the time of the second impact at 9:03 a.m. At that point they come to the conclusion that the OEM bunker in WTC 7 is too dangerous to enter and instead walk towards the West Street command center where they have brief discussions with Ganci and Nigro. They decide to look for an alternative to the OEM bunker. A young police officer suggests an office of Merrill Lynch at 75 Barclay street, across the north-east corner of WTC 7, and the whole entourage moves back north. This can't have been much later than 9:15 a.m., because Giuliani and Kerik only feature in the testimonies of Ganci's deputies Mosiello and Nigro. 245 EMS chief John Peruggia, fire chief Albert Turi and his aide Joseph Chiafari, arriving around 9:20-9:25 a.m. at the West Street command post, with the latter two giving an extensive list of individuals they spotted here, never mention seeing Giuliani or Kerik. Peruggia, who walked to Building 7 just after 9:30 a.m., did notice members of the mayor's group move towards Barclay Street, seemingly after a brief stop at World Trade Center 7. 246 Looking at the account of Ray Goldbach, the executive assistant to fire commissioner Thomas van Essen, he and associates probably spent at least 20 minutes in search of the mayor at Barclay Street, 7 World Trade Center, and back up towards Greenwich Street, when the first tower collapsed. 247

The South Tower comes down as Giuliani is speaking to the White House, where persons as Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Norman Mineta, and Richard Clarke are situated. 75 Barclay is clearly also too close to the World Trade Center complex: some of the windows break and the dust cloud blows right in through the front door. Giuliani and Kerik are evacuated through the building to Church Street. As their drivers are racing 80 mph (130 kmh) north, the North Tower collapses, taking Ganci, Downey, and Feehan with it. 248

When the death of chief Ganci is confirmed in the early afternoon, Daniel Nigro becomes the new chief of the fire department. Around the same time, at roughly 12:15 p.m., Barry Jennings and Michael Hess are freed from World Trade Center 7 249, followed a few minutes later by OEM deputy chief Richard Rotanz and a number of unknown other individuals, entering Building 7 in order to determine its stability. 250 From what little detail we have, this inspection team determines that Building 7 is going to collapse. As chief Peter Hayden explained:

"Well, we had our special operations people set up surveilling instruments to monitor and see if there was any movement of the building. We were concerned about the possibility of collapse of the building and we had a discussion with one particular engineer and we asked him if we allowed it to burn, could we anticipate a collapse and if so, how soon? And it turned out that he was pretty much right on the money, that he said "In it's current state, you have about five hours." 251

"One particular engineer"? Can we be any more vague? As with the prediction that the Twin Towers were going to collapse, we don't know which engineer or engineers actually provided the collapse warning for WTC 7. This is unacceptable, of course, if only for the historical record. And why does no one want to take credit for having predicted the collapse of these towers, especially because pretty much no else saw it coming? Whatever exactly happened, around 3:00 p.m. Daniel Nigro instates a collapse zone around Building 7. 252 At 5:20 p.m., immediately after a loud explosion, it suddenly comes down at free fall speed.

Aiding the cover up without foreknowledge

It appears at least one fire chief, Joe Pfeifer, who lost his brother on 9/11, asked himself a few questions about collapse foreknowledge by government officials. Possibly others also wondered about important people leaving the scene before the collapse:

"There was also later on the possibility of a third plane. Again, we just heard somebody say it and we tried to confirm it. We could not confirm it with any law enforcement people. We all ran out at that point. ...

"Right before the south tower collapsed, I noticed a lot of people just left the lobby, and I heard we had a crew of all different people, high-level people in government, everybody was gone, almost like they had information that we didn't have. Some of them were moved across the street to the command post [where Ganci was located]. ...

"Companies were coming in and we were listing them on the command board so we had an account of everybody. Unfortunately, the command board is not around any longer." 253

As discussed in the previous section, I'm not convinced at all of anyone at the level of the mayor and below him having had any foreknowledge of the attacks or the buildings coming down. The mayor and his immediate deputies, Van Essen, Sheirer and Kerik, didn't necessarily have to be on the front lines of the battle, especially not if there's considerable risk involved. And there was considerable risk. A second plane had hit the towers. Potentially more planes were underway. Maybe bombs would go off or additional elevators would crash down into the lobby. Marble slabs were continuing to fall from walls. The lobby was a dangerous place and anyone who did not absolutely have to be there was probably trying to get out. In fact, Callan explained that they were evacuating the building from at least 10 minutes before collapse. In his World Trade Center task Force interview, Pfeifer also seems to have been under the impression that persons as chief Ganci should have first reported at the lobby command center, while in reality they (wisely) stayed outside to set up a primary command center in a safer location.

While there is absolutely no evidence that anyone in the New York Fire Department had any clue beforehand that the buildings were going to come down, it does appear that Nigro in particular (and certainly the BBC) is covering for someone. Nigro has explicitly attacked "conspiracy theorists" regarding Building 7, explaining that he instated a collapse zone around Building 7 "without consulting the owner, the mayor or anyone else." 258 That's all nice and well, but Nigro was still acting on advise of engineers whom to this day are anonymous. At the same time we have statements that Building 7 for some bizarre reason was going to be demolished with fires still burning, and Silverstein already in discussion with his insurance company over this. 259 This is besides Silverstein's equally bizarre "pull it" comment. 260 In 2008, in the BBC's The Third Tower documentary, Nigro rather emotionlessly explains that it would have been "obscene" if he were part of any 9/11 conspiracy. 261 That's most likely true, but it doesn't change the fact that he is aiding a cover up of some kind.

One thing that can't be denied about Nigro is that he has been making friends since 9/11. In September 2002, he joined the FDNY Terrorism Preparedness Taskforce, along with elites as former CIA director and top neocon James Woolsey (head and chief counsel), former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit, and Rockefeller and JASON Group scientist Joshua Lederberg. If there ever was a combination of suspects behind the rigging of the World Trade Center towers, it's pretty much these individuals. Another member of the group was nuclear physicist Gregory Canavan, whom we can also find at the U.S. Strategic Command Strategic Advisory Group at Offutt AFB (chair), U.S. Space Command and Northern Command Independent Strategic Assessment Group (chair), the Army Science Board, the Missile Defense Advisory Committee (MDAC) and other committees few have ever heard of. The FDNY Terrorism Preparedness Taskforce was put together by superclass billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the new mayor of New York after Giuliani. 262 In 2014 Nigro returned to the New York Fire Department as its commissioner, the highest civilian post of the department. In that capacity he is directly responsible to the mayor and holds the same position his boss Thomas van Essen had on 9/11.

We see a similar trend at the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), where its 9/11 director Richard Sheirer appears to have had absolutely no foreknowledge that the buildings were going to collapse, while at the same time he is one hundred percent cooperating with the cover up. For starters, Sheirer has made the questionable claim that the last minute collapse warning for the Twin Towers came from FDNY rescue operations chief and building collapse expert Ray Downey:

"I really thought we would lose the top of the building and it wasn't until much later there was a discussion that the buildings might collapse. And that discussion I wasn't present for, but came from Ray Downey, who lost his life, but was one of the world's preeminent experts on collapse. He'd been sent to Oklahoma City, the Murray Office Building bombing. He'd been to other things." 263

Quite possibly Downey relayed the message to 75 Barclay, but it's doubtful he was the source. We've just described the movements of all the major fire chiefs on the morning of 9/11. As far as we can tell, Downey was present at the West Street command center with Ganci before the second plane hit. He was also spotted moving in and out of the North Tower lobby early on. After the second plane impact, he aided chiefs Burns, Barbara and Palmer in getting firefighter teams into the South Tower. He did not stay here, however, as he was spotted again at the West Street command center around 9:30 a.m., returned to the North Tower lobby around this time, and survived the collapse of the South Tower. At that point he was not present anymore in the North Tower lobby. Father John Delendick briefly spoke to Downey after the first collapse, indicating he was somewhere near the West Street command center. Where Downey precisely was in the 10-15 minutes before collapse is unknown, but there is no evidence that he went over to WTC 7 to have a chat with Richard Rotanz and John Peruggia. While it is possible, it's hard to imagine that Downey would not have informed chief Ganci first about these concerns. Peruggia also clearly referred to someone else--an "engineer type person" he didn't know--as the source of the warning. He never mentioned seeing Downey, whom he knew very well. On top of that, we know that Downey was actually of the opinion right after the first collapse that "there were bombs up there because it was too even", indicating he had not expected a full collapse beforehand.

I guess we have just found one more reason why it needs to be clarified who provided the last minute collapse warning for the Twin Towers, as well as WTC 7. In the 30 minute interview just cited, Sheirer initially comes across as a very genuine and friendly person. But appearances can deceive. He clearly knows precisely which opinions to have and to not have. As a person who has worked for mayor Rudy Giuliani since 1994 and who later became executive vice president of Giuliani Partners, it's not hard to see why he fawns all over the former mayor, promoting him as the ideal future president of the United States. It's still a little over the top though:

"[Giuliani is] a caring thoughtful individual. ... He comforted people, got them what they needed, and is a decisive decision maker... He's a terrific person to work for, to work with, and I'm proud to say he is a very good friend. ... He was going through the same thing you were, because many of the people that were lost that day were very good friends of his also. You know, I mentioned Billy Feehan and Pete Ganci and Father Judge. And individual police officers and firefighters. [Just before] he had thrown a dinner for ... Ray Downey to recognize his service to the city. ... He's always thoughtful of people and he understands that people need support and help and he doesn't abandon them. And he is really a very special individual. ... I'm very worried about complacency [of the people towards a potential new terrorist attack]..."

Sheirer thinks the assassination of Osama bin Laden and the dumping of his body was a "gutsy move" but at the same time "a wonderful job" with "everything [done] proper." More worryingly, he thinks 9/11 skeptics should "grow up!" 266 This includes the well known skeptical 9/11 families, whom Sheirer attacks rather insidiously near the end of his interview:

"The [9/11] families have responded to this over the years in a number of ways. Some with strength that I can't imagine when they have lost a child or mother or a father. ... They've done some wonderful things out of that - and now they are helping the military. And their attitudes, and their personalities, reflect a strength that is just unbelievable. And then you go to the other end of the spectrum. There are families who have used this to, unfortunately, not to better anybody but to help themselves. Not in a good way, but just to benefit from it. Then there are those families who can't and probably never will get over this and you feel bad for them. You hope that they would get some help, professional help... and reflect on the person they lost in a positive way instead of being so angry and bitter. ... It really doesn't matter what happens. They'll always be the same way [not clear if he's talking about the terrorists or critical 9/11 families]. And that's unfortunate. For them, not for anybody else."

Whether or not one thinks Sheirer is a bit of dirt bag, it doesn't seem very likely that he had any advance knowledge of the attacks or the buildings coming down. He was on location within minutes and lost "between 75 and 100 friends, the sons of friends, and fathers of friends." 267 This includes chief Ganci. Sheirer was basically lucky to survive. If he walked out of the North Tower 5 or 10 minutes later, he might well have been buried in the rubble of the South Tower coming down.

Giuliani: friend of SMOM and neocon elites, criminals, and alleged pedophiles

Sheirer has had a good mentor in Giuliani when it comes to twisting the truth, insidious underhanded remarks, and kissing asses. Giuliani appears to be a real piece of work. He married three times, divorced twice. The first marriage was to his second cousin Regina Peruggi, with his best man being close friend and accused pedophile priest Alan Placa. Giuliani kept the blood relation secret from the church at the time of the wedding, but later quietly used it to get a divorce. In 2002 he was able to end his second marriage on grounds of "cruelty", most likely invoked because his wife, Donna Handover, wouldn't have sex with him anymore. She filed a counterclaim requesting a divorce on grounds that Giuliani had committed "serial adultery". For years the married Giuliani had rather public affairs, among them with communications secretary Cristyne Lategano, whom he provided with "a $250,000 a year job as head of the NYC Convention and Visitor's Bureau". 268

When it comes to protecting himself and blowing his own horn, Giuliani didn't oppose the statement of his police commissioner Bernard Kerik that he was present at the West Street command center just 10 minutes before the towers collapsed. He claimed he was just as much at Ground Zero as the rescue workers, but in reality spent as much time here in three months as the average rescue worker spent in just three days. He was heavily criticized over this by fire and police officials. 269

Then there are all the other instances. During Giuliani's 9/11 Commission hearing he suggested that firefighters ignored evacuation orders because they unselfishly decided to stay behind trying to help civilians. In reality, many firefighters higher up in the towers were unable to hear these evacuation orders due to antiquated radios. These radios already failed during the 1993 WTC bombing, but were never replaced until 2001, after Giuliani awarded a no-bid contract to Motorola. Unfortunately, the new radios malfunctioned and were immediately recalled, thus on 9/11 the fire department still had to work with the same faulty system as in the 1993 bombing. 270 Giuliani skipped this aspect and the 9/11 Commission didn't ask him about the no-bid contract. The result was a number of angry shouts from the crowd: "Talk about the radios! Stop wasting time! My son was murdered, because the radios didn't work!" Applause follows by people mainly in the back, but Giuliani and the commissioners completely dismiss it. While Slade Gorton predictably reacts to the story with misty puppy dog eyes and the words "Thank you, thank you. That's absolutely extraordinary", with others pleading for order, Giuliani spits in the face of the protestors by saying: "It's an understandable - Senator, it's an understandable [reaction]. And when you undergo the losses, it creates, uh, [anger]. It's very, very understandable." In other words, Giuliani is saying that these people are just being irrational; they don't have any real questions. The crowd in the back reacts by yelling "Lies! One sided! Ask about who is getting contracts from Motorola! Put one of us on that panel, just one of us!" It doesn't go anywhere. Vice chairman Thomas Kean, a solid member of the superclass, ends Giuliani's interview with:

"I did feel how it is important that I simply just express my appreciation not just for your leadership - you've heard that a lot this morning - but also for the cooperation you've given this commission and the candor with which you responded this morning. ... As mid-Westerner, I might say to you I've been impressed time and again with the pride you've expressed in New York City. And I admire that greatly."

The panegyric is interrupted by someone in the crowd again: "Stop kissing ass! 3000 people are dead! Let us ask some real questions here! I will ask for two minutes to ask some real questions! I wanna know why 300 firemen died and I've got some real questions! Let's ask some real questions! Is that unfair?" Somebody else chimes in as the session is ended. It appears some people are clapping for Giuliani and others for the protestors. 271

It's quite clear that the 9/11 Commission to a large extent was just a puppet show, with many important questions being ignored. What's unfortunate though is that it takes family members of dead firefighters and a relatively minor issue of incompetence and nepotism, to have a handful of people take the lead and start protesting.

Another controversial issue revolving Giuliani is that in 2002 one of his best friends since the late 1950s, Father Alan Placa, was forced to resign from his position in the Diocese of Rockville Center, Long Island, where he was basically seen as a spider in a network of 23 child abusing priests:

"Placa's formal title at the Archdiocese of Rockville Center was Vice Chancellor and Secretary for Health Affairs, but behind the scenes, he acted as legal council for the Bishop. In that capacity, all cases of alleged sexual abuse by clergy were referred to him. When speaking with families of victims, Placa acted as if he were trying to dispense justice in their cases, but was in fact acting as the bishop's lawyer. In his interviews with the victims of sexual molestation by priests, Placa would steer them into making statements supporting the diocese's case and enabling the offending priests to get off the hook. Placa was a nationally recognized expert on sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy and was personally in charge of the diocese's policy on abuse. In short, that policy was to badger the victim into backing down or shutting up, or, in some cases, getting abusive priests reassigned to other parishes where they often continued to work with children.

"In the 1980s, unbeknownst to other high-ranking priests in the Rockville Center diocese, Placa also acted as legal council to the House of Affirmation in Whitinsville, Massachusetts, a treatment center for priests with problems including those related to sex abuse, where he strove to negotiate settlements with abuse victims in the range of $20,000 to $100,000 each.

"In 2002, Placa's decades-long efforts to cover up sexual abuse by clergy came back to haunt him. In April of that year, he was asked to resign by Bishop William Murphy, who had replaced Bishop McGann, as Suffolk County was convening a grand jury to investigate possible obstruction of justice by officials of the Archdiocese of Rockville Center in regard to clerical sex abuse cases. During the course of the grand jury proceedings, not only was Placa's role in covering up clerical abuse brought to light, but the grand jury report also identified Placa himself as "Priest F," who, while a teacher at St. Pius X Preparatory Academy in Uniondale during the 1970s, before he became an official of the diocese, accumulated a string of sexual abuse accusations, including one of attacking a teenager and feeling him up while preparing banners for a right-to-life demonstration. In connection with these accusations, Placa was suspended in 2003 from performing the mass and exercising other functions of the priesthood, pending an investigation. Summing up the grand jury report, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said that the grand jury could have indicted 23 Long Island priests for sexually abusing children had the right laws been in place at the time." 272

Several months after Placa was suspended in 2002, he was hired as a consultant by Giuliani Partners. What Placa exactly was doing in this position, the firm refused to disclose. 273 Placa and Giuliani first met in the late 50s in high school. At the time Giuliani himself was aspiring to become a priest, but in the end chose law school. Placa was Giuliani's best man at his first wedding, officiated at his second, officiated at the funerals of Giuliani's parents, and baptized his children. They visit each other about once a week. 274 Interestingly, the case didn't make any headlines until Giuliani's presidential campaign in 2007. Another two years later, in December 2009, Placa was finally found "not guilty" by the Vatican, but only because "Placa could not be prosecuted criminally because the statue of limitations had expired." 275 Richard Tollner, the only victim-witness who came publicly forward, responded with, "I'm not retracting anything. He molested kids." 276 Given the Vatican's reputation on these matters even with ordinary child abusing clergy, it's hard to imagine them throwing a priest under the bus who is politically connected and has saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation costs.

Giuliani's ties to the Catholic church are actually more extensive than just Placa. He's a political protege of Knight of Malta Bill Simon, the son of William Simon (1927-2000). 277 While the elder William Simon is primarily known as U.S. treasury secretary from 1974 to 1981, he was one of the biggest Catholic power houses of his lifetime. A brief summary of his key associations in business include Salomon Brothers, Citigroup, Kissinger Associates, Halliburton, Power Corporation, United Technologies, and W.R. Grace & Co. Furthermore, he was president of the Olin Foundation, director of the Atlantic Council, trustee of CSIS and the Heritage Foundation; a member of the CFR, CNP, Bohemian Grove and Alfalfa; a Pilgrims Society executive, and on the executive committee U.S. branch of the Knights of Malta. 278 Not to be overlooked, Simon sat on the advisory board of AmeriCares, an outfit tightly linked to the Bush family, CIA, special operations, and international cases of child trafficking and abuse. 279 He could also be found at the earlier-mentioned American Australian Association, together with Rupert Murdoch, future WTC shopping mall owner Frank Lowy, James Wolfensohn, Maurice Greenberg, David Rockefeller, and Riley Bechtel.

Simon, Sr. basically was a leading representative of the Vatican to the liberal establishment. And it is his son appears to have been one of the major powers behind the throne of Giuliani. Bill Simon wasn't the only one, however. From the Washington Post in 2007:

"Starting last fall, when Giuliani first called Simon and said he was running for president, Simon, 56, has been more responsible than anyone for Giuliani's policy education, and he has been the agent charged with managing the sometimes eager, sometimes awkward relationship between the former mayor of a liberal city and the conservative establishment.

"Well before Giuliani said publicly that he would be a candidate, [Bill] Simon put him through a rolling seminar that those in the campaign called Simon University, bringing in thinkers to brief Giuliani on key issues. The result is that though many of Giuliani's campaign operatives worked with him when he was mayor, his policy staffers, who have largely been assembled by Simon, come mostly from the think-tank world.

"The roster of the seminars was a who's who of conservative intellectuals, and their ideas a menu of conservative thought. There were neoconservatives Norman Podhoretz, John R. Bolton and R. James Woolsey Jr. on foreign policy, as well as less ideological thinkers such as Gen. Anthony C. Zinni and Yale professor Charles Hill; the Hoover Institution's Michael Boskin on taxes and economic policy; Hoover's race scholars Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell; and retired Gen. Jack Keane and the military scholar Frederick W. Kagan, the authors of the Iraq "surge." ...

"Giuliani's senior policy advisers tend to favor some of the least popular elements of Bush administration policy. His most visible foreign policy adviser, Podhoretz, supports an armed intervention in Iran and a lengthy stay in Iraq. Giuliani's lead economic adviser, Boskin, was a prominent proponent of privatizing Social Security and remains convinced of the long-term necessity of private accounts. And [Steve] Forbes, his campaign co-chairman, believes the Bush tax cuts did not go far enough in cutting marginal tax rates for the wealthy." 280

Norman Podhoretz, John Bolton, James Woolsey, Fred Kagan's brother-in-law Robert Kagan, and Steve Forbes (hardcore neocon, but also from a Pilgrims Society family) are all solid superclass and all appear in ISGPs Superclass Index. Even General Jack Keane could be added as a minor player to the index. He can or could be found at General Dynamics, the Defense Policy Board, National Defense Panel, the Institute for the Study of War (with Robert Kagan's mother), and a few other NGOs. He's very well connected to the military establishment.

These ties to the liberal, Zionist and neocon elites seem to have increased immediately after 9/11 when Giuliani was considered the "mayor of America" and a poster boy for protecting the United States against future acts of terrorism. He basically became friends with just about anyone suspected in this article of having known about explosives in the World Trade Center towers. In 2004 Giuliani joined the board of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation (WTCMF), together with David Rockefeller, Maurice Greenberg, Peter Peterson, John Whitehead, Anne Tatlock, and others. We already discussed this group and these individuals. Giuliani was also invited to the America-Israel Friendship League, also discussed previously. It is stacked with liberal and neocon elites as George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Lawrence Eagleburger, Jack Kemp, Vernon Jordan, General Paul Vallely (boss and friend of Col. Michael Aquino), CPMAJO's Malcolm Hoenlein, the Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman, and more. In 2005 the Qatar royal family became clients of Giuliani Partners. After Jordan and Saudi Arabia, Qatar has the strongest ties to the western superclass. The royal family is particularly close to Jacob Rothschild and the billionaire Kravis couple, judging by the board of the Qatar Museums Authority.

Giuliani and his police commissioner Bernard Kerik were also picked up by the Bush administration in the aftermath of September 11. After the invasion of Iraq, Kerik was appointed interim interior minister of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, a position he held from May to September 2003. It was headed by persons as Kissinger Associates managing director Paul Bremer and CIA asset Ahmed Chalabi. Kerik had no education to speak of, apart from a B.S. in social theory which he received in 2002, probably as a requirement to be given a higher level position like this. Giuliani had ambitions of his own. At the 2004 Republican National Convention he explained the thoughts he supposedly had after the 9/11 attack: "Without really thinking, based on just emotion, spontaneous, I grabbed the arm of then-Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and I said to him, "Bernie, thank God George Bush is our president."" That same year the former New York mayor was nominated for the position of secretary of Homeland Security, its advisory headed for a long time by two former CIA heads. However, the appointment fell through after concerns about the amount of dirt and scandal that might be dug up around him, much of which has already been reported in this chapter. On Giuliani's recommendation, President Bush nominated Kerik instead, which turned out to be a monumental disaster. First Kerik had to admit he'd employed an undocumented alien as a nanny and from there the ball went rolling. Eventually he went to jail in 2010 for fraud and (violent) intimidation partly involving associates of the Gambino crime family. 281

Kerik is a peculiar individual. Looking at his background, maybe one shouldn't be surprised if it turns out one day that he has been a long-term but low to mid-level CIA asset. He had early stints in Saudi Arabia as a security guard and served as a hand-to-hand combat instructor to special forces at the Kennedy Special Warfare School. After being hired as a bodyguard for Giuliani in 1994, he becomes affiliated at some point with heirs to the Gambino mafia, a family notorious for its associations with Mena, the Clintons, the P2 and Michele Sindone network. After his stint as Iraq's interior minister (overlooking the police and intelligence services) was over, Kerik served as a national security advisor to King Abdullah of Jordan and President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana. 282 In recent years he has also been invited as a knight commander in the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George. Headed by the centuries old royal Bourbon family, it has various shady Cercle members among its ranks. 283

All this having been said, there's still no indication that Giuliani or any of his subordinates had foreknowledge of the events of 9/11. Most likely he is considered a corrupt person who the superclass can rely on to protect their interests. It might be fruitful to figure out who Giuliani was talking to the entire day of 9/11, because it was him who in the afternoon of 9/11 helped quell rumors of explosives at the World Trade Center. As one reporter noted:

"I spent the rest of the afternoon at the mayor's command center. The reporters were trying to figure out what happened. We were thinking that bombs had brought the buildings down. The mayor [Giuliani] talked to us and said he had no evidence of bombs." 284

Assuming there were explosives, how could the persons involved be certain that Giuliani would go along with dismissing them? It's the same question with the mainstream media, in which reporters and program hosts didn't even explain to the public that earlier reports about explosions and bombs had been incorrect. Everybody just dropped the issue like a hot potato. The question is how this happens. In case of Giuliani, does he have some kind of national security or anti-terrorism aide in direct touch with the CIA, White House, or "retired" government officials at a think tank which he more or less blindly listens to? Very hard to say, but one would think that Giuliani is a controlled asset.

The funny thing is, I actually deleted a section from the original version of this article that dealt with the incredible amount of child abuse accusations against persons suspected here of 9/11 involvement. So I delete it, and with the very first update the link between Giuliani and Placa comes up, apart from a separate article I read a few weeks ago in which Lord Leon Brittan is accused of child abuse and also of covering up other cases. Brittan was a solid member of the establishment, close to the Rothschilds and numerous Pilgrims Society executives. Ironically, he was a speaker at the World Trade Center Association, Chateau Sainte-Anne, Brussels, which I had earlier already flagged for its huge amount of national and international elites accused of child abuse. It makes me fear the worst when it comes to the type of skeletons in Giuliani's closet.

Mind you, it is very common for mayors to appear in child abuse dossiers (not to mention police commissioners). For Belgium and France alone I'm aware of Leopold Lippens (Knokke 1979-2004), Pierre Descamps (Aubechies and Beloeil), Serge Kubla (Waterloo since 1982), Pierre and Dominique Baudis (Toulouse 1971-2001), and Philippe Douste-Blazy (Lourdes 1989-2000 and Toulouse 2001-2004, and deputy mayor 2004-2008). Douste-Blazy was France's foreign minister under Jacques Chirac, himself a mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995 who surrounded himself with ultra-right figures, some of whom also implicated in high-level sadistic child abuse networks. The notorious Paul vanden Boeynants almost became mayor of Brussel at one point were it not for his past (publicly-known) transgressions. One thing Placa and Giuliani might have in common with many of these European figures is an Opus Dei allegiance, but this is usually kept very hush-hush. The Knights of Malta represent the same network though.

Then there's the question why Barry Jennings purposely lied to Alex Jones and the Loose Change crew in 2007 about explosions taking place before any of the towers came down. This is discussed in detail in ISGP's WTC 7 article. Subsequently Jennings dies under mysterious circumstances, days before the NIST report on Building 7 is released. This appears to be some sort of psychological warfare operation. But who does it come down from? Barry Jennings worked as deputy director of emergency services for the New York City Housing Authority, whose chairman is decided on by the mayor. At the same time the person Jennings got stuck with inside WTC 7 is Michael Hess, Rudy Giuliani's chief lawyer and later founder and senior managing director of Giuliani Partners. In 2008 the BBC tried to debunk Jennings and at the same time interviewed Hess, but left enough holes open to allow for the debate to continue indefinitely. Considering we have more than enough evidence of intelligence services purposely creating all kinds of red herrings in conspiracy-related subjects and one has to conclude that it is very likely here that the New York City mayors, Giuliani (1994-2001) and Bloomberg (2002-2013), can be used as assets in these types of political manipulations. The trick is finding out why they're going along; what kind of skeletons they hide in their closets.

PART II: CIA-RELATED

The 9/11 Commission and the CIA's National Endowment for Democracy

Almost every controversial affair is followed up with a Congressional investigation and 9/11 was no exception. The 9/11 Commission was established in November 2002. As initial chairman Bush picked none other then Henry Kissinger, the undisputed number 1 in ISGP's Superclass Index and - as has been discussed - a person who should actually be considered one of the main suspects behind 9/11: advisory board chairman of AIG, involved in the same group that provided Mohammed Atta with a scholarship, and friends with virtually all other suspects in the event.

Maybe we shouldn't forget that back in the late 1960s and 1970s Kissinger, as national security advisor, 40 Committee chairman and secretary of state (for a while all at the same time), literally ran worldwide CIA operations, from putting South American dictators in powers to the sanctioning of funding for the fascist-terrorist P2 Lodge in Italy. As discussed at length in ISGP's Pilgrims Society article, Kissinger literally gave orders to CIA director Richard Helms and his deputy director of operations Thomas Karamessines on these issues.

In other words, Kissinger should be the last person to head any kind of independent inquiry into 9/11 - yet he was Bush's first pick. It's yet another solid indication that something related to 9/11 was in great need of covering up.

However, Kissinger was quickly forced to resign as 9/11 Commission chair by the 9/11 families after they began pointing to potential conflicts of interest of his firm Kissinger Associates. Rather than divulging any details about his clients, the Saudi Arabian bin Laden family in particular, Kissinger decided to withdraw. 285

Former Senator George J. Mitchell, once a member of the Select Committee on the Iran-Contra Affair, had been appointed vice chairman, but had retired for similar reasons a few days earlier. Ironically, Mitchell had been the founding chairman of George Soros' International Crisis Group in 1995 (anno 2013 still listed as "chairman emeritus"). This is a very elite grouping, with men as Morton Abramowitz, Prince El-Hassan bin Talal, Prince Turki al Faisal, Vernon Jordan, Robert McNamara, Carla Hills, General Wesley Clark, Richard Armitage, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Mikhail Khodorkovsky all serving on the board at one point or another. 286 In this article some of these persons are considered important suspects in the 9/11 event. Looking at ISGP's index of institutes, we also find Mitchell at the Council for America's First Freedom, the State of the World Forum, the CFR, the Bilderberg steering committee and the Munich Security Conference, all very elite groups.

Immediately after the resignations of Kissinger and Mitchell, the names of Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, respectively as chairman and vice chairman, were put forward. Before we go on, let's first take a look at the National Endowment for Democracy. The following excerpt is from a 1991 Washington Post article:

"The old concept of covert action, which has gotten the agency into such trouble during the past 40 years, may be obsolete. Nowadays, sensible activities to support America's friends abroad (or undermine its enemies) are probably best done openly. That includes paramilitary operations such as supporting freedom fighters, which can be managed overtly by the Pentagon. And it includes political-support operations for pro-democracy activists, which may be best left to the new network of overt operators. ...

"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," agrees [Allen] Weinstein. The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection. ...

"The sugar daddy of overt operations has been the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-private group headed by Carl Gershman that is funded by the U.S. Congress. Through the late 1980s, it did openly what had once been unspeakably covert -- dispensing money to anti-communist forces behind the Iron Curtain. ... The National Endowment for Democracy was created in 1983 as a funding conduit for U.S. government financed regime change worldwide." 287

The National Endowment for Democracy is actually pretty similar in purpose and design as Soros' International Crisis Group, which we just mentioned. But what does the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have to do with the 9/11 Commission? Well, looking at the board of the NED of the late 1990s we find the name Thomas Kean, the person who would be appointed chairman of the 9/11 Commission after the forced resignation of Kissinger. Kean stepped down from the NED board in late 1999 or early 2000. Amazingly, it is in this period that Lee Hamilton, future 9/11 Commission vice chairman, was invited to join the NED. 288

Kean and Hamilton are actually among the best connected individuals from U.S. congress and appear quite high in ISGP's Superclass Index - especially Hamilton. This means that they belong to the absolute elite of the elite, despite the fact that they are less well known as a Henry Kissinger or a Zbigniew Brzezinski. Both Kean and Hamilton have visited Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission at one time or another before 9/11. 289

In fact, a recent 2014 Pilgrims Society membership list this author acquired reveals that Kean has joined the board of this society. Guess who three of four long-standing vice presidents of this society were at that point? That would Henry Kissinger, Paul Volcker and John Whitehead, three very good friends - and also three very good Rockefeller friends. Alternately, others on the board include key officers of the Achelis and Bodman Foundation, a somewhat obscure non-profit that helps finance a plethora of neocon think tanks and conferences. So no, Kean is not even remotely independent.

Something else this author only realized years after the original version of this article was finished is that 9/11 Commission vice chair Lee Hamilton aided then Reagan vice president George H. W. Bush in covering up his (deep) involvement in the CIA-Contra cocaine import scandals of the 1980s. It's absolutely amazing that this is possible in what is supposed to be a modern democracy.

Getting back to the CIA's National Endowment for Democracy, others on the board of this NGO have included Zbigniew Brzezinski, Fred Ikle and Paul Wolfowitz, all of them in ISGP's Superclass Index. Paula Dobriansky, near the top of the Superclass Index, is vice chairman. Chairman until early 2001 was John Brademas, a Rockefeller man who is also close to the top of the Superclass Index. Brademas was among the individuals who for years had known Joseph Kasputys, tenant of the South Tower's impact and collapse floors, through the Committee for Economic Development (CED). Brademas had been a friend of notorious South Korean KCIA-sponsored lobbyist Tongsun Park, a founder of the CIA- and pedophile entrapment-linked George Town Club, since their days at Georgetown. Frank Carlucci, who also knew Kasputys at the CED and met Osama bin Laden's half brother on the morning of 9/11, appeared on the June 2001 NED list. Richard Holbrooke, who just joined AIG and was involved in the same U.S.-German exchange program network as Mohammed Atta, also appeared on the same list. Carlucci and Holbrooke can be found in ISGP's Superclass Index. 290 Again, it's such a small world at the very top.

It's interesting to note that the other 9/11 Commission members are less well connected than Kean and Hamilton. John Lehman is the third most connected commission member (and only slightly), followed by Jamie Gorelick.Here readers can check the various private institutes and committees these individuals have been involved with. This author actually encountered John Lehman, a former secretary of the air force, on recent Pilgrims Society membership lists as well, similar to 9/11 Commission chair Thomas Kean. Lehman was a Pilgrim in the 1990s and 2000s. Even more interesting, Lehman's name was closely linked to the 2016 anti-Erdogan coup in Turkey, providing us with (additional) evidence that Lehman is a top-level CIA asset. Not that that is so different from other commission members. Gorelick, for example, could be found on such trust-inspiring bodies as the Defense Policy Board and the CIA's National Security Advisory Panel.

9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow is connected to the same interests. His appointment, a decision, to the chagrin of some of the Democratic committee members, made unilaterally by Kean and Hamilton, is especially clear-as-day evidence that with the 9/11 Commission the Bush administration was simply investigating itself. Like Rice, Zelikow was an important protege of George Shultz since the 1980s. All three played an important role in the Vulcan Team that prepared George W. Bush for the presidency. Rice joined Bush's administration as national security advisor and then secretary of state; Zelikow was appointed to the very influential President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). In addition to that, in the late 1980s and early 1990s Zelikow had been an aide to President George H. W. Bush and national security advisor and Kissinger protege Brent Scowcroft. He has been a protege of the absolute top of ISGP's Superclass Index. ''Outside'' government he has been involved in the very elitist America Abroad Media, together with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, Lee Hamilton, Brent Scowcroft, and former CIA directors Robert Gates and James Woolsey; and later on also in the Trilateral Commission and the Aspen Strategy Group.

Zelikow has been a good boy. In fact, he was such a good boy that his own 9/11 Commission staff turned on him, which, of course, had zero effect. Together with Kean and Hamilton, Zelikow prepared an outline of the final report even before the investigation began. While that might not be such a bad idea, the three actually decided to keep this outline hidden from the staff. When the staff found out about this over a year later, members were especially worried about a section entitled ''The Blinding Effects of Hindsight'', which clearly implies that it has already been decided from the start that the Bush administration could not have known or done anything beforehand to prevent the attacks. In response, staffers circulated a parody entitled ''The Warren Commission Report--Preemptive Outline'', with one of the chapter headings reading ''Single Bullet: We Haven't Seen the Evidence Yet. But Really. We're Sure.'' And here we're thinking that government investigators automatically denounce all conspiracy theories... The underlying message here is pretty strong. If staffers of the seemingly much more sensitive NIST investigation would only have dared to do something similar...

Lee Hamilton's appointment as vice chair of the 9/11 Commission additionally was the biggest joke ever after the failure to appoint Henry Kissinger as chair, because Hamilton, as chairman of the House Committee on the Iran Contra affair of the late 1980s already helped George Bush, Sr. in a big way with covering up CIA/Bush/White House-supported Contra cocaine trafficking into the United States in the 1982-1986 period. The Iran Contra committee wanted nothing to do with this information. A separate committee under Senator John Kerry was established for this, in which the Costa Rica-based CIA asset John Hull was named as major drug trafficker by half a dozen witnesses. When the Costa Rican president personally put wheels in motion to bring Hull to trial for drug trafficking, guess who headed a committee to force Hull's release? That would be Lee Hamilton. As a result Hull was released, spirited out of the country with U.S. aid, and subsequently shielded from extradition by President George H. W. Bush. And here we have Hamilton in the early 2000s popping up again to shield Bush, Jr. from any damaging questions being raised about 9/11. It boggles the mind that these elites can get away with this. I guess that's why they're called elites.

Two other pre-9/11 directors of the National Endowment for Democracy were Senator Bob Graham and Senator Jon Kyl. Graham was a member from at least 1996 to 2002; Kyl showed up in the June 2001 list. 291

What is interesting about these men is that they visited Pakistan in the last days of August in 2001, less than two weeks before the attacks. Porter Goss, a former CIA covert operations officer and future CIA director, went with them. 292 At that point Goss was also a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, overseen by such notorious covert operations spooks Richard Helms, Ted Shackley (whom Goss had briefly worked for in 1963), Frank Carlucci, Bobby Ray Inman, George H. W. Bush and William Webster. 293 Among the men they met was General Musharraf and Pakistani intelligence chief General Mahmud Ahmed.

Soon hereafter General Ahmed came to the United States on a ten day trip. On the morning of 9/11 he was actually having lunch with Senator Graham, Senator Kyl and Porter Goss. It was during the meeting that a staffer of Porter Goss informed him that both World Trade Center tower had been hit. 294 There may not be much to worry about until this point, until one learns that Indian intelligence and the FBI found out that General Ahmed had ordered $100,000 to be wired to Mohammed Atta just before the visit of Goss, Graham and Kyl to Pakistan. 295 This news actually went unreported in the U.S. and most of the international media. Because of this lack of reporting it was actually possible to have Porter Goss and Senator Graham appointed as co-chairmen of the 9/11 Joint Intelligence Inquiry, in which Congress and the Senate were to find answers as to why the intelligence community hadn't picked up on the plot before it was carried out. The potential conflicts of interest here can be spotted from a mile away, of course. Obviously, Goss, Graham and Kyl should be thoroughly questioned about all the discussions they had with the Pakistani ISI, which has always been notorious for its support of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network. The "surprise" in 2011 when the Pakistanis turned out to be protecting bin Laden really was no surprise at all.

Along with Goss, Graham and Kyl, former CIA director James Woolsey and two of his colleagues at Crescent Investment Management, Mansoor Ijaz and General James A. Abrahamson, were also involved in the Pakistan question. On September 7, 2001, days before 9/11 and with General Ahmed in the United States, an article written by these men was published in the New York Times. It read:

"The Bush administration is preparing to lift punitive sanctions imposed on India for its nuclear program. But clearing this hurdle to bolster political, economic and military ties with India while maintaining even sterner sanctions on Pakistan would be seen throughout the Middle East as discrimination of the first order. Islamabad would be pushed in dangerous directions, particularly toward increased reliance on its nuclear and missile programs. ... India and Pakistan's greatest enemies are poverty and insularity, not each other. Lifting U.S. sanctions from both nations could help usher in an era of prosperity for the region while checking pressures to rely on military might. ... Pakistan is a deeply flawed state today. Reversing the current trends there is important for U.S. security. Simultaneously removing the sanctions on both India and Pakistan is a good place to start." 296

Apparently Woolsey was already involved with Goss, Kyl and Graham over the Pakistan question, but certainly after 9/11 they became close allies in the new War on Terror. By November 2001 Woolsey and Goss were both standing on stage at the 4th annual symposium of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. A year later Woolsey joined the AFIO - of which Goss had already been a member - as a honorary director. Woolsey, who, by the way, occupies the number 2 spot in ISGP's Superclass Index list, soon after 9/11 became a co-chairman of the influential Center for Security Policy, along with Senator Jon Kyl. The Center for Security Policy is a post-Cold War and neocon continuation of the notorious CIA-linked American Security Council. More than half of the people ending up in the Bush administration were directors or involved in its meetings in the years prior to 9/11. These included Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Douglas Feith and Dov Zakheim.

The interesting thing about Woolsey is that he actually was in contact with Al Qaeda elements in Pakistan, as well as its backer, the Pakistani ISI. Woolsey had been introduced to these networks by Mansoor Ijaz, the Pakistani founder of Crescent Investment Management, of which Woolsey was vice chairman. Vanity Fair explains:

"Danny [Pearl, the journalist who ended up being beheaded] called on a tip from Indian intelligence, which said [Mansoor] Ijaz was wired with leading jihadis. ... Ijaz made introductions to three sources: Shaheen Sehbai, editor of The News, Pakistan's largest English-language daily; a jihadi activist he declines to name; and--most fatefully-- Khalid Khawaja, a Muslim militant and a onetime agent with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) who counts among his very best friends Osama bin Laden. Within weeks, Danny ... was in the capital, Islamabad, 700 miles to the north, for a several-hour session with Khalid Khawaja. ... But despite his talk of bin Laden's being "a man like an angel," Khawaja was sufficiently broad-minded [LOL] in his allegiances that he got the Taliban to agree to receive Ijaz and ex-CIA director Woolsey." 297

Mansoor Ijaz was the son of a nuclear engineer who played a major in Pakistan acquiring "the bomb". It appears that what Ijaz and Woolsey were trying to do, was to prevent Al Qaeda from acquiring nuclear weapons. Considering the allegiance many senior government officials in Pakistan, including the leadership of the ISI, have towards Al Qaeda, this country can certainly be considered a major threat to the United States. The ISI is even sponsoring terrorist attacks against India, knowing full well it will lose any conflict with that country.

"Danny made another valuable acquaintance in Hamid Mir, editor of Islamabad's Urdu-language Daily Ausaf and self proclaimed "official biographer" of Osama bin Laden. In their last chat, in early November, bin Laden had boasted of possessing chemical and nuclear weapons. Mir is a Taliban enthusiast. Quietly, though, Danny was onto something much more compelling than the daily bombing reports: he'd found links between the ISI and a "humanitarian" organization accused of leaking nuclear secrets to bin Laden. The group--Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN)--was headed by Mr. Bashiruddin Mahmood, former chief of Pakistan's nuclear-power program and a key player in the development of its atomic bomb. Mahmood--who'd been forced out of his job in 1998 after U.S. Intelligence learned of his affection for Muslim extremists--acknowledged making trips to Afghanistan as well as meeting Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. ... That's not how the CIA saw it. According to the agency, Mahmood and another nuclear scientist, Caudry Abdul Majid, met with bin Laden in Kabul a few weeks before 9/11-- and not to talk about whole-wheat bread. U.S. pressure got the scientists detained in late October, and they admitted having provided bin Laden with detailed information about weapons of mass destruction. But, for what was termed "the best interests of the nation," they were released in mid- December." 298

In his last interview with Hamid Mir bin Laden claimed to be in the possession of chemical and nuclear weapons and threatened to use them if the United States would. 299 It was a questionable claim at best and there never arose any evidence that bin Laden has been in the possession of this kind of weaponry. Still, reports of collusion between Pakistani nuclear experts and Osama bin Laden must have greatly worried U.S. intelligence agencies and private spooks as James Woolsey.

As is the case with just about anything Woolsey is involved with, Crescent Investment is a bit of strange company. Its founder, Mansoor Ijaz, played a major role in failed negotiations to have Osama bin Laden extradited to the United States (more on that later). On the advisory board of Crescent Investment sat Prince Alfred von Liechtenstein, who co-wrote many of the articles of Ijaz and Woolsey. The Liechtenstein family, of the 1001 Club and headed by Hans Adam II, has been very close to the Pell family of the Pilgrims Society. Hans Adam has financed a huge amount of disinformation on the alien abduction phenomenon, together with Laurance Rockefeller and seemingly James Woolsey in the background. 300

A little less "out there" was the vice chairmanship in Crescent at the time of General James Abrahamson, who is known to have visited a meeting of the secretive Cercle group in 1985. He has also spoken at an American Security Council meeting. From December 1997 until some time beyond 9/11 Abrahamson was a director of Stratesec (Securacom) 301, a security firm which received about $10 million in contracts for the World Trade Center in the 1996-1997 period. 302 Marvin Bush, a brother of President George Bush, served on the board of directors of this company until some time in 1999. To a lesser extent the WTC contracts continued "up to the day the buildings fell down." 303 In addition, Abrahamson, a retired air force general, served as chairman of International Air Safety, LLC, described by him as "a synergistic grouping of companies and joint ventures focused upon improving global air traffic management and air safety." He had also been a member of the 1996/1997 White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. Other commissioners included CIA director John Deutch, the Opus Dei-linked FBI director Louis Freeh and future New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. These connections may mean nothing, but to a large extent we do keep moving in circles. It's not a very big world apparently.

Osama bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia with its extremist Wahhabist strain of Islam. In the 1980s he came over to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets there. After the Cold War he became a problem for the Saudi ruling family and the United States. Osama saw the United States as the great Satan whose only objective in the Middle East was to keep control over the oil (which is true, of course). Soon after the First Gulf War, in which the Saudis allowed the United States access to some of the country's military bases, Osama was forced to leave his homeland. He went to Sudan where he continued the family business: operating a construction company. From his wealthy relatives back in Saudi Arabia he received an annual stipend of $7 million, which was cut off in 1994 on orders of King Fahd as Osama continued to verbally attack the Saudi royal family.

Already immediately after the Cold War the first Al Qaeda-linked terrorist plots were discovered against the United States, soon followed by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Apparently, the mastermind behind that plot, Ramzi Yousef, had planned to topple one of the towers while simultaneously releasing a cloud of cyanide. As Neil Livingstone explained it to the BBC:

"They ran out of money. They didn't have enough gas canisters for the bomb, and some of the low-level members of the conspiracy - the foot soldiers - placed the bomb alongside the wrong support structure." 304

As already explained, Livingstone was a protege of CIA counter-intelligence chief James Angleton, served with him on the board of the American Security Council and was later in the private spook business with James Woolsey. Amazing again how a leading pundit on terrorism is so close to the circle suspected here of involvement in 9/11.

Osama bin Laden in 2009 on the anniversary of 9/11. Doing his best to look sharp: trimmed and dyed beard.

In any case, the 1993 WTC attack is supposed to have inspired Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda group to start conducting their own large scale terrorist acts. It was Ramzi Yousef's uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been named as one of the major 9/11 plotters, along with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda's military chief, Mohammed Atef.

The State Department first accused bin Laden of running terrorist training camps in 1995, after an assassination attempt earlier that year against Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, in which bin Laden was suspected of having played a role. By early 1996 Sudan was negotiating with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to try and get rid of bin Laden. This led the terrorist leader to leave for Afghanistan in May 1996, where he was embraced by the Taliban.

The official U.S. standpoint is that Sudan never offered to extradite bin Laden to the United States in return for economic aid. The U.S. only put pressure on Sudan to expel bin Laden to a different country. One person who disagrees with this notion is Mansoor Ijaz, the earlier-discussed Crescent Investment founder who helped Daniel Pearl get in touch with Al Qaeda elements. Ijaz negotiated with the Sudanese over the extradition of bin Laden to the United States in early 1996. He claimed that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was in favor of the plan, but that she was overruled by national security advisor Sandy Berger (today a business partner of Albright and both on the board of the 9/11 Commission-linked Partnership for a Secure America), who acted on the advise of counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke. At this point, bin Laden was not yet the wanted terrorist he would soon come to be. He only really became that with the August 1998 bombings against the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people and injured an additional 5,000.

However, Ijaz claimed that the Clinton administration also refused to cooperate in an effort to get bin Laden in 2000, three months before the USS Cole attack of bin Laden. Bin Laden clearly was on the FBI's Most Wanted list by that time. 305

There was another instance in which Bill Clinton himself prevented the neutralization of Osama bin Laden. According to CIA covert operations officer Hank Crumpton, who briefed Bush and Cheney on CIA operations in Afghanistan in the early 2000s, in 1999 his team located Osama bin Laden in a village close to Kandahar, Afghanistan with the aid of a predator drone. Crumpton wanted to take Bin Laden out immediately, but Bill Clinton ordered U.S. eyes on the ground first to confirm, allowing bin Laden to get away. Clinton may have been fearful of an international incident, but how many opportunities can you waste before it becomes suspicious? Even more so because an apparent friend of Clinton in Miami owned the flight school where key 9/11 plotters were learning to fly.

Should we take Crumpton serious? Hard to say, especially with a personal favorite of CIA Counter-Terrorism Center chief Cofer Black. Crumpton also testified to the 9/11 Commission as the anonymous "Henry" about the missed opportunities in Afghanistan under Clinton. As for Ijaz, he is a hardcore necocon and definitely hard to trust. In the end, everything seems to be a bit of a fake Democrat versus Republican horse and pony show at the very top. Neocons have been attacking Clinton relentlessly for not having taken the Osama bin Laden threat seriously enough. In turn, Democrats and moderate Republicans - the liberal establishment - have been attacking the neoconservatives for their obsession with Iraq. Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism chief at the National Security Council from 1993 to 2003, sided with the latter group in his 2004 book Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. In it he blames the Bush administration for failing to have adequately responded to terrorist threats while at the same time having pushed for war with Iraq while there were no indications that this country had anything to do with terrorism or 9/11. Interestingly, today Clarke serves under James Woolsey at the Paladin Capital Group. 306 Not only is Woolsey the business associate of Ijaz and a former CIA director, he is the world's most influential neoconservative who within 24 hours after 9/11 immediately pushed for war with Iraq. Woolsey's exact words to Peter Jennings on September 12, 2001 were:

"I think that there has already been some rethinking in the United States about the World Trade Center attack in 1993 and the possibility that there may have been Iraqi government involvement in that. ...

"It's quite possible that Osama bin Laden was involved in this and that indeed his group did it. But it is also possible that there was someone behind them and one candidate is the Iraqi government. Outside chance that it was another terrorist group and the Iranian government was involved - I think that is much less likely. ...

"[If it was Osama bin Laden] that doesn't mean that there is no one working behind with him, or guiding him, or suggesting approaches, or helping with false identities and travel documents and all the rest. The prime candidate there would have to be, not proven, but would have to be Iraq.

" ... The Taliban has certainly been harboring him, but they may have been his hotel, but not the- to make a metaphor - the Wizard of Oz behind the scenes pulling the levers. That role would far more be likely in the hands of Iraq than this very chaotic conservative government in Afghanistan." 307

As one can see, it is quite ironic that Richard Clarke likes to work today with possibly the nation's number one neocon warmonger. Clarke has a State Department background and had bosses as George Shultz and James Baker. His primary political mentor, however, has been Morton Abramowitz 308, a person who could be found at George Soros' Open Society Institute, Freedom House, the International Rescue Committee and the earlier-discussed National Endowment for Democracy - all fronts for covert financing by the U.S. government. As has become the norm, Abramowitz can be found in ISGP's Superclass Index.

Ironically, in the same interview Woolsey stated: "I have no inside information on this whatsoever. I am a private citizen for 6.5 years." Woolsey is today the number two on ISGP's Superclass Index, immediately behind Henry Kissinger. His biography is absolutely massive and along with his wife, Suzanne, who for at least ten years had known Joseph Kasputys, the tenant of the South Tower collapse floors, he appears to be one of the major insiders to private sector CIA operations.

Above: professional flight simulator. Below: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2012, cockpit of a Boeing 737-800. Already back in the late 1990s MS Flight Simulator would come with a manual hundreds of pages thick. Anyone taking flight lessons combined with realistic flight simulators can keep a plane in the air and steer it towards a target, certainly in excellent weather. Manually landing is by far the most difficult aspect - and that wasn't necessary on 9/11.

Kissinger men, who represent the State Department instead of the Pentagon and CIA, partly were against an invasion of Iraq. Certainly not all though. Two Kissinger Associates men appeared on television in the hours after 9/11. One was former Kissinger Associates managing director Paul Bremer, who worked for Marsh and McLennan, tenant of all the impact floors of the North Tower, who stated several hours after 9/11: "Bin Laden was involved in the first attack on the World Trade Center. ... and there are at least two states, Iran and Iraq, who at least remain on the potential list of suspects." 309 If bin Laden was indeed involved in the first attack on the World Trade Center, it would be really interesting to know why Richard Clarke - a leading counterterrorism expert, just as Paul Bremer - and others in the Clinton administration let bin Laden walk free for so many years. Former Kissinger Associates president Lawrence Eagleburger was also interviewed on 9/11. He sounded a bit more hawkish than Bremer when he said: "The Afghani government has a responsibility that is at least as great as Osama bin Laden's. And that means, I think, we must take military action against them." 310 Eagleburger also referred to "a number of states" that also may be targeted, but didn't elaborate.

One gets the impression that after 9/11 major debates broke out between members of the establishment (ISGP's Superclass Index) about which countries to take out first. After the Afghanistan campaign, for example, another friend of Kissinger, Alexander Haig, was primarily interested in attacking Syria. 311 Haig was also interviewed on 9/11. Despite being known as a major hawk, he was actually rather cautious in his statements. Acknowledging he had no insider knowledge, his only words were: "All we have to do is look at the world today with the Palestinian and bin Laden groups." 312

As with James Woolsey, with Haig it is also somewhat questionable that he had no insider knowledge. First of all, like Eagleburger, he appears in ISGP's Superclass Index, by definition meaning he is extremely well connected. More specifically, in February 2000 Haig had been a co-founder of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, together with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Max Kampelman (also very high up in ISGP's Superclass Index). 313 This committee was established in response to Russia's Second Chechnyan War, which had begun several months earlier. Public support for the war massively increased after a series of Russian apartment bombings that killed 293 people. However, on September 22, 1999 one of the bombs was found and defused with the perpetrators being directly linked to the FSB/KGB, the Russian intelligence service until several weeks before headed by Putin. Controversy erupted, at least as far as the media in Russia could allow it:

"I don't get it. Why did it take two whole days to tell the world it was an exercise? Frankly, it is incomprehensible. ... Let's start with the fact that they told us it was sugar in the bags [instead of RDX]. Does this mean that neither the FSB specialists nor the interior ministry know what sugar looks like? ... Let's just imagine that real explosives were planted and it was a real attempt at provocation in order to increase tension in the Caucasus and so on and so forth. Do we have any guarantee that we would have been given an accurate reply that we, the public, would find convincing to what had happened? I suspect, unfortunately, that we wouldn't." 314

What's interesting is that the evidence against Putin and the FSB implicating them both in false flag terrorist events is overwhelmingly strong. But for some reason Western elites have hardly used this evidence to push Putin out of office. Why is that? Is here some unwritten gentlemen's rule in place that these type of operations are never exposed? It certainly makes one wonder if these U.S. elites possibly decided to take a page out of Putin's book. They only did it bigger, better and much more sophisticated, as one would expect to be necessary in a democratic country. Looking at a trustee list of April 2001 for the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya we certainly find a long list of top level government insiders. Examples include Morton Abramowitz, John Brademas, Richard Perle, Robert McFarlane, James Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, William Kristol and many others. Future 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean also just happens to be in the list 315, meaning this is the third pre-9/11 private group Kean shares membership in with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the other two having been the Trilateral Commission and the National Endowment for Democracy. It might be a coincidence; it might not be.

Beginning immediately after his forced relocation to Afghanistan, bin Laden started to become a major problem for the Americans. He has been accused of plotting the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in June 1996, the August 1998 Dar es Salaam U.S. embassy bombing, and the suicide attack on the USS Cole in October 2000. In between he has also been accused of financing the Luxor massacre of November 1997. Despite praising them, bin Laden actually denied involvement in these attacks. Initially he also denied having anything to do with the events of 9/11.

"I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons. I have been living in the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan and following its leaders' rules. The current leader does not allow me to exercise such operations." 316

He also claimed that U.S. intelligence might have been responsible for the attack:

"[Osama] said these [9/11] attacks could be the act of those who are part of the American system and are rebelling against it and working for some other system. Or, Usama said, this could be the act of those who want to make the current century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity. Or, the American Jews, who are opposed to President Bush ever since the Florida elections [untrue], might be the masterminds of this act. There is also a great possibility of the involvement of US intelligence agencies, which need billions of dollars worth of funds every year. He said there is a government within the government in the United States. The secret agencies, he said, should be asked as to who are behind the attacks." 317

However, it appears quite certain that bin Laden did plan the 9/11 attacks. One of the most important videos of bin Laden to surface after 9/11 is a home video of him discussing aspects of the 9/11 operation with some of his associates. In between all the praises to Allah and the discussions about prophetic dreams, bin Laden can be heard saying:

"We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (...Inaudible...) due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the fuel in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for. ...

"We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day. ... After a little while, they announced that another plane had hit the World Trade Center. The brothers who heard the news were overjoyed by it. ...

"The brothers, who conducted the operation, all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation and we asked each of them to go to America but they didn’t know anything about the operation, not even one letter. But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes. ... Muhammad ((Atta)) ... was in charge of the group." 318

Video on which Osama bin Laden talks about the 9/11 attack. Not really seen a reason to question its authenticity.

Although there is a lot of debate on the internet about this video being fake, I personally don't buy the arguments for it and suspect it is part of the daily dose of disinformation. I think it is reasonable to assume that Osama bin Laden really did plan the 9/11 attacks, along with his military chief Mohammed Atef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an uncle of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the first World Trade Center attack. This is the basic conclusion of the 9/11 Commission actually. These aspects kind of had to be real in order to allow news media and investigators to discover the story for themselves. If everywhere they'd look there's a total absence of terrorists and masterminds, combined with denials and complete ignorance about any aspect of the attack, too many people would be given a chance to ask skeptical questions that can't really be ignored or ridiculed. What if bin Laden, his top men and the Taliban all appear on Afghan television and eloquently start to explain they have absolutely zero knowledge about the attack? Subsequently U.S. investigators and the Army's War on Terror interrogators trying to prove the contrary never find any terrorists who know anything about the attack either. That would be bad planning on behalf of the conspirators. They have to limit the odds of the plot being discovered and the best way to do that is to manipulate an existing conspiracy against the United States. And the evidence is there to say that this is most likely what happened.

In light of all the questions that remain about the attack it is very unfortunate that a U.S. Seal Team decided to assassinate bin Laden in 2011 (with later stories that he killed himself), as a trial could have given much clarity about the details of 9/11, his accomplices throughout his life (didn't the U.S. wanted to know that?), his alleged escape from Tora Bora and how he managed to remain hidden for ten years. Bin Laden should have been captured alive and given a fair trial. Even the worst serial killers and child rapists receive fair trials. Why not bin Laden? Or why not alleged terrorists in general? It's a sad state of affairs, that's for sure.

It's also interesting to see how the United States continues to protect Pakistan in its War on Terror. Pressured by the United States into cooperating with the War on Terror, in reality the ISI is the most important backer of Islamic terrorism. With its militants primarily aimed at India, the ISI may have helped finance the 9/11 hijackers, it may have helped bin Laden escape to Pakistan and it was quite clearly protecting bin Laden from capture before the terrorist leader was killed close to a major Pakistani military base. That is, if it was really bin Laden who was killed in 2011. Absolute proof has not been provided to the public by the Obama administration with locals all claiming that it wasn't bin Laden who was living at the Pakistani compound he was supposedly killed at. 319

So many questions remain about Osama bin Laden and 9/11 that it can be considered an travesty that he was executed without a proper trial and without the public even being given proper evidence that it was indeed bin Laden who was killed. And that is without addressing any moral responsibilities a western country as the United States is supposed to have.

Osama may have received support from the ISI and the Taliban, he was still a member of one of Saudi Arabia's most powerful families. He was indoctrinated with the same extremist Wahhabist Islam literature as everyone else in the kingdom (he later swung over to an offshoot, Takfirism). The ruling family of Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud, upholds these teachings, but at the same time has been forced by the British and later the Americans to work with western powers. Needless to say that the House of Saud is very unpopular in many parts of the country and the rest of the Middle East because of that. As for what the Saudi Arabian Wahhabist teachings involve, there's a great account of Carmen bin Laden, wife of Yeslam bin Laden:

""Underneath [Saudi men] have always maintained their self-assured and inflexible value system, and it rises to the surface as they age. This is what happened to the Bin Ladens in the years I lived with them, and it's what happened to Saudi Arabia as a whole while I was there. It is still happening today." ... "The Saudis are the Taliban, in luxury," Bin Ladin writes. ...

"When the couple moves to Saudi Arabia, it's as if the world goes black and mute. Carmen writes of her first time wearing an abaya, the suffocating shrouds women must wear over their faces and bodies: "I looked out of the car window and through my veil I saw just a dim light — no people, no buildings. Even the streetlights were dark." Not surprisingly, it gets worse. An extraordinarily rare trip to the grocery store, so she can get the proper milk for her daughter, involves an arduous charade: "And in order that one completely black-shrouded woman could walk inside with her husband, the store had been emptied — completely emptied — of all its clients and staff." In Saudi society, women simply have nothing to do.

""There were no books," Bin Ladin writes. "There were no theaters, no concerts, no cinemas. There was no reason to go out, and in any case we could not go out: I was not allowed to go for a walk, and legally could not drive." ... Her daughters' schooling is all religion, and "no sports, no debates, no discussions. No games, marbles, or tricycles." Wafah, the oldest, returns home one day with "I hate Jews, I love Palestine" scrawled in her notebook, just as a normal girl would scribble her first name beside the last name of the little boy she loved. ...

"After this beginning, it's confusing to learn that just a few years later, the country flush with oil money, the bin Ladens could enjoy Thursday night parties where the sexes mingled and alcohol was served. Carmen Bin Ladin says she initiated these happy nights: Western businessmen and diplomats would visit for tennis matches and a perusal of her proud library. No Saudi women ever showed, but a few Saudi men did. One gets the sense that the bin Ladens, under the protection of the Saudi royal family and their own astonishing wealth, really could do what they pleased. ...

""One afternoon, I was in a supermarket when a pregnant woman fainted; her husband rushed to help her up. The mutawa [religious police] were there, and they stopped him, yelling at him that he must not take his wife in his arms in public." Carmen, however, had a Sudanese driver by her side to shield her from the mutawa with two words: "Bin Laden," the driver would say, and the police would back down. The truth is that the bin Ladens choose to live the Wahhabi way, even though, as Carmen often suggests, they had the potential for more freedom than everyone else.

"The hypocrisy in Saudi Arabian culture about women is difficult to get your mind around. Bin Ladin writes of Saudi princesses, locked up and disdained by their husbands, suffering from "bone density problems from lack of sunlight and exercise," who, not surprisingly, fall in love with one another. "We all heard rumors of a kind of lesbian party circuit in Riyadh," Bin Ladin writes, "where women would socialize and pick each other up."" 320

For many decades an important contact of the West in this rather bizarre country has been Prince Turki al Faisal Al Saud. He served as Saudi ambassador to Great Britain in 2003 and Saudi ambassador to the United States from 2005 to 2006. More importantly, Prince Turki was Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief from 1977 to 2001. Already in the late 1970s did he attend his first Cercle group meeting. 321 In that same period he was involved in the Safari Club, a privately organized intelligence network to circumvent all the restraints the CIA had been put under after several years of congressional inquiries. Involved in the Safari Club network with Prince Turki were General Vernon Walters of the CIA, Alexander de Marenches of French intelligence, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and the Shah of Iran. 322 Prince Turki did on occasion visit Le Cercle, even after his retirement as Saudi intelligence chief. 323 He also served on the board of George Soros' International Crisis Group, the private institute co-founded and headed by initial 9/11 Commission vice chairman George J. Mitchell. Zbigniew Brzezinski and Carla Hills of AIG were among the other board members. Thomas Pickering, an important figure in the Cercle network, has served as a long-time co-chairman of the International Crisis Group.

What is interesting about Prince Turki's involvement with Le Cercle is that it puts him in contact with the absolute highest level intelligence insiders in the West, many of them very notorious individuals with ties to arms and drug trafficking, false flag terrorist attacks and pedophile entrapment networks. On 9/11 the network had largely been run by notorious CIA spook Ted Shackley for many years. Some readers may remember that Shackley was also on the board of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) in Florida, along with his friends Richard Helms, George H. W. Bush and Frank Carlucci, as well as James Woolsey and William Webster. The earlier-discussed Porter Goss, a congressman from Florida who once used to work under Shackley, had curious ties to a Pakistani ISI general who reportedly helped finance 9/11, and was co-chairman of the 9/11 Joint Intelligence Inquiry, was also a prominent member of the AFIO. Prince Turki actually appears to have had his own important contacts in Florida, most notably to mob figure Alvin Malnik 324, a close friend of top Jewish/Italian mobster Meyer Lansky. 325At one point Malnik was even considered a potential heir to Lansky. If such a connection isn't strange enough, an important business partner of the Florida flight school which trained Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 terrorists, isn't far removed from Malnik at all. 326 And that is besides the fact that certainly Ted Shackley has major historical ties to the mafia, with reports that Prince Turki and some of his older brothers, as youths, have been sexually abused and "turned" by elements tied to the CIA. More on that later.

What is just as important to know is that Prince Turki has repeatedly been named as the main Saudi Arabian liaison with Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda group. The story goes that Prince Turki kept providing bin Laden with funds to prevent him from targeting the fragile Saudi Arabian state. Whether this accusation is true or not, bin Laden continued to criticize the House of Saud in speeches and interviews. His name was also tied to the 1996 truck bombing of the Khobar Towers inside Saudi Arabia. In the years before 9/11 Prince Turki was said to have arranged meetings between bin Laden and his mother and stepfather who tried to persuade him to cease his terrorist activities. 327 Two months before September 11, Prince Turki is even said to have arranged a meeting between Larry Mitchell, a senior Dubai-stationed CIA officer, and bin Laden when the latter was treated for his kidneys in the American Hospital in Dubai. 328 Bin Laden visiting here makes sense, because the ruler of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, reportedly was among the rich Arab leaders who met with Osama and Taliban leaders in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, when Gulf elites organized various hunting trips in the Kandahar area on rare birds of prey. Prince Turki was also among them, as well as other rich Saudis. 329 As General Wayne Downing, Bush's former national director for combating terrorism, explained:

"They would go out and see Osama, spend some time with him, talk with him, you know, live out in the tents, eat the simple food, engage in falconing, some other pursuits, ride horses." 330

Possibly it was Sheikh Mohammed, a visitor of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, who was the one protecting Osama from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement during his stay in Dubai. Unsurprisingly, none of them could persuade bin Laden to cease his campaign against the West - and in all reality, they not have really wanted him too either.

To make any role played by Prince Turki in the events of 9/11 even more intriguing is that King Fahd fired him as head of Saudi intelligence on August 31, 2001, less than two weeks before 9/11. The sudden "resignation" of Prince Turki after 24 years puzzled many intelligence experts, but apparently Washington and possibly King Fahd himself had enough of Prince Turki's support of Al Qaeda:

""Sources told the digest that Turki was close to the Taliban militia government of Afghanistan – which is suspected of hosting and protecting bin Laden. That relationship "rankled" the United States, the intelligence weekly reported. ...

""For years, Turki pledged to lure bin Laden out of his Afghan hideout and into a trap set by the United States," Geostrategy-Direct.com reported. "When that promise failed to materialize, a crisis developed between Riyadh and Washington."

"Turki was Saudi Arabia's leading liaison to the Central Intelligence Agency in the U.S., European analysts told the digest.

""It was realized that the negotiations between Turki and bin Laden were not working and that the United States and Saudi Arabia were being taken for a ride," Guillaume Dasquier, editor of a leading European intelligence newsletter, said.

"Alexandre Del Valle, another European expert, agreed and noted that Turki was in contact with bin Laden."" 331

The timing for the firing of Prince Turki remains very suspect. Could it be that King Fahd picked up rumors of an impending attack on the United States? Which could potentially be linked to Prince Turki? Apparently rumors were swirling around in the Middle East that something was about to happen, although very few people knew any details. 332 Certainly after 9/11 Prince Turki was targeted by the 9/11 families lawsuit, in which a defected Taliban official implicated him in "large money transfers from wealthy Saudis to the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan." 333 Soon thereafter captured terrorist Abu Zubaydah stated that since 1991 Prince Turki was the main secret fundraiser for Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. 334 Three other Saudi princes Zubaydah named all died within a week of one another. A Pakistani general close to the ISI who was also named by Zubaydah died eight months later in a plane crash. 335

Prince Turki and his ISI colleagues had "distributed over $1 billion in cash to Afghan guerrillas during the late 1980s," 336 but apparently they never lost their loyalties to Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda group. Both Prince Turki and the ISI were cooperating in this effort with CIA director William Casey and and his deputy Robert Gates. I can't help but notice that David Cohen, suspected earlier in this article of having rigged the World Trade Center with thermate and explosives, was a protege of these men, with the top leadership of AIG or Blackstone having known Casey or today knowing Robert Gates. For what it's worth, another person involved with the Mujahideen was CIA deputy director (after Gates) Richard J. Kerr, who was photographed with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Islamabad in 1988. Kerr became a major, major insider of the national security establishment with positions at the CIA's In-Q-Tel, MITRE, ManTech, the NSA, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Sandia and BAE Systems (the last position shared with 9/11 Commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton).

Prince Turki is not the only Saudi official who may have played a role in 9/11. Attention should also be given to Yeslam bin Laden, a half brother of Osama. Yeslam owned the airline company Avcon Business Jets SA in Switzerland, which offered pilot training. Immediately after 9/11 it was found out that Yeslam had come into contact with a Cannes policeman, whom he had sent to the Venice Airport in Florida for flight training - all expenses paid. 337 It's hard to imagine that this was just a random coincidence, as Mohammed Atta and several other hijackers were trained at this same small airport, located in a quiet retirement community. Researcher Daniel Hopsicker has detailed how two shady Dutchmen were operating flight schools here, Rudi Dekkers and Arne Kruithof. Hopsicker also found out a lot about Wally Hilliard, the financial patron and business partner of Dekkers. Both Hilliard and Dekkers were knee-deep in the drug trade whose operations were protected by the FAA and the U.S. government in general. 338 Reportedly Wally Hilliard was in direct contact with President Bill Clinton 339, who himself was accused of shielding CIA drug trafficking flights while being a governor of Arkansas in the 1980s. 340

In addition to Avon Business Jets SA, Yeslam bin Laden was also running Saudi Investment Company (SICO), an international subsidiary of the Saudi Binladen Group. Already in 1999, years before 9/11, French investigator Richard Labeviere, who also found out about the CIA meeting with bin Laden in Dubai, pointed to SICO as a key corporation in financing the terrorist network of Osama bin Laden. Yeslam didn't file a defamation suit, explaining in private that he did not want to advertise a book full of errors. 341 What is certainly clear is that a number of shady individuals were involved with the company, among them persons with suspected ties to the CIA. 342 In addition, Yeslam's former wife, Carmen, confirmed that her husband had rediscovered his intolerant and egocentric Wahhabist roots:

"Carmen does discuss the intense bin Laden clan loyalty, the Bedouin mentality that she believes makes Saudi Arabian men unique. She writes that she "cannot believe" the bin Ladens would cut Osama off completely: "I simply can't see them depriving a brother of his annual dividend from their father's company, and sharing it among themselves. That would be unthinkable — among the Bin Ladens, no matter what a brother does, he remains a brother." At the end of the memoir, Carmen "openly defies" the bin Ladens to open their books and prove that they had nothing to do with Sept. 11. ...

"The truth is that the bin Ladens choose to live the Wahhabi way, even though, as Carmen often suggests, they had the potential for more freedom than everyone else. The Iranian revolution [in 1979] also made Yeslam and his extended family, extraordinarily nervous and religiously obedient, terrified of the militant radicals in their own country. Yeslam would change forever, becoming a perpetually sick, intolerant, harsh and religious man, and later a harsh, religious man with mistresses on the side. It was these changes in her husband that finally broke Carmen — both Yeslam's infidelity and his demand that she have an abortion when she became pregnant with her third child. It was a request she'd complied with before, much to her despair." 343

The suspicions against SICO mirror the ones against Saudi financier Khalid bin Mahfouz, once a director of the notorious BCCI bank, which collapsed in 1991 amid charges that it was deeply involved in money laundering for international intelligence agencies, criminals and terrorists. Bin Mahfouz's sister was married to a bin Laden. At the same time he was a shareholder in several companies with Salem bin Laden 344, another half brother of Osama who was a member of the elite 1001 Club, along with the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Prince Bernhard, Prince Philip, Mobutu Sese Seko, relatives of the Shah of Iran and several Mossad agents. Among the members was also Agha Hasan Abedi, founder and president of the BCCI, as well as Dr. Alfred Hartmann, a huge money launderer for the Rothschilds who may have played an even more dominant role in the BCCI than Abedi. 345 In another section of this site we already discussed that senior BCCI directors explained at the time that the bank was controlled by an international Mossad and CIA-linked "black network" involved in assassinations, intimidation, arms, drugs and gold trafficking.

A French intelligence report published in 2002 revealed that dozens of companies and individuals involved in the BCCI subsequently formed the network that was helping to finance Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. This had been become possible because so few people connected to the BCCI were ever prosecuted. The role of bin Mahfouz was highlighted in the report. After paying a fine of $225 million dollars for his role in the BCCI, bin Mahfouz became a director of one of Saudi Arabia's largest banks, the National Commercial Bank. In 1999 bin Mahfouz was placed under house arrest at the urging of U.S. authorities, who had found out that the bank was siphoning off millions of dollars from wealthy Saudis to charities controlled by Osama bin Laden, an activity that had been going on since the inception of Al Qaeda (which makes him a close ally of Prince Turki). Despite his house arrest, the Saudis never allowed bin Mahfouz to be questioned by American officials. 346

To make matters worse, Salem bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz were business partners of persons surrounding the Bush family, including Jim Bath and James Baker. Salem bin Laden and bin Mahfouz invested in George W. Bush's oil companies in the late 1980s 347 and in 1995 two of bin Mahfouz's sons invested roughly $30 million in the Carlyle Group, ran by the CIA's Frank Carlucci, George H. W. Bush and former secretary of state James Baker. Through the bin Mahfouz family and its connections with the royal family Carlyle was now able to bring in major defense contracts in Saudi Arabia. 348 What makes this connection especially interesting, of course, is that Carlucci, Bush and Baker had invited Shafig bin Laden, another half brother of Osama, to a Carlyle meeting at the Washington Ritz-Carlton on the morning of 9/11. 349

***

So what does all this information mean? At the very least the activities of Wally Hilliard, Rudi Dekkers and Arne Kruithof at the Venice Airport, where three of the four 9/11 hijackers were trained, indicates that the United States government was fully aware that terrorists were coming to the United States. Daniel Hopsicker:

"The chief tenet of the 'Magic Dutch Boy Theory' is: "Two foreign nationals purchasing flight schools at the same airport at about the same time which are soon hubcap-deep in Arab terrorist pilot-wannabees is just a magical, or freak, coincidence." It is the official position of the chief investigative agency of the United States Government, the FBI. Others disagree. "Two Dutch boys buying adjacent flight schools which shortly thereafter get 'overrun' by terrorists is one damn Dutch boy too many," growled one nationally-known law enforcement figure." 350

Terrorist flight school owner Wally Hilliard. Completely protected by the FAA (Jane Garvey was FAA head 1997-2002, appointed by Clinton; see bio in appendix A) and apparently the CIA. Connected to the drug trade and reportedly also to Bill Clinton, Jerry Falwell, Adnan Khashoggi and various other unsavory characters. At 1981 Myron Du Bain, a friend of Henry Kissinger and reportedly a business associate of former CIA director John McCone, took over one of his companies. 351 His Cuban relations might not be that unusual, as men like David Rockefeller, Frank Carlucci, James Schlesinger, Oliver Stone and others were helping to open trade relationships with Cuba since 1998. Whether Hilliard knew these men personally is not known.

These suspicions are strengthened when one learns to what extent the drug trafficking and other illegal activities of Hilliard and Dekkers were shielded by the FBI and undoubtedly the CIA. Hilliard reportedly being in direct contact with President Bill Clinton is extremely significant - you'd almost begin the think that the operation was ran directly from the White House. Remember that Clinton's friends and associates included Vernon Jordan (a close advisor during his presidency), Jacob Rothschild (Clinton and his wife were supported by his family) and Joseph Kasputys (Committee for Excellence in Government) - all linked to the South Tower impact floors. Clinton also knew Henry Kissinger, Maurice Greenberg and Peter Peterson, with all their additional ties to the World Trade Center complex. The father of incoming president Bush was part of the exact same network, just as business partner Frank Carlucci. And on it goes.

The information in this part also indicates that "black network" (drugs, gold, weapons) type individuals took control of these flight schools - and not an ordinary CIA or FBI spook who at least tried to maintain a front of respectability and legitimacy about the business being operated. Hilliard, Kruithof and especially Dekkers were controversial figures. It's actually a miracle that Atta and al-Shehhi remained at Dekkers' Huffman Aviation with all the bad press about him. Then again, Hopsicker's investigation shows there's much more to the story than meets the eye. Besides running international drug flights, Hilliard and Dekkers were also "ferrying Saudi princes all over the U.S." on largely unsanctioned flights. As one aviation executive explained to Hopsicker:

"All their getting is a slap on the wrist, but you can go to jail for the kind of things they're charged with. What they were doing is blatantly illegal. Without a Federal Aviation Administration air carrier operating certificate, the Government has no idea where those planes went, or even who was on board. Whoever they were flying for didn't want anyone to know." 352

Supposedly it was Osama bin Laden running the terrorist cells, but based on Hopsicker's account we had terrorists in Florida who were getting close to various non-Arab CIA-linked drug traffickers, as well as non-Arab "brothers" from different European countries. Atta even had an American stripper as girlfriend for a while, Amanda Keller, who did confirm that somehow Atta considered himself a devout Muslim. As is basically the norm with low level intelligence networks, there were a million different eccentric personalities all interacting with one other.

The connection between Yeslam bin Laden and the Venice Airport also indicates that there is some unknown CIA-Arab connection operating in the background of the conspiracy. Not reported yet is that Porter Goss was apparently frequently spotted at the Venice Airport in the mid 1990s, which already back then was linked to drug trafficking activities. 353 That's the same Porter Goss who has a secretive CIA history; who was negotiating with a Pakistani ISI general who may have helped finance 9/11; who was co-chairman of the 9/11 Joint Intelligence Inquiry; and who was a member of the AFIO, along with many other very senior and very controversial retired CIA officers. Also when we look at Prince Turki al Faisal (Saudi intelligence, Le Cercle, Safari Club, Alva Malnik) and Khalid bin Mahfouz (BCCI, Carlucci, Bush), possibly the two most important Al Qaeda financiers in the Saudi Kingdom, and we find all kinds of links to a private international network consisting of shady bankers, terrorists, drug traffickers and intelligence officers.

The CIA Counter-Terrorist Center and Blackwater

While almost having finished this article, several new leads were found that provide us with more insight into the covert relationship between the Saudis and the CIA, or the CIA in general. Not just the old boy network of George Bush and Frank Carlucci is implicated, but also various CIA officers working under the CIA director from 1996 to 2004, George Tenet.

A first person of interest might be Ronald S. Pandolfi, a senior officer in the CIA Directorate of Science and Technology who has been involved in overseeing the UFO and new age community for decades at this point--and seemingly also a key person in the briefing of presidents on the subject. One of Pandolfi's informers/friends, Dan T. Smith, stated to the FBI his belief that Pandolfi had known about the upcoming attack, although to the outside world he hasn't made it precisely clear why he thinks that. It appears that Smith was suspicious because days before 9/11, Pandolfi called together Smith's little network of end-of-the-world eschatologists. Around 10:30 on the morning of 9/11 Pandolfi called Smith from what appears to have been the situation room of an otherwise evacuated CIA headquarters (Langley was evacuated by Tenet). While Pandolfi was on the line with a very unimportant Smith, he ignored other incoming phone calls. Smith correctly noted that Pandolfi was serving at the CIA's National Intelligence Council at the time under General John Landry. Apparently Pandolfi had the private phone number of Tenet with whom he occasionally shared a driver. Later Pandolfi served as Measurement and Signature intelligence (MASINT) head in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He also deals with the elite JASON Science Advisory Group. By the way, all sources related to Pandolfi and Smith, including to 9/11, have been archived in ISGP's article Coast to Coast AM: Cult of National Security Trolls.

Apparently Smith was also suspicious of the activities of his sister, Deborah, a close friend of Nancy Ellis Bush and George H. W. Bush. According to Smith, on the morning of 9/11 she was at Logan Airport around 8 AM, at the same time that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta and his aide Marwan al-Shehhi boarded their planes here. Soon after boarding a plane herself, she was on the phone with George H. W. Bush. While this is not nearly enough information to become suspicious, at the same time it is interesting to note a) how small the world is (considering I found Dan Smith in a whole different investigation); and b) that at that point Bush was at a Carlyle meeting with Frank Carlucci, James Baker and a half brother of Osama bin Laden, Shafig, with several past investors in Carlyle having been financiers of Islamic terrorism. However, based on the limited amount of information given by Smith, his sister may simply have called Bush out of concern for her own safety.

Now the more important stuff: the CIA's Counter-Terrorist Center (CTC) and Blackwater. In the 1996-1999 period Michael Scheuer was head of the Osama bin Laden Task Force and Bin Laden Station, also known as "Alec Station". Some years after 9/11 Scheuer began making headlines that the Clinton Administration refused to capture or kill Osama bin Laden on at least 10 occasions. That accusation does not stand entirely on its own, but this type of criticism always seems to come from hardline conservative corners, and Scheuer is no exception to that. Bizarrely, both Osama bin Laden and the Islamic State have acknowledged Scheuer's views. Among his appointments after resigning from the CIA in 2004 is that of terrorism analyst for the Jamestown Foundation. Board members in past and present? Cheney, Rumsfeld, Brzezinski, former CIA directors William Casey and James Woolsey, Frank Carlucci's, wife and other high level retired CIA officers. The CIA's no. 1 suicide bombing expert, Professor Brian Glyn Williams, who was in touch with Boston bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev, is another major expert of the Jamestown Foundation.

Clinton is not the only one to blame, however. Six months before Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi came to the United States, Saudi nationals Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar traveled to the United States, fresh from a Kuala Lumpur al-Qaeda Summit. The CIA's Counterterrorist Center (CTC) under Cofer Black, which also controlled Alec Station, was aware that these men visited the Al Qaeda conference. By March 2000 the CTC was also aware that Hazmi and Mihdhar had come to the United States. Strangely, the CTC didn't put the men on a watchlist until just before 9/11. The 9/11 Commission also came to the conclusion that the CIA never gave any information on these men to the FBI. Black came under heavy criticism over this after the events of 9/11 unfolded. 354 Nevertheless, Black was promoted by the Bush administration and after he left as ambassador at large for counter-terrorism in November 2004, Black largely ran JSOC's secret anti-terrorist assassination program in Pakistan through Erik Prince's Blackwater USA and Total Intelligence Solutions. 355 In a second massive failure, the Pakistani intelligence and military authorities Black and Prince were working with all these years, forgot to tell them they were the ones hiding Osama bin Laden. All a coincidence? Increasingly unlikely.

Things become even more suspicious when we realize that Cofer Black's closest ally in the hunting of Osama bin Laden since 1996 and subsequently at Blackwater was Enrique "Ricky" Prado, in 2012 exposed as a CIA/Contra drug trafficker and a youth friend and hitman for Florida mafia boss Alberto San Pedro. 356 Going back in newspaper archives of the 1980s, we find that San Pedro received protection from Senator Bob Graham 357, co-chair of the 9/11 Joint Intelligence Inquiry, together with his close friend, the CIA's Porter Goss. As already discussed, these two men are known to have had breakfast with Pakistani ISI chief General Mahmud Ahmed, suspected of having financially supported 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta. In light of the CIA recruiting of mafia bosses Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli, Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante back in the 1960s maybe we shouldn't be that surprised of Prado's involvement with the CIA, but the level a which he has been operation is rather unusual: head of the CIA's Korean Operations, deputy chief of the East Asia Division, deputy chief on the original Osama bin Laden Task Force in 1996 and immediately after 9/11, chief of operations of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center (CTC) where he largely coordinated JSOC, Delta Force, and Seal Team Six units. In recent years Prado has also been appointed "special advisor" to the MITRE Corporation and a director of Jefferson Waterman International's Crosshatch International 358, both of which are linked to the events of 9/11 in this article. And Prado also provides yet another link to drug trafficking for Jefferson Waterman International.

Another top level CIA man involved in Blackwater USA was Robert Richer, a Near East Division officer who retired CIA associate deputy director of operations (ADDO) in 2005, is accused of having aided the forging of a letter that was supposed to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein helped train 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta. 359

Former CIA executive director Buzzy Krongard briefly served on the advisory board of Blackwater USA, but was forced out in November 2007 when it was revealed that his brother, Howard, a State Department inspector, had been intervening in a Justice Department investigation of Blackwater employees in arms smuggling. While still at the CIA Krongard had helped Blackwater acquire its first major government contracts in Afghanistan. 360 Krongard also brought in the angle of pre-9/11 insider trading, a subject we will continue with in the next section.

Pre-9/11 insider trading

In October 2002 it was the not particularly reliable Mike Ruppert who prominently tied Blackwater's Buzzy Krongard (see previous section on Blackwater) to suspected pre-9/11 insider trading. The suspected insider trading regarding United Airlines took place via one or more clients of Alex. Brown 361, the oldest investment bank in the United States, which Krongard had been chairman of between 1994 and 1998, at which point "mutual friends" were responsible for him becoming an aide to CIA director George Tenet. This was soon followed by the position of executive director of the CIA - not to mention a directorship in the elite high-technology CIA firm In-Q-Tel. 362

While the link seems weak, a little looking around turns up the fact that Krongard first joined Alex. Brown in 1971, was appointed a partner in 1980 and until 1994 served under Benjamin Griswold IV as vice chairman. 363 Griswold was the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Alexander Brown, founder of the bank in 1800 364, with later family members occasionally involved in the elite Pilgrims Society. Anyone who read ISGP's Pilgrims Society article, which goes into detail about ties between the banking world and the CIA, will consider it entirely possible that Krongard, with the consent of the Griswold family, already was a senior CIA asset during his time at the bank. It is also entirely possible that Krongard or the Griswolds knew or had a good idea as to who made the curious investments.

Despite the somewhat distant tie of Krongard, insider trading just prior to 9/11 is a hugely important and seemingly sensitive issue. Alarms were going off very early. According to CBS News, already "the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market. An extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines stock price would fall." 365 As for United Airlines, immediately before 9/11 "UAL put option purchases were 25 times greater than the year-to-date average." 366 Almost immediately inquiries were opened not just in the United States, but also "Japan, Germany, the U.K., France, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Spain [had] their own investigations running." 367 Less than two weeks after the attacks, the head of the Bundesbank, Germany's Central Bank, Ernst Welteke, stated that his team could show that "there were highly suspicious sales of shares in airlines and insurance companies, along with major trades in gold and oil markets." He also said: "What we found makes us sure that people connected to the terrorists must have been trying to profit from this tragedy." 368

It primarily was speculation with American Airlines and United Airlines that received media attention in the weeks after 9/11, profits which actually never were collected by the anonymous investors due to the controversy that erupted. As the San Francisco Gate newspaper astutely observed: "The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors -- whose identities and nationalities have not been made public -- had advance knowledge of the strikes." 369

Predictably, nothing came of these investigations and before long various market experts were cited explaining the speculation as "business as usual" with a $2.7 million overnight profit on United Airlines alone by a person unknown being termed "unspectacular." 370 In September 2003 the FBI closed its investigation with the conclusion that there was "absolutely no evidence'' of people having traded with inside knowledge. 371 That's interesting, because three later scientific studies, one in 2006 and two in 2010, all came to the same conclusion that stock speculation immediately before and after 9/11 was highly suspicious. 372

In 2009 David Callahan, the executive editor at that time of SmartCEO, filed a Freedom of Information Request for some of the insider trading documents handed to the 9/11 Commission. The answer? "We have been advised that the potentially responsive records have been destroyed." 373

In 2012 and 2013, Lars Schall, an obviously highly skeptical financial reporter for the Asia Times, followed up on this with the question: "Why did the SEC destroy its records on the 9/11 insider trading issue?" He received no reply. 374 At the same time Schall exposed the story of William Bergman, a Federal Reserve market analyst who had noticed that "from June to August 2001, this [M1 money supply, which circulates outside of the banks] posted the largest growth rate for a June to August 2001 since World War II." While suspicious, Bergman didn't immediately raise the alarm at the time, but after 9/11 suggested to his superior that he would like to investigate a potential link between these M1 money supply increases and 9/11. As Bergman himself explained: "The call was shorter than I expected. A week later my money laundering assignment was terminated, and I lost my credentials for access to confidential information. A month later my position in the bank was eliminated." Schall asked the Federal Reserve on two occasions why they had fired Bergman, but was not given an answer. 375

In the end only one person was publicly accused of 9/11 insider trading: Amr Ibrahim Elgindy. During one of his trials related to financial racketeering issues, assistant U.S. attorney Kenneth Breen charged that Elgindy had traded on September 10 with foreknowlegde of 9/11. 376 However, the court decided to "not hear evidence supporting an assertion that prosecutors once made suggesting that Mr. Elgindy might have had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks." 377 It makes a lot of sense though. During the court proceedings it was revealed that Elgindy made donations to the Mercy International Relief Agency 378, a notorious 1992-founded Saudi foundation deeply linked to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Mercy International supported bin Laden by issuing false passports and aiding in the transportation of various goods. The foundation has been specifically linked to the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi as well as to the aid of Islamic terrorists in the Balkan. 379 Unsurprisingly, the CIA was not far behind. As French journalist and intelligence asset Richard Labeviere, whom we already met, wrote in 2000:

"In Nairobi, the FBI was mainly working to sort out the tangled web of ties between the Sudanese secret service, the Osama bin Laden organization and the Islamic NGO's. Going from one surprise to another, the investigators ended up focusing on two American connections. The first relates to the organization Mercy International Relief Agency, whose direct involvement in the financing of the "Afghan" networks we have mentioned on several occasions. Active in Bosnia, Chechnya and Albania, this subsidiary of the Muslim Brothers was able to establish its headquarters in the United States, in the State of Michigan, with the assistance of . . . the CIA. The Agency provided significant logistical and financial support to this "humanitarian" organization, enabling it to act clandestinely in the various Balkan conflicts as well as within the Muslim communities of several Russian republics. On the basis of the FBI's conclusion, the Kenyan government announced the dissolution of Mercy International and five other Islamic NGO's that had probably also enjoyed Saudi and CIA support. The second organization in question is the Al-Haramain Foundation..." 380

A key person in Mercy International (and who also worked within the SAAR Network 381) was the Eritrea-born U.S. citizen Abdurahman Alamoudi, who for many years had been a leading spokesman for Islamism in the United States, having had meetings with President Clinton, President Bush, as well as at the Pentagon. In 2004 he was jailed for 23 years, not for supporting terrorism, but for aiding Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi in a for him lucrative plot against the Saudi king. 382 Far from being a moderate relief organization, Mercy International was part of a whole network of extremist Saudi-backed foundations that formed the backbone of Al Qaeda and Muslim terrorism. Other foundations discussed in this article include Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), the Muwafaq Foundation (Blessed Relief), the Al Haramain Foundation and the SAAR Foundation.

President George W. Bush with his friend, Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. for more than two decades and apparently deeply involved with the CIA..

Cofer Black's Blackwater clique and 9/11 insider trading resulted in a little d-tour, but time to get back to the hijackers his CIA Counter-Terrorist Center missed: Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. These men were picked up from the Los Angeles airport by Saudi national Omar al-Bayoumi, who housed both men, opened accounts for them at Riggs Bank and took care of their needs in every way. In July 2001 al-Bayoumi moved to England, two months before his proteges hijacked Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon. A videotape was recovered as well of Al-Bayoumi, "flanked by Saudi Arabian diplomats who the [FBI] said had ties to al-Qaida", filming the Capitol and surrounding buildings in Washington, D.C., while referring to a "plan". 383

Al-Bayoumi is not just any person. He was widely considered to be an agent of Saudi intelligence 384, which in fact he was. Even as a student he was moving hundreds of thousands of dollars on occasion to buy such things as mosques. 385 In 1999 and 2000 Al-Bayoumi received indirect monthly payments from none other than the wife of Bandar bin Sultan 386, with a much-later released FBI memo more clearly stating:

"In the late 1990s and up to September 11, 2001, Omar al-Bayoumi was paid a monthly stipend as a cooptee of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency (GIP) via then Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan." 387

The then chief of the General Intelligence Presidency, the chief Saudi intelligence agency, was Prince Turki al Faisal, a superclass member with deep NGO ties to the West. As for Prince Bandar bin Sultan, he was Saudi Ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005. Bandar bin Sultan was married to a sister of Prince Turki 388, so always has been similarly a top intelligence official. From 2012 to 2014 he himself headed Saudi intelligence, eventually being removed for funding rebel groups deemed too Jihadist and not caring enough about radicalism spreading into Saudi Arabia. 389 As a youngster Prince Bandar received fighter pilot training in the United States, and later, as an ambassador, grew extremely close to the Bush family, resulting in the nickname "Bandar Bush". 390

That's just where things begin. After the CIA came under intense scrutiny in the 1970s by congressionally inquiries, it became almost impossible for the Agency to run many of its most sensitive (and probably illegal) operations. Brian Crozier's 6I and the Safari Club were two important results. As it turns out, starting in 1976, when George H. W. Bush became CIA director, the agency approached Saudi intelligence chiefs Sheikh Kamal Adham and his nephew, Prince Turki al Faisal, with whom Shackley and Helms were already forging ties before he was appointed head of Saudi intelligence. The Saudis opened accounts at Riggs National Bank and from there pumped tens of millions of dollars from Saudi corporations and the Saudi Embassy to CIA operational accounts. For many years Bush, Helms, Shackley, Carlucci, Edwin Wilson, Thomas Clines and other CIA officers would work closely with Adham and Prince Turki. These ties continued into the 1980s when the CIA and Saudis cooperated with Pakistani financier Agha Hasan Abedi in turning the BCCI into a bank that basically logged all terrorist and criminal finances worldwide. Bush, Helms, Casey, Adham, Prince Turki - all of them were involved in the bank. Apparently not realizing the monster they were creating, the BCCI collapsed in 1991 in what became yet another CIA-linked scandal. 391

All this is really amazing information, of course, because it shows that the old boy CIA network that could be found at the AFIO in Florida at the time of 9/11 - Helms, Shackley, Bush, Sr., Carlucci - have had a decades long, very crucial and extremely secretive relationship with Saudi intelligence chiefs Kamal Adham and Prince Turki al Faisal, as well with long-time ambassador Bandar bin Sultan, who handled a lot of the accounts at Riggs National Bank for the CIA. 392 BCCI director Khalid bin Mahfouz can also be added to this list. That's incredible, because Prince Turki and Khalid bin Mahfouz have been named as Saudi Arabia's most important financiers of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda group, with "Bandar Bush's" wife having financed what has basically been a case officer of two 9/11 hijackers.

That situation would be the same as the CIA providing funds to Florida flight school owners Wally Hilliard and Rudi Dekkers. Oh wait, there's every indication that that has been the case. And these two men also just happened to be "ferrying Saudi princes all over the U.S." in a "blatantly illegal" manner, "without a Federal Aviation Administration air carrier operating certificate." 393 A report that Hilliard has been in business with arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, an old friend of the CIA and Saudi Arabia's Kamal Adham, should hardly surprise anyone anymore. 394

Will the real Prince Turki al Faisal stand up please? The one who is a Muslim extremist and secret supporter of Osama bin Laden, or the westernized intelligence chief and close ally of the most questionable elements in the CIA: Helms, Shackley, Bush, Sr., Carlucci, etc.

Saudi Arabia played a role in 9/11 - so much is clear. The CIA was also involved, as the Wally Hilliard connection makes plain. So how likely is it that Saudi Arabia double-crossed the United States, headed by President George W. Bush, son of one of their closest allies for decades? Probably not too big. It shouldn't be forgotten either that Jeb Bush was governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. Possibly he had something to do with the "special treatment" given to Saudis in Florida. 395 What we do know is that Jeb Bush personally assisted a quiet FBI grab of all of the files of Huffman Aviation and flying them out to Washington, D.C. on a C-130, immediately after 9/11. 396 Again we have to thank Daniel Hopsicker for that information.

The ties of George H. W. Bush and his son to the Saudis are more than strong to suspect a continued covert relationship, but also a brother of George, Sr., Jonathan J. Bush, has an interesting connection to the Saudis. Since 1970 Jonathan Bush has been chairman and CEO J. Bush & Co. In 1997 his company became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Riggs Bank, the same bank that was used by Saudi intelligence in the 1970s to finance the CIA's covert operations, and the same bank used to finance the case officer of two 9/11 hijackers. In both cases Bandar bin Sultan, a very close friend of the Bush family, had a hand in transporting the funds. At Riggs Bank Jonathan Bush primarily cooperated with one of its leading executives Henry A. Dudley, Jr. In May 2000 Bush was appointed president and CEO of Riggs Investment Management (RIMCO), with Dudley becoming chairman. 397 Dudley had joined Riggs Bank in 1976, the exact same year that CIA director George H. W. Bush and the Saudis began using the bank to finance Agency operations. In the 1980s he served as senior vice president under president and controlling shareholder Joseph L. Allbritton (Alfalfa Club and equally elite George Bush Presidential Library Foundation), also involved with the bank since 1976 and who bought a controlling interest in 1980. 398 What pretty much solidifies Dudley's CIA connections is that he appeared on the board of the elite George Town Club in the 1980s. Board members of the club had extensive ties to the CIA, not to mention that different members can be linked to child abuse, MKULTRA and Opus Dei. 399 That also shouldn't particularly surprise anyone, as Bush, Sr. himself has been linked to all these elements, as well as Shackley, Helms, Casey and Prince Turki.

Going back to the Saudi intelligence associates of the Bush family, these relatively westernized Saudis, as well as the House of Saud in general, would probably have only benefited with bin Laden and his followers gone, because all of them hated the Saudi monarchy, its wealth, corruption and cooperation with the United States. Maybe these Saudis just had enough of paying off Osama and its followers. So they cooperated with the CIA in getting rid of him, with the additional hope that the United States would crush neighboring regimes in Iraq, Iran and Syria.

It seems so obvious today, but it is entirely possible that Osama and other al Qaeda leaders had no clue that their terrorist cells were being followed and manipulated every step of the way by the CIA and Saudi intelligence. It's hard to imagine that the multimillions at the disposal of these agencies would be unable to bribe Al Qaeda personnel, pressure them in some way, or bring in their own super-enthusiast would-be terrorists (just take care or their families). It's standard operating procedure of intelligence agencies to approach and bribe members of terrorist cells. It is also not unheard of to lure suspected terrorists to apartments that have been bugged beforehand. It happens all the time. 400

What I actually would find surprising at this point is if elements of the CIA's "old guard" or "old boys" at the AFIO - basically located down the block - were not directly or indirectly in contact with terrorist flight school owner Wally Hilliard. Can't say that for sure, of course. But maybe Hopsicker can find out.

This section on Kay Griggs and the Marine Corps clique of her husband Colonel George Griggs has been transformed into a separate article.

The most important point to remember here is that it would be foolish to overlook the possibility that retired Marine Corps General Carl Mundy and retired Army General Carl Stiner, and even more so generals James L. Jones and Jack Sheehan, were consulted by the 9/11 conspirators for their covert operations expertise. There are plenty of indications that these men are among the most trusted allies of the liberal eastern establishment and the old boys CIA network. And undoubtedly both the CIA and this Marine Corps group would be able to find some mercenaries or a fascist private militia willing to rig the World Trade Center buildings.

Ultimately the new insight Kay gives us is welcome, as she does point to the same group of individuals that we have already been suspecting of involvement in 9/11 and adds to the evidence that this group has been involved in other activities that cannot stand the light of day as well.

Kay has also been the only individual to mention the JFK Special Warfare School to me as a center where a lot of these covert operations are run from. This school has been described earlier on ISGP, because the covert operations deputy to CIA deputy director of operations David Cohen, suspected by ISGP of having had a degree of knowledge as to who rigged the WTC towers, had been a commander of this school. Kay has basically been the only person within the conspiracy community who really seems to have an insider's perspective, despite some of the biases in her reporting and her later refusals to provide any additional meaningful information.

1. Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda group really did plot the attack against the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.
2. Former Saudi financier Khalid bin Mahfouz and Saudi national Yeslam bin Laden have been other supporters of Osama bin Laden, but also had close ties to the CIA. Bin Mahfouz, an important former BCCI director, was in business with the CIA's Frank Carlucci and George H. W. Bush.
3. Beginning in 1976, Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al Faisal and Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan have had an important and crucial relationship with CIA officers as Richard Helms, Ted Shackley, George H. W. Bush and Frank Carlucci. Turki has been caught running and financing terrorist networks. Bandar Bush, through his wife, was tied to some of the 9/11 hijackers.
4. The CIA Counterterrorist Center (CTC), under later War on Terror fundamentalist Cofer Black, was aware from March 2000 and on that Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar had entered the United States via Los Angeles, immediately after attending an Al Qaeda conference in Kuala Lumpur, which the CTC was also aware of. The CTC didn't put this pair on watchlists. Neither did it inform the FBI about them. On its own the FBI figured out that these men were financed and supported by a Saudi intelligence asset with covert financial ties to the wife of Bandar Bush, a close friend of the Bush family.
5. The CIA CTC, FBI, or even the White House should have been aware that other terrorist hijackers had come to the United States by mid 2000, because ring leader Mohammed Atta and other suicide pilots ended up taking lessons with two CIA-linked flight schools. One flight school owner, a drug trafficker with the name Wally Hilliard, reportedly was in direct contact with Bill Clinton, and to a lesser extent with Saudi national Adnan Khashoggi.
6. Only discussed in an update: Since the late 1990s Khashoggi and Prince Turki al Faisal were partners in Russian GRU firm Far West, together with Cheney's KBR Halliburton and the CIA's Diligence, LLC. Far West is deeply tied to the ISI also, and the heads of various terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda. It appears that the anti-Putin Far West and its allies are involved in false flag terrorism and coups all over Central Asia.
7. During the Bush administration's first National Security COuncil meeting of January 30, 2001 the agenda was set to invade Iraq and find any excuse, primarily related to nuclear weapons development, to do so. President Bush, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz, CIA director George Tenet, and Shultz-protege and national security advisor Condi Rice were the ones who prepared the Iraq plot in advance of this NSC meeting. At the end of this meeting Bush told Tenet to gather additional "evidence" and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to start preparing war plans.
8. Immediately before 9/11 happened, Bush already had plans on his desk to invade Afghanistan, supposedly to grab Osama bin Laden.
9. Secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, a protege of the CIA's Frank Carlucci, with his deep ties to the Saudi backers of terrorism, clearly hid in his office while the 9/11 attacks were going on, guaranteeing that no early shoot-down orders could be given against any of the hijacked airliners. Cheney, acting outside of the chain-of-command, somehow had been able to give very late shoot-down orders himself.
10. Key members of the Trilateral Commission and their closest friends had total access to the impact and collapse floors of the North Tower, as well as to Building 7. Henry Kissinger, Maurice Greenberg (CIA), Jeffrey Greenberg, Peter Peterson come to mind. ALl these men are close associates of George Shultz, the key mentor of national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, as well as decades-long CIA asset David Rockefeller. In fact, all these people are "above CIA" assets.
11. For years and sometimes decades key members of the Trilateral Commission had been close to Joseph Kasputys, tenant of the South Tower impact and collapse floors. In addition, pre-collapse "pressure pulses" were seen coming from the offices of Kasputys' company. Among these associates of Kasputys were Elliot Richardson (Trilateral exec.), Peter Peterson (Trilateral), John Brademas (Trilateral), Frank Carlucci (Trilateral; CIA), George Shultz (Trilateral), Paul Volcker (Trilateral exec.), Joseph Nye (Trilateral exec.) and John Whitehead (Trilateral). In addition, Suzanne Woolsey (CIA) had also known Kasputys for at least a decade, while Clinton and George H. W. Bush probably knew him too through the Committee for Excellence in Government.
12. The Trilateral Commission had recruited the tenants of the South Tower impact floors 79 to 82: Toru Hashimoto and Toru Kusukawa. Paul Volcker (Trilateral chairman), Vernon Jordan (Clinton advisor; Trilateral), James Wolfensohn and Jacob Rothschild had a particularly close partnership with these men. Molten metal - most likely steel - was seen flowing from this company's offices minutes before the collapse.
13. The Trilateral Commission members who controlled the North Tower impact floors - Henry Kissinger, Maurice Greenberg, Jeffrey Greenberg - were business partners of Kroll, the primary security consultant to the Port Authority and the World Trade Center Complex. One would expect this to have given them access to the entire building, although we do not know the exact details.
14. AIG, which controlled the North Tower impact floors and had a strategic partnership with Kroll Associates, had major ties not only to the State Department elite, but also to the CIA, MI6 and SAS.
15. The potential role of David Cohen having ran the operation to bring down the towers is particularly intriguing. Biography of Cohen: Protege at the CIA of William Casey, Robert Gates and John Deutch. CIA deputy director of covert operations 1995-1997. CIA station chief of New York 1997-2000, which should have brought him to the CIA office in WTC 7. Security risk consultant for AIG November 2000-January 2002, during which time he most likely worked closely with AIG's partner firm Kroll Associates. January 2002-today: NYPD intelligence chief, which allows him to monitor basically any potentially subversive group in the New York area. Quite possibly Cohen takes into account that terrorists and foreign government agents can hide behind 9/11 Truth groups and investigators. Certainly it would be nice to have an insider monitor these groups.
16. Joseph Kasputys, tenant of the South Tower's impact and collapse floors, had various direct and indirect ties to the Carlyle Group, both pre and post 9/11. Carlucci and former president George H. W. Bush, both with a CIA background, were key individuals of this company. Carlucci knew Kasputys for years before 9/11 through the Committee for Economic Development and Bush almost certainly through the Council for Excellence in Government. In addition, Kasputys' associate Patrick Gross ran a company owned by the Carlyle Group.
17. Carlucci, Bush and James Baker met Shafig bin Laden, an older half brother of Osama bin Laden, on the morning of 9/11 at a Carlyle meeting. Coincidence or not, it remains an interesting fact, because it is entirely possible that Shafig bin Laden is yet another Saudi with dual loyalties.
18. Since the late 1970s Bush and Carlucci were close associates of Ted Shackley, a CIA officer who should be considered the number one suspect in running the operation to kill Kennedy and of carrying out some of the other most sensitive black operations of the CIA.
19. Since 1998 Carlucci was serving on the board of the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association, along with JFK and World Trade Center movie producer Oliver Stone. Another board member was former CIA director James Schlesinger, who could also be found at MITRE, the Center for Security Policy, the OSS Society, the AFIO, the Military Order of the Carabao, the Defense Policy Board, etc. Trilaterals David Rockefeller, Paul Volcker (Fuji Bank), John Whitehead, Carla Hills (AIG) and others also sat on the board. General Jack Sheehan was another interesting name.
20. In the months before 9/11 Carlucci shared the board of the National Endowment for Democracy with future 9/11 Commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton. Future 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean could be found at the NED's board some in the years prior to the appointments of Carlucci and Hamilton.
21. Senators Bob Graham and Jon Kyl also served on the board of the NED in 2001. Both were in contact with Pakistani backers of Al Qaeda, along with CIA covert operations veteran and AFIO member Porter Goss. On the morning of 9/11 these three men were having lunch with an ISI general who reportedly wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers.
22. Goss was reported to be a frequent visitor of the Venice Airport in the mid 1990s from which drug trafficking operations were ran. In the years before 9/11 the key hijackers were trained at this airport, also by men associated with the drug trade, as well as the CIA.
23. Goss and Graham were appointed to head the 9/11 Joint Intelligence Inquiry despite having a massive conflict of interest due to their connection with a financier of the 9/11 hijackers and in case of Goss, with the Venice Airport. Along with Senator Jon Kyl these men were also among the most hawkish in Congress and the Senate.
24. Suzanne Woolsey, a Stanford and Harvard trained psychologist, knew Joseph Kasputys, tenant of the South Tower's collapse floors, since at least 1991 through the Council for Excellence in Government. Her husband, James Woolsey, is the CIA man with the deepest connections to the military-industrial complex and the largest amount of post 9/11 neoconservative organizations. Woolsey knows Carlucci and his wife has worked with John Deutch and Bobby Ray Inman in various capacities. Through CSIS Woolsey has also been among the closest associates of Henry Kissinger, Maurice Greenberg and Zbigniew Brzezinski. In the years prior to 9/11 Woolsey also shared the board of the CIA-linked H. Smith Richardson Foundation with Brzezinski and Rumsfeld. In addition, through Crescent Investment, Woolsey had access to Al Qaeda elements in Pakistan. Upon joining the AFIO honorary board of directors in 2002, we know that Woolsey was also in close contact with Helms, Shackley and other controversial CIA spooks.
25. Many persons mentioned in this article are linked to child abuse networks. Is it possible that these prominent people really live in a world that is different from ours when it comes to the things they can hide and get away with?
26. The majority of key neoconservatives absorbed in the Bush administration had been active in the Center for Security Policy, a post-Cold War neocon continuation of the CIA and black operations-linked American Security Council. Drug trafficking, death squads, false flag terrorist operations and COINTELPRO were among the specialties of the old American Security Council. How likely is it that the Center for Security Policy all of a sudden disavowed these policies?
27. Trilateral Commission member George Shultz, a protege of the Bechtels and the Rockefellers, played a major role in putting together the foreign policy team for George W. Bush. His own protege, Condoleezza Rice, played a major role in these preparations. So did Paul Wolfowitz, another more minor protege of Shultz.
28. John Diebold's voting machines were accused in 2000 and 2004 of swinging the elections towards George W. Bush. Coincidentally John Diebold had been a close associate of the CIA and liberal establishmentarians as Zbigniew Brzezinski since the 1970s. Through the Committee for Economic Development, Diebold had also come to know Peter Peterson, Frank Carlucci, George Shultz and Joseph Kasputys years before 9/11.
29. Most of the names mentioned here appear in ISGP's Superclass Index, which for 90 percent was developed without 9/11 (or other conspiracies) in mind. The index is just the sum of (mainly) influential private institutes various persons have been involved with their lives.

Again, let's consider that the use of explosives and thermate at the World Trade Center is a fact. At that point everyone who looks at this list of facts really should start to wonder what the chances are that none of these people were involved in the operation to destroy the World Trade Center. What outside group would have swept in completely unnoticed to do the job and get out? Okay, Israel maybe. Potential evidence for the involvement of Israel:

1. In the months before the attack two Zionists, Larry Silverstein and Frank Lowy, took over the entire World Trade Center complex from the Port Authority, which had been running the buildings for decades. These Zionists were closely connected to Netanyahu, Sharon, Barak, Rupert Murdoch and Israel's national security establishment. These men do not appear in ISGP's Superclass Index.
2. A number of Jewish students were arrested on 9/11 after they had been seen cheering while the towers went down. They were driving a truck belonging to Urban Moving Systems, largely an Israeli company headquartered in New Jersey. After the men had been arrested, a police dog reacted to traces of explosives inside the van, but nothing was found. The men were eventually returned to Israel. They denied links to the Mossad and explained that they had taken it upon themselves to document what they were seeing. Like most employees of Urban Moving Systems, they were apparently happy with the attack for it meant a guaranteed future alliance between the U.S. and Israel in the field of anti-terrorism. The owner of Urban Moving System fled to Israel soon after 9/11 and it is suspected by some that the company was used for intelligence operations by the Mossad.
3. Larry Silverstein's "pull it" comment appears to be a clear, but somewhat veiled reference to controlled demolition of World Trade Center 7. As there is strong evidence that WTC 7 was brought down in a controlled demolition, Silverstein's admission has been copied to all parts of the internet and continues to cause endless debate.

Important: in this section facts are mixed in with quite a bit of speculation, as a possible scenario is being described here - not necessarily the absolute truth. I've been thinking of deleting it, but for now I'll leave it up. May give a few additional insights.

1989: It's 1989. The Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan and soon thereafter the Cold War is over. Throughout the late 1980s and the 1990s Russia is ruled by Gorbachev, Yeltsin and the oligarchs - all of them linked to western financial elites. Defense spending in the United States drastically decreases.

1996: Osama bin Laden begins his war against the United States. From May 1995 to December 1996 John Deutch is CIA director. Likely at the recommendation of Robert Gates, he picks covert operations outsider David Cohen as his deputy director of operations. Cohen stays on for some time under Deutch's successor, George Tenet.

1990s: Russia's economy is completely devastated under the corrupt Yeltsin. Oligarchs, often linked to Israel and Jewish bankers as the Rothschilds and Edmond Safra, come in the possession of much of Russia's wealth. Various mafia groups, sometimes also linked to Israel, control much of the country. Two high level "neocon" CIA men, James Woolsey and Fritz Ermarth (Le Cercle), reportedly are using Jewish-Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky as a tool to manipulate Russian politics and siphon off IMF aid to the country. 401 Others named in the IMF and related financial scandals are the oligarchs Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky and Roman Abramowich 402; Jewish-Russian mafia boss Simeon Mogelivich 403; Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Jewish banker Edmond Safra 404; CIA and Mossad front man Bruce Rappaport; and Rappaport's colleague at his Bank of New York-Inter Maritime, Alfred Hartmann 405, a 1001 Club member and important Rothschild banker whose name has also surfaced in the Banco Ambrosiano, BCCI and Iraqgate affairs. 406 Yeltsin and his family members also feature among the suspects of looting funds meant for the development of the country. 407

It appears that there are groups in the West who would like to see Russia economically devastated and possibly even split up into various smaller countries, as to never worry about Russian communism again.

1998: Founding of Russian GRU firm Far West, with its ties to Osama bin laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Shamil Basayev, as well as very high level drug trafficking, arms smuggling, and false flag terrorist operations. Its secret founding partners include Dick Cheney's KBR Halliburton and elite CIA-linked Saudis Prince Turki al Faisal and Adnan Khashoggi. Although anti-Putin, Anton Surikov of Far West will be suspected of having played a role in the 1999 Russian apartment bombings.

1999: Former KGB/FSB chief Vladimir Putin comes to power and begins to revive the Cold War by initiating the Russian apartment bombings of September 1999 and re-invading Chechnya. 408 He also initiates a program to retake the possessions of oligarchs as Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Berezovsky soon flees Russia and is given asylum in England. Khodorkovsky teams up with Henry Kissinger, Jacob Rothschild, Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Soros, but is later imprisoned by Putin. 409 Western elites, both liberal, conservative and Zionist are extremely worried. Among them is future 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean, who joins the board of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, founded by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Alexander Haig, with men on the board as pro-Israel CIA agent Michael Ledeen, PNAC founder William Kristol, neocon superman Richard Perle, CIA handler of the neocons James Woolsey, Center for Security Policy founder Frank Gaffney, and two dozen other trustees. 410 Good to know the later investigation of 9/11 is in such truly independent hands.

1999: As they are always doing, liberal and conservative elites in the United States - key members of which can all be found in ISGP's Superclass Index - are discussing how to best deal with the situation in the Middle East. They are primarily concerned with two issues:

1. Secure future oil supplies to the West, especially with a peak in conventional oil approaching.
2. Stop Russia and China from becoming too powerful by limiting their access to Middle Eastern oil.

Everyone largely agrees on the basic strategy set out by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. The 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is also considered very important. It is written by Samuel Huntington, who, pre-9/11, shares various boards with leading 9/11 suspects. At the top-level Center for the National Interest he works with Kissinger, Conrad Black, Schlesinger and neocons as Perle, Kristol, Wolfowitz and Zakheim. Post 9/11 he is joined here by Brzezinski, Scowcroft, Peterson and Greenberg. 411 He is sharing the board of Freedom House with Brzezinski, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Woolsey. 412 He can also be found on the board of the CIA-linked H. Smith Richardson Foundation, again with Brzezinski, Rumsfeld and Woolsey. 413 All this is in the late 1990s. The overall objective of the group becomes to:

1. prevent the rise of new powerful anti-western regimes in the Middle East that can threaten Israel, Saudi Arabia, western Europe or even the United States;
2. transform various existing Middle Eastern regimes hostile to the West into pro-western democracies or pseudo-democracies;
3. deal with Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda group, as well as all other branches of Muslim extremism.

Under normal circumstances a long-term approach of diplomacy, political pressure and covert financing may be preferred to achieve these goals, but with a potential revival of the Cold War and countries being increasingly pressured to secure their share of Middle Eastern oil, a more drastic approach is needed.

Understanding Saudi Arabia might be key in understanding 9/11.

Everyone on the inside agrees with the notion that the best way to guarantee oil deliveries in the near future is to quickly transform the entire Middle East region. Most likely the Middle East will become politically irrelevant within the next three to four decades with conventional oil running out, assuming shale oil is able to fully replace conventional demands. Everyone in these discussions realizes that if shale oil doesn't cut it that in the next 10 to 20 years international strategy most likely will turn into a game of "every superpower for himself" and "last man standing" - so it's considered best to be as early in the game as possible. Keep in mind there was little to no talk about shale oil at this point.

All that is needed for massive intervention in the Middle East is a pretext. Osama bin Laden's freshly-announced war against the United States turns out to be a gift from heaven. If Osama is able to succeed in one major attack against the United States, this will be all the pretexts the United States will ever need. Luckily for the group, bin Laden is already planning for such an attack. All he needs is a little help, so the liberal and conservative elites in the United States decide they are going to look the other way. But even then Osama and his army of terrorists aren't competent enough to launch an attack that will traumatize the nation to such an extent that it will guarantee support for an indefinite War on Terror. Multiple attacks are not an option, because with each new attack the administration and the intelligence services will come under critical review. What is needed is one massive, traumatizing attack. It has to be non-nuclear and preferably can be tied to as many Middle Eastern countries as possible.

Once it is agreed on that the attack will be allowed to happened, the CIA old boys network - Helms, Shackley, Bush Sr., Carlucci - and their Saudi friends - Prince Turki, Bandar bin Sultan - are consulted on how to best covertly manage Osama's hijackers (both were probably already in the process of doing this). Quite possibly Dick Cheney was used as the U.S. tie to Russian GRU firm Far West, which would have influence with the Pakistani ISI and Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri. In any case, before the hijackers set foot in the United States, powerful people already know their purpose. President Bill Clinton has been informed about the plot and helps manage the operation from the White House - as his link to Wally Hilliard seems to indicate. It's possible he doesn't know any details, as the attack will happen only after he will have left office.

November 1999: With help from partner firm AIG, the Blackstone Group has begun the process to take full control of Kroll Associates, the primary security consultant to the WTC. AIG, already the third largest shareholder, is ran by CIA asset Maurice Greenberg and Henry Kissinger. Blackstone is ran by one their best friends, Peter Peterson. All three are good friends of WTC founder David Rockefeller, whose family has its own major ties to the Saudis; and former CIA director Richard Helms. Also retired CIA men as Carlucci and Deutch are part of their Trilateral Commission group.

Already at this point discussions are going on that the future hijackers might be needing some help when they attack the World Trade Center towers, not just in the form of convenient surveillance failures and a failue to issue shoot down orders, but actually in bringing the towers down. Calculations show that it is unlikely the towers will even partially collapse from the plane impacts. These conspirators agree that the attack will have to be devastating and traumatizing enough in order to receive a carte blanche from the public to limit the democratic process and invade the Middle East. The Twin Towers are the absolute best target to achieve this objective with, despite David Rockefeller possibly not being particularly happy with seeing the towers go. But national security is not his domain at all and he just has to take one for the team.

January 2000: The first hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, move to the United States, fresh from a Kuala Lumpur al-Qaeda Summit. Through Saudi intelligence officer Omar al-Bayoumi they are being taken care off by Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al Faisal and ambassador Bandar bin Sultan, at the request of the old boys in the CIA, the White House and those that are part of Kissinger's group. Terrified that these Saudis are of Muslim extremists that loathe their cooperation with the Americans, they are eager to cooperate and have the United States deal with their enemies.

March 2000: The CIA Counterterrorist Center finds out that Hazmi and Mihdhar have arrived in the United States soon after visiting the Kuala Lumpur Al Qaeda conference. They forget to put the two on watchlists, forget to inform the FBI, and lose track of them. The CIA CTC is headed by Cofer Black, an old acquaintance/enemy of Osama bin Laden in Sudan. Alleged mafia hitman and Contra cocaine trafficker Enrique Prado is his close aide.

June 2000: More hijackers move to the United States. They end up taking flight lessons in Florida from criminal elements in the CIA who do business with the Saudis. The financier of the flight school where ringleader Mohammed Atta is going, Wally Hilliard, is in regular contact with Bill Clinton. The old boy CIA men are almost down the block at the AFIO, some of them keeping an eye on the operation.

October 2000: Peter Peterson of Blackstone, struggling to acquire Kroll, takes over the mortgage of WTC 7. He now becomes a lender to Larry Silverstein, who has been involved with Building 7 since it was built in the 1980s.

November 2000: The 9/11 operation goes into high gear now that the terrorists are firmly in place. CIA station chief of New York (at WTC 7) since 1997, David Cohen, is approached by his old patrons at the CIA, Robert Gates and John Deutch. He is asked to retire from active service, join AIG and run the operation to demolish the WTC towers. Maurice Greenberg and Henry Kissinger have approved of the operation. Kroll, partly owned by AIG, directly or indirectly aids in the operation. In addition, AIG controls all the North Tower impact floors through Marsh and McLennan, as well as floors 47 to 55 of the South Tower, where the offices of its subsidiary Guy Carpenter are located.

Cohen, once one of the most trusted CIA officers of William Casey and Robert Gates (linked to drug trafficking, potential mind control research, and in case of Casey, pedophile entrapment networks), has all the expertise and connections to run the operations. After all, he was Deutch's deputy director of covert operations in the 1995-1997 period. Most likely he would have known WTC 7 building leaser Larry Silverstein, as well as mortgage holder Peter Peterson.

Early 2001: A dozen Ukrainian KH-55 cruise missiles disappear towards Iran through KBR Halliburton and Diligence LLC partner Far West. Iran back-engineers the cruise missiles, improves on the technology, and is soon seen as a threat to the West. There are rumors that a few nuclear warheads have also made their way to Iran through Far West.

April-July 2001: Larry Silverstein takes over the rest of the WTC complex. Along with his partner, an Australian billionaire with Israeli national security ties, Frank Lowy, he becomes almost the sole reason why people suspect Israeli involvement in the 9/11 plot.

July 2001: Future Flight 77 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar returns from a trip to Mecca, but isn't tracked or arrested upon arrival in the U.S. because the CIA CTC still hasn't put him on a watchlist.

August 20, 2001 (approximately): Tenants are informed that in the weekend of September 8-9 the upper half of the South Tower will have no power due to recabling work that needs to be done. Reportedly this will be the first time since the 1993 bombing that there will be a complete loss of power in one of the towers. Scott Forbes of Fiduciary Trust is of the opinion that tenants are given relatively little time to come up with solutions to this loss of power, because many corporations have to rely on their systems 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

August 23, 2001 (approximately): Additional security measures are taken at the tower, with many guards now having to work 10 hour shifts. Apparently there are rumors of an impending attack on the towers.

September 6, 2001: Osama bin Laden later claims to have known the exact day of the attack the Thursday before it happened, most likely because the hijackers were waiting for a period of ideal weather forecasts. Ironically, this is the same Thursday that additional security is removed from the towers.

September 8-9, 2001: Extensive recabling work is being done over the weekend in the upper half of the South Tower. Scott Forbes of Fiduciary Trust, who is on duty that weekend due to the power outage, will become very skeptical of the work done that weekend. The Port Authority and 9/11 Commission refuse to accept his testimony, however.

As to what was done in the building that weekend is impossible to say (if it happened at all, because there is only one source), but it is very possible that the work had to be speeded up if there was knowledge that the attack was about to happen.

September 11, 2001: It's Tuesday morning, the attack happens. Liberal and conservative establishments now continue their debate in public on how to best reorganize the Middle East. Liberals prefer to first deal with Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan; (neo)conservatives, always looking out for Israel, want Saddam Hussein gone. Others, like Alexander Haig, think that it would be a good idea to target Syria before going after Hussein. In later years Iran becomes a primary target of the (neo)conservatives, with eventually the liberal establishment also largely giving up on diplomatic solutions as long as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in power.

Summary: who did it?

As demonstrated in Part 1, it's pretty much impossible to rationally argue against the theory that explosives and thermate were located inside the World Trade Center towers. If this is considered fact and looking at all the evidence in this second article, then the conclusion has to be made that virtually all major suspects can be found in ISGP's Superclass Index. There's no way around it. For several reasons this also makes sense:

1. The persons in this index (plus a few CIA officers and close friends) can be tied to just about every conspiracy the world has seen: Kennedy, Mockingbird, Watergate, MKULTRA, Jonestown, CIA drug trafficking, Iran-Contra, Iraqgate, BCCI, the Strategy of Tension, the Franklin affair, the Dutroux X-Dossiers, Haut de la Garenne, the Russian apartment bombings, the rise of ISIS - you name it. What's the chance that all of a sudden some other, totally unknown group is involved?


2. These are the only persons with the connections in the media, politics and intelligence to plot something of the magnitude of 9/11 and get away with it.


3. At any one time, most leading superclass members are thought to have long lost power. However, these individuals continue to exert huge influence on later administrations, including the Bush 43 administration, through advisory roles and proteges that have risen to cabinet level positions. They and their friends also make - and have been - ideal private sector, fully-deniable CIA assets.

As should be clear by now, the primary suspects of having carried out the operation were involved in the covert CIA-Saudi relationship that goes back to 1976 when George H. W. Bush was director of the CIA. He and his allies - Frank Carlucci, Ted Shackley, Richard Helms - are considered some of the main suspects, along with Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al Faisal and Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan. Both are known to be very close to this CIA group and to have also covertly supported those responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Kissinger as chair of the 9/11 Commission, due to his past as national security advisor, 40 Committee chairman, and secretary of state giving orders to Helms on (very questionable) worldwide CIA operations, as well as Kissinger's apparent ties to the WTC through AIG and his closest friends, would have been the ideal pick of Bush in heading any "independent" inquiry into 9/11 that might expose the activities of his former subordinates.

Then again, his replacements, all of them superclass members, did an "excellent" job as well, with Commission vice chair Lee Hamilton already being known as a person who aided Bush's father in covering up his (deep) involvement in the CIA-Contra cocaine import scandals of the 1980s and chairman Thomas Kean soon popping up as an officer of the elite Pilgrims Society, along with Henry Kissinger. It's a total disgrace, of course, that the media didn't make sure that the 9/11 Commission was replaced by something truly independent, let alone their silence over the even more sensitive NIST reports on the WTC collapses.

Parallel to these traditional CIA-Saudi Safari Club connections is the relationship of the same Saudis (including Adnan Khashoggi) and CIA people of a later generation with Russian GRU firm Far West since 1998. KBR Halliburton of Dick Cheney, the soon-to-be vice president of the United States, also played a leading role in this group. Besides the Saudis, Far West should be the top suspect in not just handling terrorist Shamil Basayev, but also Ayman Al Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden. Far West also appears to have excellent ties to the leadership of the Pakistani ISI, which time and again has proved to be the handler of the Taliban and, looking at the $100,000 wire transfer to Mohammed Atta right before 9/11 and them shielding Osama bin Laden, quite possibly even Al Qaeda. These aspects are only discussed in various updates to this 9/11 article.

While it might be impossible to figure out the exact activities of the Bush administration, the FBI and George Tenet's CIA in the years preceding 9/11, luckily there is such a thing as a private, more easily observable establishment loaded with mentors to present administration officials from which major conspiracies seem to emerge.

The fact is, nothing happens without the liberal establishment's consent, because major media outlets, as the Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, Time magazine, CBS, CNN and others, are all part of this establishment. ISGP's article on the Pilgrims Society already shows plenty of evidence for that. Key names of the liberal establishment include Maurice Greenberg, WTC 7 leaseholder Peter Peterson, David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger and even the CIA men just mentioned. As discussed in ISGP's American Security Council article, this CIA group has always controlled much of the Pentagon's conservative defense establishment, using it in covert operations whenever necessary. Helms' father and brother were in the Pilgrims Society and he is a good friend of the men just mentioned. The Bush family has a long history with members of the Pilgrims Society. Carlucci and Deutch of the CIA were visitors of the Trilateral Commission. Peterson and Greenberg visited the commission in the 1990s, with Rockefeller, Brzezinski, Volcker and Kissinger all among the leadership.

Essentially it can be said that the primary suspects of 9/11 are a combination of Trilateral Commission members (but not the Trilateral Commission itself) and senior old boy CIA officers cooperating with the Saudis. There are just numerous facets to the 9/11 intrigue. There are the Saudis, the ISI, Far West, Al Qaeda, the CIA, the White House and, looking at the Zionist owners of the WTC in particular, the Israelis. However, the bottom line seems to be that a number Trilateral Commission members, one ex-president, one or two sitting presidents, and a group of old boy CIA officers devised the operation and effectively were in charge of it. They could have put a stop to it any time they wanted, but it appears they not only refused to do so, they helped make the attack more devastating than Osama and his 300 cave dwellers could have done on their own. The primary motive appears to have been to reorganize the Middle East for a variety of reasons.

Most people who question 9/11 will probably continue to blame "the neoconservatives". However, the neoconservatives hardly exist as a separate establishment. At least, not yet. Most of them have a career as mid level Pentagon employees and pro-Israel scholars and appear to be fronts for the CIA-Mossad relationship originally maintained by men as James Angleton and Ted Shackley. Few neoconservatives are actually worth mentioning, but some of the key ones in the Bush administration are discussed in appendix A of this article. Also, key foundations backing the neocon movement, have had plenty of "liberal" Eastern Establishment figures on them.

Personally, if I'm asked to make an informed guess as to how 9/11 probably came about, I'd propose the following theories:

1. Osama bin Laden planned the attacks, but his operation was manipulated by Saudis intelligence, either directly or through terrorist foundations as Mercy International and Al Haramain. Possibly the network Far West - Saudi Intelligence - ISI simply ordered Osama to attack the World Trade Center and Pentagon, with Osama not having a clue that there's been high level debate with people in the U.S. government. Quite possibly Osama is simply an asset who does what he is told.
2. In any case, early on the Saudis informed their allies in the old boy CIA network surrounding the AFIO, OSS Society and Le Cercle about Osama's plot;
3. The old boy CIA network immediately consulted the Rockefeller/Kissinger group in New York to debate the pros and cons of allowing one major non-nuclear attack against the United States;
4. Clinton was informed, at least to a degree, and decided that allowing such an attack would be a possibility, but not under his watch;
5. The Saudis, who would have enjoyed the idea of the U.S. declaring war or all their (Sunni and especially Shia) enemies, asked permission from the CIA to assign one of their U.S.-based agents to the first group of hijackers;
6. Clinton knew the identities of the second group of hijackers before they even entered the country;
7. Cofer Black and Enrique Prado at the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center let the hijackers roam free on purpose on orders from the White House or George Tenet.
8. Henry Kissinger and Maurice Greenberg, who both ran AIG, hired former CIA deputy director of operations and CIA station chief of New York David Cohen after consultations with Robert Gates, John Deutch, Richard Helms (a former consultant to AIG) and likely George Tenet and Cofer Black with the express purpose of putting him in charge of the operation to bring down the towers after the impacts of the planes. (a very bolt theory/prediction of what one day may be found evidence for).
9. AIG and Blackstone did their best to acquire full control of Kroll Associates, because the firm would come to play an important role in advising David Cohen and his private CIA group on the WTC's security system, how to bypass it and all the intricacies of the building's design features.
10. Bush was the preferred presidential candidate by these elites, because his father knew every single 9/11 conspirator very well: from the Reagan ultraconservatives, the Kissinger group and the CIA to the Saudis.
11. The Diebold Corporation, with its long standing ties to the CIA and State Department elites, helped Bush win the election, explaining the rather huge differences between the exit polls and eventual results.
12. Rumsfeld was picked as defense secretary because he was a friend and political protege of CIA man Frank Carlucci, as well as a friend of the liberal, conservative and Zionist establishments.
13. So many future Bush administration officials came from the Center for Security Policy because they love to do the dirty work, which is what everyone also expects of them: carry out false flag attacks, invade countries, introduce anti-democratic legislation. Their brief involvement in high office also allowed for convenient theories that Israel and these neocons had taken over the U.S. government and were behind 9/11. Since then this "rogue" group has been put back into the box, it appears.
14. Leads to Israel - with or without the consent of the Israeli leadership - were intentionally created to draw away attention from U.S. and Saudi establishments involved in the plot and to help discredit future "conspiracy theories".
15. That various persons involved in 9/11 had different ideas on how to best reorganize the Middle East, with liberals preferring to focus first on Al Qaeda and (neo)conservatives, as well as Zionists, wanting to get rid of Saddam as fast as possible.

To put it shorter, the evidence points to:

1. Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda having plotted the attack.
2. Saudi and Pakistani elites having supported the war of bin Laden against the West, but at the same time were interested in having Bush declare war on all their Muslim enemies (Hussein and Shia states Syria and Iran in particular).
3. Liberal and conservative CIA elites having picked up on the attack for over a year before it took place, largely through Saudi allies.
4. Liberal and conservative CIA elites having increased the dramatic effects of the attack by rigging the World Trade Center towers with explosives and thermate.
5. Liberal and conservative CIA elites using the attack in their favor by giving themselves a nearly indefinite carte blanche to restructure the entire Middle East.
6. The Bush administration hijacking any "genuine" War on Terror or War on Weapons of Mass Destruction agendas by first zooming in on privatizing Iraq's oil reserves, this to satisfy the massive amount of corporate backing he gets from the oil industry.

Even if the tenants of the various floors had absolutely no clue that their floors were being rigged with explosives, that still leaves their friends at AIG, Blackstone, the Port Authority and Larry Silverstein as suspects. When it somehow turns out that no explosives and thermate were located inside the buildings, there is still the evidence that the CIA and Saudi intelligence elites were on top of the hijackers for over a year before they carried out their attack. In all cases the same group of persons is implicated, so it seems that with this article we really managed to narrow down the list of suspects for 9/11 to approximately 70 of the most connected individuals on the planet - who also just happen to have been implicated in many other alleged conspiracies. Some of the conclusions reached are rather bold, but this has been done on purpose. Essentially they are predictions as to what the ultimate true story of 9/11 will look like if it ever comes out. But, of course, that's a really big IF, of course.

UPDATES

WTC's additional national security and Zionist ties

While the CIA's David Cohen remains ISGP's chief suspect of having ran the operation to bring down the WTC towers, additional information indicates that Israel was very much aware of the operation. Remember governor Christine Todd Whitman, the person who appointed Lewis Eisenberg head of the Port Authority, and with that, the World Trade Center complex? The same Eisenberg who leased the World Trade Center to fellow (billionaire) Zionists Larry Silverstein and Frank Lowy?

As it turns out, Whitman is even more connected than already anticipated. So connected, in fact, that she has been added to ISGP's Superclass Index at a shared 78th place (only five women are ranked above her). She's a member of the Alfalfa Club, executive chair of the Eisenhower Fellowships, director of the American Security Project, a 1998 Bilderberg visitor, etc., etc. Among the aspects not previously explained is that she has known Eisenberg since about 1991, four years before appointing him head of the Port Authority. 414 Both founded the Republican Leadership Council in 1993, with Eisenberg, a vice chairman of the Republican Jewish Committee, becoming the chief lobbyist for the Republican Jewish vote. 415 That's far from all. Unable to confirm it the first time around, Eisenberg was indeed involved with the powerful and radical Israel lobby group AIPAC. To be more precise, he served as a director from 1998 to 2003. 416 As ISGP found out while putting together its index of institutes, right up until 9/11, Eisenberg served on the board of the International Republican Institute (IRI), one of several combined CIA/State Department fronts involved in overthrowing countries around the world. Among the prominent board members with Eisenberg, were Kissinger Associates men Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, as well as Center for Security Policy and Cercle veterans Edwin Feulner and Jeane Kirkpatrick. Senator John McCain, discussed here for his involvement in discrediting the 9/11 Truth movement and his extensive ties to the group suspected here of involvement in 9/11, has headed the IRI since 1993. 417 Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld 418, controversial CIA operations officer and 9/11 Intelligence Inquiry chairman Porter Goss 419, and at least post-9/11, Christine Whitman 420, have all headed IRI teams into various countries that were ripe for regime change or a little boosting of their democratic principles.

Also, already back in the 1990s Whitman could be found on the board of the Peres Center for Peace, quite possibly the most elite group for relations between the liberal establishment, Israel and the Zionist international. Most trustees served for very long periods. All persons mentioned below already served on the board of the Peres Center before 9/11:

Zionist trustees include: Lester Crown, a mafia-linked protege of Obama, who controls General Dynamics; Rockefeller-ally and Israeli banker Jacob Frenkel; the mafia-linked Charles Bronfman of the Power Corporation of Canada; Swiss-based banker Edgar de Picciotto, an associate of George Soros and Russia mafia- and Mossad money launderer Edmond Safra and, along with the Bronfmans, at one point a favorite target of Lyndon Larouche; Baron Eric de Rothschild; Sir Evelyn de Rothschild; Isabel Maxwell, daughter of Mossad- and Yakuza-ally Robert Maxwell; Bruce Rappaport, the CIA and Mossad asset who was at the center of the Russian IMF money laundering scandal; and exiled Russian oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky, equally linked to the Russian mafia and the IMF money laundering scandal.

Liberal establishment trustees include: James Baker III, Henry Kissinger, John Whitehead, Mortimer Zuckerman (Zionist), Senator Joseph Lieberman and Rothschild family friend, Senator Daniel Moynihan. Most of these persons have been mentioned in this article before. 421

Readers can check other associations of Christine Whitman in ISGP's Superclass Index. The basic conclusion is that if there is any group in the world with the means and a lack of conscience to take down the World Trade Center and cover it up, it would be the group Whitman has been part of since at least the mid-1990s.

UPDATES/APPENDICES

From the WTC to Far West to the Russian Apartment Bombings

The timeline in this article dealing with Russian-American relations is a bit dated, after largely having written, but not published due to time constraints, a 50,000 word article on Russia's power structures. Simply put, Russia has the traditional think tank elite, the oligarchs, with a dominant Zionist element during the Yeltsin years; Putin's more nationalist "Petersburgers", and, certainly during the early Yeltsin years, an ultra-right-wing military siloviki aspect. For the most part Putin has suppressed all other establishments, including the Zionist-oriented Solntsevskaya mafia that has been particularly close with many oligarchs and some think tank elitists. ISGP's intro article contains a section on Russian politics.

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"I don't get it. Why did it take two whole days to tell the world it was an exercise? Frankly, it is incomprehensible. ... Let's start with the fact that they told us it was sugar in the bags [instead of RDX]. Does this mean that neither the FSB specialists nor the interior ministry know what sugar looks like? ... Let's just imagine that real explosives were planted and it was a real attempt at provocation in order to increase tension in the Caucasus and so on and so forth. Do we have any guarantee that we would have been given an accurate reply that we, the public, would find convincing to what had happened? I suspect, unfortunately, that we wouldn't."

Evgeni Savostianov, former Moscow FSB/KGB chief, on the March 2000 NTV program about the Moscow apartment bombings of September 1999. Putin and the FSB, who basically revived the Cold War, were completely implicated in the bombings. Present on the program were Ryazan building residents, various witnesses, experts and the FSB leadership to counter the claims of conspiracy. In fact, Anton Surikov, a clandestine business partner of 9/11 vice president Dick Cheney, as well as terrorist-sponsoring Saudi and Pakistani intelligence, has been accused of involvement in the bombing. His Far West group apparently handled Muslim terrorist Shamil Basayev, accused of the Moscow bombings, as well as Al Qaeda's Ayman al Zawahiri and seemingly also Osama bin Laden.

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Another interesting 9/11-related coincidence showed up while writing this article on Russia. This coincidence is related to WTC co-owner Frank Lowy and Far West, a black operations front for the Russian Ministry of Defense. In a minute it will be described what Far West exactly is, but in the 1993-1995 period two directors of this company, Anton Surikov and Audrius Butkevicius, were visiting scholars at the Centre for Defence Studies, King's College, at the University of London. 422 Both Surikov 423 and Butkevicius 424 had important CIA ties at this point, something which is rather unusual for Russian intelligence officers. Chairman of the Centre for Defence Studies from 1991 to 1996 was the very well-connected British-Australian Robert J. O'Neill 425. In 2003 this O'Neill showed up in Australia as a founding director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy (LIIP), along with Martin Indyk 426, the first executive director of AIPAC and a director of Lowy's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. Rupert Murdoch and James Wolfensohn have been among the persons on the Lowy Institute's advisory board. 427 Wolfensohn, together with Jacob Rothschild were key partners in Fuji Bank, the firm that controlled the South Tower impact floors from which molten steel was seen flowing in the minutes before collapse. Frank Lowy, of course, was the partner of Larry Silverstein in buying the World Trade Center complex from Port Authority chairman Lewis Eisenberg. All three were radical Zionists with highest level national security ties.

Where is this going? That's hard to say. For starters, it would be very interesting to know how well O'Neill knew Anton Surikov of Far West, because, as the reader will see, Surikov and Far West have been deeply linked to Muslim terrorism, along with partners that include the Saudis and the neocons. As both men were connected enough to be taken up in ISGP's Superclass Index - the top 300 or so most connected persons in the world - there's a good chance that they knew each other to some extent. In England O'Neill was involved with the Rhodes Trust and Ditchley. He also headed the International Institute for Strategic Studies. In Australia, in 2001, he was the founding chair of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. In 2003 he joined the newly-established Lowy Institute and in 2008 showed up as a fellow at the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

Anton Surikov was one of O'Neill's Russian counterparts in the world of defense studies - at least in official terms. As a "political scientist" Surikov was a protege of key think tank elitist Andrei Kokoshin 428, who still works with Henry Kissinger and associates on questions of nuclear proliferation. His father, from 1976 to 1992, was deputy director of the Central Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNIIMash), Russia's ICBM production facility. As can be seen in ISGP's index of institutes, both father and son were involved in a range of establishment think tanks. In 1992 both men participated in the Dartmouth Conferences, which has brought together American and Russian elites on an annual basis since 1960. David Rockefeller was among four American participants who attended the conference for more than 25 years. Hal Saunders, a protege of Kissinger, was another. Yevgeny Primakov, Georgy and Alexei Arbatov, and Andrei Kokoshin were among the big Russian names attending the conference for many years.

Surikov, however, who died under suspicious circumstances in 2009, was more of a covert schemer than a political scientist. He and close friends, Ruslan Saidov, a Chechen; and Vladimir Filin, a Ukrainian, reportedly all served together in the GRU - Russian military intelligence - since the 1980s in Afghanistan. 429 By the 1990s, when Russia had descended into one corrupt, criminal swamp, these men were taking orders from "party of war" defense minister Pavel Grachev and involved in anything from illegal weapons sales, to assassinations and drug trafficking 430 - even manipulating jihadist terrorist groups. Most infamously, Surikov is widely reported to have been assigned as the handler of Chechen separatist and terrorist Shamil Basayev in the 1992-1993 Georgian-Abkhazian War. 431 Until his death in 2004, Basayev was the Osama bin Laden of the Caucasus. Instead of fighting his Jihad against the United States, his primary enemy was Russia. A list of activities Basayev has been associated with:

• November 9, 1991: Basayev and two associates hijack an airplane and take 178 people hostage. They threaten to blow up the plane unless Russia withdraws its troops from Chechnya. Russia withdraws anyway due to heavy Chechen resistance. The hijackers give themselves over and are safely returned to Chechnya. The new president/dictator, Dzhokhar Dudayev, makes Basayev one of his militia leaders. Dudayev controls the notorious Chechen mafia in Moscow, under the control of Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev.
• August 1992 - September 1993: During the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict Basayev arises as a major Chechen war criminal, himself beheading dozens of Georgian soldiers and civilians in various creative ways.
• June 14-19, 1995, during the 1st Chechen War: Basayev heads an armed Chechen group that takes 1,500 Russians hostage in a Budyonnovsk hospital. About 150 children are among the group. Basayev demands that Russian forces withdraw from Chechnya and begins to shoot hostages. A failed rescue attempt leaves over 100 hostages dead, after which Russia gives in and begins to negotiate with the Chechens. As in 1991, Basayev is allowed to return to Chechnya.
• 1999: Basayev forces the introduction of Sharia law in Chechnya, in opposition to the vast majority of Chechens, including president Aslan Maskhadov, who really has no choice but to obey the extremist militias.
• August 1999: Basayev is heading the invasion of Dagestan, triggering the appointment of the unknown Putin as prime minister and the start of the Second Chechen War. There are widespread rumors that Putin's (Zionist) patrons, Boris Berezovsky and his business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili, with the support of Yeltsin, have been bribing Chechen commanders into starting the war.
• September 1999: Basayev is named as a key organizer of the Russian apartment bombings. Putin's "Petersburg" group is deeply implicated in covering up the failed Ryazan bombing, even though the most important programs have been put together by his (later) political enemies, Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky. Others implicated over the years are Anton Surikov and GRU head General Valentin Korabelnikov. Most prominent critics of the bombing have either died or were intimidated.
• October 23, 2002: Basayev is behind the Moscow theater hostage siege. Up to 900 people are taken hostage. 130 die.
• December 27, 2002: Basayev is behind a truck bombing in Grozny on Russia-backed government officials. 83 people are killed.
• Other suicide bombings follow over the next few years.
• September 2004: Basayev is behind the Beslan Massacre. 1,100 people are taken hostage, including 777 children. Eventually 385 people die, 186 of them children.

Whether or not Basayev already was a GRU asset in November 1991, at the very beginning of Chechen independence, his "expertise" in terrorism was immediately put to good use by the new Chechen president, Dzhokhar Dudayev. Although the Russians often hardly acted any better, Dudayev was a corrupt leader who destroyed and criminalized Chechnya's economy. 432 His militia also formed the notorious Chechen mafia 433, which began a virtual genocide against Russians still living in Chechnya. 434 The Chechens themselves also suffered greatly. In Moscow the Chechen mob was locked into a turf war with the KGB/FSB-backed Solntsevskaya mafia. 435 Russia of the 1990s was an incredible mess.

Most of the important oligarchs belonged to Solntsevskaya. A few, most notably Boris Berezovsky and business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili, while being Zionist, were tied to the Chechens and have been widely accused of having bribed Basayev into attacking Dagestan, in order to create a pretext to appoint Putin prime minister, re-invade Chechnya, and quickly build Putin up as the Yeltsin camp's preferred presidential candidate. Incredibly, ISGP has actually found that Patarkatsishvili was the neighbor of "Nebula" leader Felix Przedborski in Antibes, with Berezovsky having his estate down the road. 436 ISGP also noticed major ties between Przedborski, Ukrainian mafia head Semion Mogilevich and Solntsevskaya (not to mention an Israeli-CIA child snuff ring) 437, indicating that back in the 1990s Przedborski served as a key contact point between the CIA, Mossad, Solntsevskaya, the Chechens, the Vatican and seemingly also other mafias. ISGP has also come to suspect that the retired Mossad colonel whose team protected Przedborski might well have been Yair Klein 438, notorious for having turned the Medellin and Cali drug cartels into anti-communist death squads. 439

As this satellite image of Antibes shows, the southern-most tip of this resort town contains the largest estates by far. Either Przedborski or Berezovsky owned the largest domain in all of Antibes, but Przedborski has held it since at least the 1980s, when the Soviet Union still existed and Berezovsky barely had enough money to feed his children. Already back then Przedborski was hosting lavish parties with the mayor of Antibes attending. It was said that Przedborski "owned" Antibes. We'll leave Suleiman Kerimov and his primary financial trustee, Alexander Studhalter, alone for now, except to say that Kerimov may well be linked to Dagestani terrorism and Far West partner Adnan Khashoggi. 440 As can be seen below, the whole network surrounding Far West is extremely complex, made additionally hard to understand due to the fact that pretty much nothing has been written about Russian elites and their criminal ties.

A potential link between Robert J. O'Neill of the Lowy Institute and Far West partners Anton Surikov and Audrius Butkevicius would be interesting to prove, but turns out to be far from the only link between Far West and western elites. There's every indication that Far West directors have extensive ties to the CIA and are particularly fond of the hawkish neoconservatives and their CIA and Defense Department handlers.

While meeting O'Neill in the 1993-1995 period and reportedly first establishing ties with Fritz Ermarth of the CIA in 1996 441, it wasn't until October 1998, while Surikov was serving in the government of Yeltsin, under prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, that he and Filin set up Far West. 442 Filin became chairman. Ruslan Saidov soon joined them, along with other friends, seemingly all veterans of the GRU.

CIA front firm Diligence, LLC, Dick Cheney's KBR Halliburton and Russian military intelligence firm Far West, with Ruslan Saidov, Vladimir Filin and Anton Surikov pictured. Why did this neocon-leaning network ship cruise missiles to Iran, potentially even a few nuclear warheads, at the very beginning of the Bush administration? Far West has incredible (reported) connections to terrorists: from Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev to Al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, not to mention the Pakistani ISI and Prince Turki and Adnan Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia. Weren't the latter two linked to the events of 9/11? Yes, they were.

Interestingly, in 2007 JNR, the firm of Jacob and Nat Rothschild, appears to have bought a majority stake in Diligence, LLC. 443 Of course, Jacob Rothschild was also involved in the Yukos affair. Yukos' Mikhail Khodorkovsky was the partner of Kissinger and Rothschild in the Open Russia Foundation and automatically handed over Yukos to Rothschild after his arrest. Both Khodorkovsky and the Rothschilds are part of an international, criminal Zionist network, largely allied with the Zionist-oriented 444 Solntsevskaya mafia (in turn close to "the nebula"), so don't feel too bad for them losing an investment. Rothschild employee and 1001 Club member Robert Hartmann has been involved in the BCCI, BNL and Russian IMF money laundering scandals. The Rothschilds also have curious ties to the Russian Sistema company, linked to Solntsevskaya. 445 In fact, the Rothschild's most important oligarch partner in Russia, Oleg Deripaska 446, who is also backed by the CIA and involved with the CFR 447, is linked to the Russian mafia and is reported to have been present at a 1999 meeting in Israel with Semion Mogilevich 448, a sadistic 449 Zionist mafia chief allied with Solntsevskaya and Uzbek mafia boss Gafur Rakhimov. 450 Zionist oligarch Michael Cherney, also linked to the CIA's James Woolsey and John Deutch 451 and the Russian mafia 452, was also present at the meeting in Israel.

Maybe the fact that Jacob Rothschild was a long-term strategic partner of Fuji Bank with its offices at the impact floors of the South Tower, and from which molten metal was seen flowing in the minutes before the collapse, indeed was less of a coincidence than one might initially assume. A crime always leaves traces.

The company got involved in all the same illegal GRU business. It recent years it has had offices in Moscow, Afghanistan, Colombia, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Dubai, Pakistan and other countries. 453 In Afghanistan they ended up at Bagram Air Base, built by Dick Cheney's KBR Halliburton, a founding partner of the firm. 454 Halliburton, ISGP has noticed, shows up everywhere in Eurasia: in the controversial Estonia ferry sinking, which was seemingly also linked to Far West 455; in business associated with controversial Zionist oligarchs as Marc Rich and Frank Timis 456, and as a partner of the Zionist and Solntsevskaya-linked Alfa Group. 457 One of the CIA-associated uncles of the Boston bombers, Ruslan Tsarni, since 1999 worked for Halliburton contractors or under Halliburton executives. 458 KBR was also deeply involved in illegally shipping KH-55 cruise missiles to Iran in the months prior to 9/11. 459 Potentially a handful of nuclear warheads went along with the deal. 460 Fritz Ermarth became a 5% shareholder in Far West 461, which most likely represented KBR's stake.

As for Far West's other connections, sources of varying credibility (but most likely accurate, as much could be confirmed and nothing proven wrong) state that Far West was, or is, partnered with the Chechen government and mafia 462, the Saudis Prince Turki al Faisal and Adnan Khashoggi 463, the Pakistani ISI and the Uzbekistan dictatorship 464, the al Qaeda-financing Al Haramain Foundation 465, jihadist terrorists as Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev 466, ISI and CIA-sanctioned Taliban terrorist Mullah Abdullo 467, Al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri 468, the CIA-backed 469, bin Laden-allied Kosovo Liberation Army 470, and Dagestan and Ossetia-based terrorist groups 471.

Relations with the Americans, besides KBR and Fritz Ermarth, have reportedly gone through CIA and State Department elites as Fiona Hill, Robert Kagan, Randy Scheunemann, James Woolsey, William Webster and Robert Gates, with reports that the CIA was keeping an eye on its "investment". 472. It may be yet another coincidence, but all U.S. contacts listed here can be found in ISGP's Superclass Index, with "retired" CIA officer and Russia expert Fiona Hill being the only exception. Her name does show up in more than a few important NGOs, but she's still too much of a rising star to be listed in the index at this point. Far West leadership also maintained at least casual relations with the Mossad, including Shabtai Shavit, head of the Israeli spy agency from 1989 to 1996. 473

Besides KBR Halliburton, William Webster, founder and advisory board chairman of the secretive intelligence firm Diligence, LLC 474, is the most confirmed of these Far West partners 475 - this because we have official documentation implicating Diligence, KBR and Far West in secretly shipping KH-55 cruise missiles to Iran back in 2000 and early 2001, potentially along with a number of nuclear warheads. 476 A quick biography of William Webster from ISGP's article on the OSS Society and the AFIO:

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Obviously, Diligence is CIA, along with closely allied firm GlobalOptions, which has described itself as a "private CIA". GlobalOptions founder Neil Livingstone and his friend James Woolsey, who could also be found at Booz Allen Hamilton, later created a spin-off of GlobalOptions: the "consultancy" firm ExecutiveAction, LLC, a bizarre reference to the CIA's term for political assassinations. Ties with the Russian mafia-connected oligarchs are all over the place, so Far West would fit in rather neatly with this network. Anton Surikov actually had something to say about "consultancy" companies like these:

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1) Ruslan Saidov encircled. He and his firm have apparently been managing Zawahiri and bin Laden, along with partners as the ISI, the Saudis and the CIA. 2) April 2002: Zawahiri and bin Laden upholding the official 9/11 story. 3) November 2011: Zawahiri surfaces as the follow-up of Osama as head of Al Qaeda. He still has no clue what his Flight 93 hijackers were to attack on 9/11. Isn't it strange that he, nor Osama, have ever given any additional insights on 9/11? Is it really a surprise the U.S. didn't bring Osama back for a lengthy trial? Most likely half of the official story would come crashing down with an open trial.

In contrast to any other partnership the CIA engages in with elements in western or third world countries, there seems to be a degree of equality among the partners, including a degree of hostility and competition even, with Far West having accused just about every partner of crimes it has seemingly been involved in itself. Far West directors, including Surikov, have fingered the Saudis as financiers of terrorism and the Americans of having made 9/11 possible. 478 Back in 1998 they accused oligarch Alisher Usmanov of organized crime ties. 479 (which the oligarch has, like many others) They accused the Americans, the British and the Pakistani Aga Khans (1001 Club) of Afghan heroin trafficking. 480 Anton Surikov accused Dick Cheney, James Woolsey and Fritz Ermarth - all three partners of his Far West firm - of working with Boris Berezovsky, to build up an opposition party to Putin. 481 Incredibly, this was a plot in which Surikov played a key role. 482 On another occasion an associate of Surikov, Boris Kagarlitsky, published a lengthy article in Novaya Gazeta, implicating Surikov in the mock 1999 invasion of Dagestan and the subsequent Russian apartment bombings. 483 Surikov didn't deny the accusations, was "neither thrilled nor disturbed by it", and continued to cooperate with Kagarlitsky. 484 In 1995 Surikov also penned the militant, anti-western "Surikov document" in which he called for (continued) intervention in the Caspian Sea region, including Chechnya and Azerbaijan, in order to prevent western companies from exploiting the oil and gas here. In the same document he accused the oligarchs of looting the country. 485 However, at the same time he's been working with the West... Incredible, isn't it? Ever seen an intelligence agent this slippery?

As for ties to Al Qaeda, one gets the impression that Zawahiri, officially the number two in the organization, became an increasingly important asset to Far West and western elites as controversy around Osama bin Laden grew. According to one source, Ruslan Saidov, a Muslim director of Far West who ran the Caucasus branch of the Saudi-financed, pro-terrorist Al Haramain Foundation, and Zawahiri were conning Osama bin Laden by secretly working with the CIA on certain occasions. 486 Back in the late 1990s, Saidov is said to have helped Zawahiri get out of a Dagestani prison, indicating he is an important intelligence asset. It appears that at some point Zawahiri (and reportedly also Osama) was hidden away in the region of Miramshah, North Waziristan 487, a Taliban stronghold in Pakistan, the same country where Osama bin Laden was found and where most likely former Taliban head Mullah Omar is also hiding. Both bin Laden and Zawahiri have always fully supported the official version of events when it comes to 9/11, at least when on camera. But strangely, even Zawahiri doesn't seem to have a clue whether his Flight 93 hijackers were going to attack the White House or Congress. Isn't that a little strange as the right hand of Osama and a co-plotter in the attacks?

It remains incredible how small the world is at the very top. In the original version of this article, Prince Turki and Adnan Khashoggi were suspected of ties to the 9/11 hijackers and now, completely independent of that, these two men show up as partners in Far West, a Russian company that seems to control Muslim terrorism across Central Asia. In a bit more detail, according to a secretly taped conversation among key Far West directors, even after his resignation as head of Saudi intelligence days before 9/11, Prince Turki was considered the kingdom's "go-to guy" for illegal covert operations involving drug trafficking and secret liaisons with the CIA:

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For those that have forgotten, there were numerous reasons for suspecting the involvement of Prince Turki and other Saudi government officials in the events of 9/11. Evidence discussed earlier in this article included:

1. Prince Turki and a local CIA officer meeting a wanted Osama weeks before 9/11 in Dubai, with Prince Turki suddenly resigning from his post on August 31, 2001;
2. Prince Turki allegedly keeping contact with his old protege, Osama, on various occasions.;
3. Khashoggi and unidentified Saudi princes cooperating with terrorist flight school owner Wally Hilliard;
4. Osama's half brother, Yeslam, sending students to this tiny airport;
5. the wife of of Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan financing Pentagon plane hijackers on the other side of the United States;
6. Saudi financier Khalid bin Mahfouz, a former BCCI director, running the Al Qaeda sponsoring Muwafaq Foundation / Blessed Relief;
7. the three Saudi princes (four, actually) who died in late July 2002, after having been identified as patrons of Al Qaeda and related terrorist groups, along with Prince Turki;

Not mentioned earlier, but what most definitely should be added to list is:

1. that in addition to Mahfouz, Prince Turki, Khashoggi, Abdullah Taha Bakhsh (another old Bush associate) and an unknown brother of bin Laden all decided to finance Osama in May 1996. 489 Seven months earlier the Saudis may have tried to kill Osama, but by that time it appears that Al Qaeda was receiving training and protection from the CIA in the form of Ali Mohamed, a veteran of the Kennedy Special Warfare School. 490
2. The Saudi government running the Al Qaeda-linked Al Haramain Foundation, which is also linked to Far West, the Russian apartment bombings, Beslan and related terrorist attacks. 491
3. BCCI financier and Saudi government-linked businessman Esam Ghazzawi, a person who hosted 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta in his Florida home, suddenly fled the United States on August 30, 2001. 492
4. Adnan Khashoggi apparently getting himself involved with the 2004 Toronto 9/11 Citizen's Inquiry through Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus author John Gray 493, with Gray lying about his long-time association with Khashoggi and the organizers of the (no-plane theories promoting) conference accepting this lie. 494
5. Adnan Khashoggi possibly having a connection to Alex Jones' Genesis Communications Network (GCN). 495 This last suspicion is not at all certain, however.

Remember how closely-knit the Saudi government, a clan of ruling families, is? Saleh bin Abdul-Aziz Al ash-Sheikh, chairman of Al Haramain, has held his position as Saudi minister of religion since 1996. King Fahd ruled the country from 1982 until his death in 2005. Prince Turki, a favorite among western elites, was head of Saudi intelligence from 1979 until his sudden resignation on August 31, 2001. After that he was appointed Saudi ambassador to Great Britain and the United States. Bandar bin Sultan, also known as "Bandar Bush", and another Safari Club insider, was ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005. Since 2005 he has been secretary general of Saudi Arabia's National Security Council and in 2012 was also appointed head of Saudi intelligence. His father, crown prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, was Saudi Arabia's minister of defense from 1963 until his death in 2011 - almost half a century.

Doesn't it seem as if the Saudi royal family and its associates finance and largely control international terrorism? The evidence is quite overwhelming. Surprisingly, it's also less controversial than one might think. First off, Surikov threw his Saudi partners under the bus in a November 11, 2001 article of Pravda, the newspaper controlled by Far West:

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Surikov's exposés of his own business partners is truly one of a kind, but in case of the Saudis, the Americans seem to be doing a decent job of their own. A year after 9/11 the CFR's Task Force on Terrorist Financing concluded:

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As for the task force, interestingly, it was chaired by Maurice Greenberg, suspected in this article of deep involvement in the operation to bring down the World Trade Center towers. Together with Kissinger he controlled all north tower impact floors and, through Kroll, was closely linked to the WTC's security system. Not mentioned in this article is that Greenberg was a business partner of Adnan Khashoggi in the Urals 498, as well as the fact that he was a good friend of vice president Dick Cheney, a person who should be intimately familiar with the operations of Far West. In February 2002 Greenberg and Cheney prominently launched the CFR's Center for Geoeconomic Studies, with the express purpose to "create the next generation foreign policy expert, one who is literate and policy-capable in economics and foreign policy, in economics and national security, and in economics and other aspects of international affairs." 499

If the Cheney-Greenberg relationship isn't an impressive enough alliance of having made the World Trade Center operation possible, a regular member of this CFR task force was the CIA's David Cohen 500, suspected in this article of having overseen the operation to bring down the World Trade Center towers. So, peculiarly, he too played a role in identifying the Saudi link to the hijackers. Another task force member was William Webster, whom we have just discussed as a partner of Far West through Diligence, LLC, which made Webster a partner of the Saudi 9/11 suspects, Prince Turki and Adnan Khashoggi. Incredible, isn't it? We keep going round and round. Not mentioned yet is that Joe Allbaugh, head of FEMA at the time of 9/11, became a co-chair of Diligence some time after 9/11. FEMA was primarily responsible for prematurely shipping off all the WTC steel to the Far East. Diligence has many other establishment ties, which are too extensive to discuss here.

Another person who openly suspects Saudi Arabia of involvement in 9/11 is former Florida governor and senator Bob Graham. In 2012 the New York Times quoted him as saying:

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He was supported in his statement by Bob Kerrey, a former governor and senator of Nebraska:

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Kerrey, as a Navy Seal in Vietnam, has been accused of ordering the killing of women and children in the village of Thanh Phong. According to Senator John DeCamp in his book about the Franklin affair, Kerrey was a financial swindler during his period as a Nebraska politician, controlled by Warren Buffett and various other businessmen. At the national level he is not particularly tied to the establishment, but in 2012 he did join the board of the New York Leadership for Accountable Government (NY-LEAD). David Rockefeller, George Soros' son, Jonathan, and several other establishment individuals can be found here.

Prince Turki al Faisal and Dick Cheney, two old Far West partners, at a party in 2011.

As for Bob Graham, he was co-chair of the 9/11 Joint Intelligence Inquiry, along with his good friend Porter Goss, suspected earlier in this article of ties to the tiny airport where 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta was trained. This airport was owned by men seemingly linked to the Saudi establishment. Both Graham and Goss infamously had breakfast with Pakistani ISI head General Mahmoud Ahmed, who, according to Indian intelligence, wired $100,000 to 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta. As reported, the ISI is close to Far West, which in turn cooperates with the Saudis, Dick Cheney's Halliburton and the CIA. And again we go in circles.

CIA-ISI-Far West ties to the Taliban and Osama

What could be the reason behind dropping hints of Saudi involvement? The motive seems to be a combination of containment and exerting pressure. Whatever the reasons, it's a virtual certainty at this point that Saudi Arabia has played a much bigger role in the 9/11 attack than the Taliban in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

Speaking of Afghanistan, there are reports that Osama bin Laden was seen as a liability by the Taliban, much like the Saudis and Sudan had come to see the terrorist leader in earlier years. Soon after Osama's arrival, sanctions began to cripple Afghanistan's economy and with each new terror attack, there was the danger of U.S. retaliations, possibly even an invasion. It made little sense to keep Osama around. So by 2000, according to various reports, the Taliban was looking for ways to have Osama extradited. 503 These reports differ, however, on the exact details of the negotiations. Some say the Taliban was stalling. Others claim it was the United States at the presidential level that for almost two years refused to give permission for an extradition, or even a targeted killing. According to Kabir Mohabbat, the top intermediary in negotiations between the Taliban and the U.S. government:

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It must be said that Mohabbat's story was published by Alexander Cockburn and Counterpunch. Much like Oliver Stone, ISGP considers Cockburn an important intelligence asset, who may have had a reason to skew the information in order to attack the Bush administration.

It's true, for example, that the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks, instead demanding to see evidence. This is a peculiar position, as it is clear the United States was going to wipe the Taliban off the map. Why fight a battle over an insignificant issue that one can't win? It was clear at this point that Osama had been involved in previous attacks on U.S. targets, so there really was no reason to not give him up. And reportedly the Taliban didn't want to have bin Laden around in the first place.

It's speculation, but possibly Pakistan, and ISI head General Mahmud Ahmed in particular, was used to keep Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan until the invasion started, subsequently spiriting away some of the key individuals. One of the most important facts about the Taliban is that the movement was built up by the Pakistani ISI to take control of Afghanistan. There's evidence that even today the ISI uses the Taliban as their tool to oppose the government of Hamid Karzai. 505 In addition, there's a lot of evidence that the ISI has been hiding Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Taliban leader Mullah Omar; has worked with the Americans in building up the Mujahideen, is backing terrorism in India, and even played a role in financing the 9/11 hijackers. Pakistan always opposed military action against the Taliban, but were forced to cooperate immediately in the aftermath of 9/11 under threat that they would be bombed "back to the stone age". 506 Again, it's speculation, but quite possibly it was the ISI, on U.S. instructions, that ordered Mullah Omar to stall the negotiations over bin Laden, subsequently spiriting both out of the country. With the Pakistani ISI leadership having been named as associates of Far West 507, like the Saudis, equally linked to terrorism and 9/11, nothing seems impossible.

But even under threat of annihilation, Pakistan never seems to have been a trusted ally. A week after 9/11, a Pakistani diplomat made the claim that he had already been informed in July 2001 that Russia and the United States were going to attack Afghanistan before October, kill Osama bin Laden and overthrow the Taliban. 508 The reason for this campaign aren't hard to see, not when one looks at oil transport routes from the Caspian Sea. Having the Taliban harbor anti-American Islamic terrorists just wasn't going to work.

Pakistan is in the same situation as Saudi Arabia: despite a large amount of evidence that important government elements are key controllers of terrorist groups, nothing is done against them. Curiously, both countries were primary allies of the United States in the fight against the Russians by training and arming the Mujahideen, which later became the Taliban. The Far West link among them is equally curious. It really does seem that the CIA-Saudi Safari Club network, Far West and the ISI is at the core of controlling international terrorist groups.

Ultimately, the impression one gets is that hiding terrorists is of far less importance than oil interests and possibly the threat of nuclear weapons, primarily when it comes to threatening Israel. This only makes sense, as a group of terrorists, in reality, poses little threat to the United States and would only aid in bolstering the national security system. Certainly the late Georgi Arbatov, Russia's number one think tank elitist and a close associate of Henry Kissinger, got it right when he explained:

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Without knowing exactly what game is being played, the basic conclusion seems to be that the CIA's old Safari Club network-Saudi intelligence-Far West-ISI network should be investigated a lot more than it has been up until this point. Most likely it will be this network that can shed light on how international terrorism is being manipulated to suit the needs of not just the United States, but also Russia. And as we will see in the next section, it appears Turkey is also used to manipulate jihadist networks to use against the Russians.

Appendix A: full list of 9/11 suspects

For the most part the names in this list have already been discussed in this article. The biographies of the neocons in the Bush administration are the exception. These biographies should make it clear that there is hardly such thing as a "neocon establishment". Every single neocon has been groomed by the liberal or the conservative/defense establishment, the latter being run by CIA men as Richard Helms, Ted Shackley, George H. W. Bush, Frank Carlucci, James Woolsey and others. These same persons, however, apart from Israel, are close associates of leading personalities in the liberal establishment: Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George Shultz, etc. Also notice what a coincidence it is that there is such an extreme overlap between ISGP's 9/11 suspects and its independently created Superclass Index.

Important: the Superclass Index is updated regularly, so small deviations from the positions listed below are more than likely!

1. David Rockefeller: Number 6 in ISGP's Superclass Index. No direct ties, but close friend of Shultz, Brzezinski, Kissinger, Peterson, Greenberg, Wolfensohn, Jacob Rothschild and through his role in Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and Le Cercle, would have known virtually every other persons in this list.
2. George Shultz: Number 3 in ISGP's Superclass Index. Bechtel and Rockefeller representative since the mid 1970s. On 9/11: director of Bechtel and chairman of the international council of JPMorgan Chase, along with David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger (and soon with Riley Bechtel). Helped put together the Bush 43 administration with his protege Condoleezza Rice and various leading neocons. Highly interested in an Iraq invasion in order to receive government rebuilding contracts for Bechtel.
3. Zbigniew Brzezinski: Number 5 in ISGP's Superclass Index. Early CIA background. Both top level liberal and neocon ties. Trilateral Commission founder for David Rockefeller, a small, elite group visited by many persons in this list. Trustee of CSIS since the 1980s, along with Maurice Greenberg, James Woolsey, Henry Kissinger, Paul Volcker, Edmond de Rothschild, Richard Mellon Scaife and others. In the 1990s on the board of the historically CIA-linked H. Smith Richardson Foundation, together with Donald Rumsfeld, James Woolsey and Samuel Huntington, who wrote the 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Himself also a famous geopolitical strategist who in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard recognized that "imperial mobilization" in order to remain an influential player in Eurasia may only be realized in case "a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat" emerges. Shared other boards in the 1990s with men as Huntington, Perle and Cheney. His daughter Mika Brzezinski witnessed the collapse of the South Tower from anywhere between 300 and 500 meters away from behind Building 7. She was coordinating her CBS ground crews for interviews. CBS has historically been in the pocket of Pilgrims Society members cooperating with the CIA - and Brzezinski was part of this clique since at least the early 1960s. Until 2010 on the advisory council of Partnership for a Secure America, together with the leading 9/11 Commission members. His son Mark was a director of Partnership for a Secure America until November 2011. Invited to Le Cercle and widely respected also among conservatives.
4. Henry Kissinger: Number 1 in ISGP's Superclass Index. By far the most connected "internationalist" alive, together with David Rockefeller, but more focused on the national security aspects. Chairman of AIG's advisory board from 1987 until many years beyond 9/11. AIG, with its top level CIA ties, had access to the WTC complex through Kroll. In the mean time, partner firm the Blackstone Group held the debt on Building 7. Blackstone, AIG and Kissinger Associates have been closely allied since the 1980s. Appointed initial chairman of the 9/11 Commission in November 2011, but forced to resign over the controversy that ensued.
5. Peter Peterson: Shared 18th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Co-founder and chairman of the Blackstone Group, which leased Building 7 to Larry Silverstein and, along with AIG, tried to get complete control of Kroll in the years prior to 9/11. Blackstone, AIG and Kissinger Associates were closely allied firms since the 1980s. His Peterson Institute of International Economics has gathered the elite of the elite. Past and present directors have included George Shultz, Paul Volcker, Maurice Greenberg, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Jacob Wallenberg, Alan Greenspan and David Rockefeller. Curiously, Joseph E. Stiglitz sits on the advisory committee. Stiglitz cooperated with Greg Palast in exposing the fraudulent policies of the IMF and the World Bank towards third world countries. Palast has also exposed electoral fraud during the Bush years. At the same time he has referred to the idea of bombs having been used to take down the towers as "nutball", despite claiming he actually investigated reports of this.
6. Maurice Greenberg: Number 9 in ISGP's Superclass Index. Chairman and CEO of AIG from 1968 to 2005, appointed as the protege of high level OSS veteran Cornelius Vander Starr. Henry Kissinger was chairman of the advisory board since 1987. Trustee of CSIS since the 1980s, along with Kissinger, Brzezinski and Woolsey. AIG owned the third largest stake in Kroll, the overall security consultant of the World Trade Center complex in the years leading up to 9/11, and supported Blackstone in trying to buy up the firm completely. Greenberg has had top-level CIA ties for much of his life, including to OSS veteran and CIA director William Casey. At one point he was considered as a deputy of Casey. Named as a candidate for the position of CIA director in 1995, a post ultimately accepted by John Deutch. Kroll had similar international intelligence ties as AIG. His son Jeffrey headed the company that leased all floors of the North Tower impact zone - and after 9/11 actually bought Kroll.
7. Frank Wisner II: Shared 56th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Vice chairman of external affairs of AIG 1997-2006. Trustee Rockefeller Brothers Fund. His father used to be Allen Dulles' somewhat controversial CIA deputy director of plans (a position known as deputy director of operations since 1973). Richard Helms served under him in this position. Wisner II was an important State Department official until 1997. Also joined Partnership for a Secure America with four members of the 9/11 Commission, including the chairman and vice chairman. Important: Wisner NEVER was a director of Kroll, as has often been claimed on the internet.
8. David Cohen: Protege of William Casey and Robert Gates in the 1980s. Helped these men cover up CIA links to an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. CIA associate deputy director for intelligence until 1995. CIA deputy director of operations 1995-1997 after a surprise appointment by John Deutch. CIA station chief of New York City 1997-2000, with his office most likely at WTC 7. Briefly vice president of AIG Global Trade & Political Risk Insurance Company from November 2000 to January 2002 at the latest. In the risk assessment department it's likely he would have cooperated closely with Kroll people. Chief of New York Police Department's newly-created intelligence unit from January 2002 to beyond 2012. Still runs spy operations throughout New York in that capacity.
9. John Deutch: Shared 35th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. CIA director 1995-1997, where he followed up James Woolsey. He is the one who appointed David Cohen as his CIA deputy chief of operations. From the 1970s until beyond 9/11 Deutch has been a life trustee of the Rockefeller-funded Urban Institute, together with Warren Buffett, Catharine Graham of the Washington Post, Vernon Jordan (Bill Clinton advisor) and later with Elliot Richardson, Cyrus Vance and others. Deutch is a major ally of the globalist elite. He has been a member of the Trilateral Commission and a trustee of the Gorbachev Foundation. Since the late 1990s he has been a trustee of the Forum for International Policy, together with Brent Scowcroft (Bush 41 national security advisor; Kissinger Associates), Lawrence Eagleburger (Bush 41 secretary of state; Kissinger Associates), Robert Gates and two future secretaries of state of the Bush 43 administration, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. With Robert Gates, his friend Joseph Nye and two future 9/11 Commission members involved in the 1997-1998 Catastrophic Terrorism Study Group. He and especially Nye knew Joseph Kasputys, tenant of the South Tower impact and collapse floors. With James Woolsey he was a director of the bizarre pro-Zionist spook outfit Intelligence Summit until its primary financier was linked to the Russian mob. Director Raytheon from 1998 to beyond 2012. In 2009 he formally asked Obama to end the Justice Department probe into harsh CIA interrogation techniques, along with other former CIA directors Hayden, Schlesinger, Webster, Woolsey, Tenet and Goss.
10. Jules Kroll: Used to be a member of Cornell's Quill and Dagger Society, together with Paul Wolfowitz, Sandy Berger (Clinton's national security advisor; Partnership for a Secure America), Thomas Jones (Northrop; 1001 Club) and the Coors family. Founder Kroll, Inc. in 1972, a company once linked to illegal terrorist operations in South Africa. Kroll was the primary World Trade Center security consultant and partially owned by AIG, a firm with very strong OSS and CIA ties. Judging from a 2009 meeting at the Economic Club, Jules Kroll and Peter Peterson of Blackstone appear to be quite chummy with FBI director Robert Mueller, who was appointed the week before 9/11 happened.
11. Brian Michael Jenkins: Served in the special forces. Recognized as a foremost expert on terrorism. Deputy chairman Kroll 1989-199. Member of Bill Clinton's 1997 Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, together with FBI director Louis Freeh and several men suspected of involvement in the WTC operation and cover-up: General James Abrahamson, Raymond W. Kelly and John Deutch. Advisor to the 2000 National Commission on Terrorism, headed by Paul Bremer, suspected by some of involvement in the WTC operation. Senior advisor to the president of the RAND Corporation, which is linked to Frank Carlucci, also suspected of involvement in 9/11.
12. Jeffrey Greenberg: Son of Maurice Greenberg (9th place in ISGP's Superclass Index), whose firm took over Kroll in 2004. Greenberg's company Marsh and McLennan leased all floors of North Tower where Flight 11 crashed into. In 2004 Marsh and McLennan bought Kroll.
13. Paul Bremer: Shared 147th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Worked as a counter-terrorism expert for Marsh and McLennan since November 2000. At one point an advisory board member of the Trilateral Commission company Komatsu Ltd., which in 1996 patented a quiet thermite demolition device. Managing director Kissinger Associates 1989-2000. State Department protege of Henry Kissinger who had once helped George Shultz get settled as secretary of state. Also served as an assistant to Alexander Haig. Interviewed on tv several hours after the attack, discussing Osama bin Laden's likely involvement. Co-chairman of the Heritage Foundation's Homeland Security Task Force soon after 9/11. Head of the provisional government in Iraq 2003-2004. At RAND's Center for Middle East Public Policy, ran by the CIA's Frank Carlucci.
14. Joseph Kasputys: Tenant of the South Tower's impact and collapse floors (77 and 78). Worked with Kissinger, Nelson Rockefeller, Brent Scowcroft and Dick Cheney at the White House in the 1970s. Knew Carlucci, Peter Peterson, John Diebold and George Shultz for years before and after 9/11. Worked with Paul Volcker and Suzanne Woolsey at the Council for Excellence in Government since at least the early 1990s. May also have met George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton through his work for the council. In general very close to the Trilateral Commission leadership without actually being a member.
15. James Wolfensohn: Undisputed number 1 place in ISGP's Superclass Index for Australia and would take about the 50th place in the overall list. Major globalist. Close friend of David Rockefeller, Kissinger, etc. Good friend of Fuji Bank leadership, a company he had been in a strategic partnership with through Fuji-Wolfensohn International since at least the early 1990s. Fuji Bank had its offices on floors 79 to 82 of the South Tower, right where Flight 175 impacted the building. Molten metal (probably steel) was seen flowing from the offices of Fuji Bank. Question is, who brought it up there? And why there? Was it sanctioned by Fuji Bank leadership and its strategic partners? That's a legitimate question. Pre-collapse "pressure pulses" were also observed coming from Fuji Bank offices, as well as from the floors owned by Joseph Kasputys.
16. Toru Hashimoto: President and CEO of Fuji Bank from 1991 to 1996, after which he assumed the chairmanship. Retired soon after 9/11. Member Trilateral Commission.
17. Toru Kusukawa: Deputy president of Fuji Bank from 1981 to 1991 and the bank's international representative. He then became chairman of the Fuji Research Institute Corporation, which was located in the South Tower. Continued to serve on the advisory board of the Fuji Bank. Kusukawa is known to have attended the annual meetings of the Trilateral Commission in 1998 and 2001, while also having been a member of the commission's Pacific Asian Group, along with Hashimoto and two Komatsu executives mentioned earlier.
18. Jacob Rothschild: family is ranked at 4th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Since 1993 a partner of the Fuji Bank through J. Rothschild, Wolfensohn & Co., with its offices at the South Tower and from which molten metal was seen flowing. Close friend of Henry Kissinger and Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Invited Senator McCain, who wrote the foreword of the book Debunking 9/11 Myths of two Popular Mechanics editors, to his London home in 2008. Known to be a great donor to Israel and to have met with prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres. His company RIT Capital Partners, through a subsidiary and a family member, is a partner in the Monument Capital Group in Washington, D.C., where Frank Carlucci, James Baker and Thomas McLarty, III (Kissinger McLarty) serve on the advisory board. JNR
19. Vernon Jordan, Jr.: Shared 37th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. The Rockefeller Foundation man who could be found at the Urban Institute for many decades with Warren Buffett, John Deutch, Elliot Richardson, Cyrus Vance and others. Decades-long Bilderberg participant. Visited the Sun Valley meetings. Very good friend and advisor to President Bill Clinton, who was in frequent contact with Wally Hilliard, the owner of the flight school that trained the 9/11 hijackers who flew into the World Trade Center. In the late 1990s Jordan sat on the initial board of FirstMark Communications, together with founder Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Evelyn de Rothschild and Henry Kissinger. Jordan was also the Rothschild's representative to the Fuji Bank, with its offices at the South Tower and from which molten metal was seen flowing - indicating thermate. Became managing director of Lazard Freres in 2000. Member Iraq Study Group in 2006, so continued to be highly politically connected despite not having held any official government office.
20. Bill Clinton: Shared 23th place in ISGP's Superclass Index, probably in a theoretical top 200. Very charming, but apparently also a very ruthless individual. As governor of Arkansas 1979-1981 and 1983-1992, deeply linked to the state's CIA drug trade and a truly amazing amount of murders. As just said, in frequent contact with Wally Hilliard, apparent drug trafficker and owner of the flight school that trained various 9/11 hijackers. Close friend of the Rockefellers, Rothschilds and also of Vernon A. Jordan, Jr. Jordan, of course, was the Rothschild's representative at Fuji Bank, the firm occupying the four floors above the two of Kasputys - and from which molten metal was seen flowing. Honorary co-chairman Council for Excellence in Government after his retirement as president. Joseph Kasputys, owner of the firm that occupied two floors of the South Tower's impact zone, could be found at this council. Rockefeller friends John Whitehead and soon George Shultz were other trustees, as was Suzanne Woolsey.
21. Wally Hilliard: Wealthy businessman. Mormon bishop. According to a witness Daniel Hopsicker interviewed, "Wally knew Clinton well ... Clinton called Wally a couple of times when I was there." Apparently the same witness told Hopsicker that Hilliard kept a picture taken of him and Clinton prominently displayed at his home. Financial backer of Rudi Dekkers' Huffman Aviation. Bought a fleet of three dozen Lear Jets. In July of 2000, the same month Mohammed Atta came to this flight school, one of Hilliard's Lear jets was caught with 43 pounds (20 kilograms) of heroin on board. Another associate of Hilliard was Dietrich Reinhardt, whose name also appeared in the Iran Contra files and who was involved with a mysterious firm called CZX Productions. It's possible that Yeslam bin Laden played a role in bringing the 9/11 hijackers to Hilliard's school. According to Hopsicker, one aviation executive familiar with Huffman Aviation's many unauthorized and unsupervised flights said: "They were ferrying Saudi princes all over the U.S. ... the government has no idea where those planes went, or even who was on board. Whoever they were flying for didn’t want anyone to know." Reported business partner of Adnan Khashoggi, who in turn was close to the British establishment, the CIA and Kamal Adham of Saudi intelligence. A photo of Hilliard exists with Guillermo Garcia Frias, a Cuban revolutionary commander close to Castro, and Hilliard was said to be often in Havana. This may or may not be connected to the efforts of the Americans For Humanitarian Trade With Cuba at the time, headed by 9/11-linked individuals as David Rockefeller, Paul Volcker, John Whitehead and CIA men Frank Carlucci and James Schlesinger, as well as Oliver Stone. According to Hopsicker, one associate of Hilliard said: "Wally was manipulated by somebody with a lot of power. He was blackmailed. Rudi was the one person who knew what was going in." Possibly some of the Saudis were also blackmailed.
22. Warren Buffet: Shared 100th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Primarily linked to 9/11 through the invitation he extended to Fiduciary Trust chairman and CEO Anne Tatlock to attend his annual Golf tournament in Omaha, Nebraska. As Tatlock's offices were above the impact floors of the South Tower and many of her employees died, this invitation may well have saved her life. The morning of 9/11, Buffett and his entourage were having a breakfast meeting at Offutt Air Force Base, where a major (nuclear) war game, Global Guardian, had just begun - involving Kissinger protege Brent Scowcroft (number 8 ISGP's Superclass Index) as a civilian observer in one of the AWACS. George Bush arrived at Offutt in the afternoon of 9/11, but most likely Buffett was already gone by then. Buffett has been a decades long trustee of the Urban Institute with John Deutch and Vernon Jordan, both with important links to 9/11, and is equally close to the Rockefeller and Rothschild circle, also with important 9/11 links. Equally important is the fact that Buffett, along with close friend Harold Anderson (named as a sadistic child abuser), is closely tied to the 1988 Franklin child abuse affair through their close association with Larry King - who was reported to have had free access to Offutt Air Force Base and all the sordid child experimentation that took place here. Coincidentally, James Woolsey, the husband of Suzanne, whom had known Buffett from years before, had a position at Offutt in 1987-1988 and was already working for the CIA. Both Woolsey and Suzanne are also part of the small elite circle with close ties to the events on 9/11.
23. Senator John McCain: 34th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. From a family with a history in the Pilgrims Society, the World Anti-Communist League and American Security Council (the latter two basically CIA fronts). Wrote the foreword of the 2006 book Debunking 9/11 Myths, written by two editors of Popular Mechanics, a magazine published by the Hearst Corporation whose head has an American Security Council history. Along with Joe Lieberman invited to Jacob Rothschild's English home in March 2008. In the same period his national presidential campaign was chaired by Henry Kissinger, Peter Peterson (Blackstone), John C. Whitehead and, in New York, by Lewis Eisenberg of the New York Port Authority. james Woolsey was an advisor to his campaign. Lynn Forester de Rothschild also backed his presidential campaign. These connections immediately explain why McCain has warned against the dangers of global warming, usually not something conservatives want to hear. On the advisory board of the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, together with Frank Carlucci. General Carl Stiner has been the long time chairman of the foundation. Update: IRI chairmanship is extremely significant.
24. Lewis Eisenberg: Chairman of the Port Authority, the owner of the World Trade Center complex, from 1995 to December 2001. Had been appointed head of the Port Authority by two (future) board members of the American Security Council Foundation, right when Henry Kissinger could be found here also. The governor of New Jersey who had initially picked him, Christine Whitman, was married into a generational Pilgrims Society family. The other, the governor of New York, George Pataki, was a friend of Eisenberg, as well as Larry Silverstein by the time 9/11 happened. She herself claimed to have been pressured by Bush and Cheney. Eisenberg became co-chairman of McCain's New York presidential campaign, with Henry Kissinger, Peter Peterson and John Whitehead being involved in the national campaign. Update: IRI link is extremly significant, as is his directorship of AIPAC from 1998 to 2003. His political patron, Christine Whitman, had extensive ties to the Zionist International through the Peres Center.
25. Larry Silverstein: Leased the entire World Trade Center complex from the Port Authority in the months before 9/11. Personal friend of Israeli prime ministers Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. Closely involved in B'nai B'rith, the UJA Federation and other Zionist causes.
26. Frank Lowy: Among the more connected elites in the international Zionist movement, as ISGP's Superclass Index demonstrates. In the overall index he would probably rank around a 300th place. Silverstein's junior partner in the WTC deal who leased the underground shopping mall. Zionist billionaire from Australia. Good friend of media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Both Lowy and Murdoch are patrons of the American-Australian Association, together with James Wolfensohn (of Fuji Bank, of the South Tower impact floors from which molten metal was seen flowing) and until recently Maurice Greenberg (of AIG, linked to WTC security and the North Tower impact floors). David Rockefeller has been involved in the association as well. In 2006 he was the founding chairman of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. Update: in 2003 he founded the Lowy Institute in Australia. Martin Indyk, also of the INSS, was among the founding directors, as was Robert J. O'Neill, who may have known Far West directors Anton Surikov and Audrius Butkevicius. On the international advisory council could be found: Rita Hauser, Rupert Murdoch, James Wolfensohn and Francois Heisbourg.
27. Benjamin Netanyahu: Among the more connected elites in the international Zionist movement, as ISGP's Superclass Index demonstrates. In the overall index he would probably rank around a 250th place. Israeli prime minister 1996-1999 and again since 2009. Known to be a friend of Richard Perle and Larry Silverstein. On September 12, 2001 Netanyahu stated the obvious, that the attacks were good for Israeli-American relations. He was among those visited by Senator John McCain (of Debunking 9/11 Myths) and Senator Joe Lieberman on their March 2008 trip to Iraq, Israel, France and finally to the Rothschilds in England. Lieberman is an advisory board member of the Israel Democracy Institute, together with George Shultz, Henry Kissinger and James Wolfensohn. Another board member is Martin Indyk, who can also be found on the board of Lowy's Institute for National Security Studies.
28. Ariel Sharon: Israeli prime minister March 2001-April 2006. Called up his friend Larry Silverstein in the aftermath of 9/11 and after that, several more times. Perle has claimed to have never personally met with Sharon, in contrast to Netanyahu.
29. Ehud Barak: Prime minister of Israel 1999-March 2001. Had once been offered the job of Silverstein's representative in Israel. Also called up Larry Silverstein in the aftermath of 9/11. Visited by McCain and Lieberman in July 2010.
30. Richard Perle: 17th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Roommate of Edward Luttwak (ASC; CSIS; SOPAG; WINEP) at the London School of Economics. Recruited by Albert Wohlstetter and send to Senator Henry Jackson (ASC). Staff member Senator Henry M. Jackson U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee 1969-1980. Slandered by Nelson Rockefeller during the 1976 presidential campaign in which Carter and Jackson were candidates. Assistant secretary for international security policy Department of Defense 1981-1987 (Fred Ikle was his boss, and Frank Carlucci the boss of both of them). Visitor of Bilderberg in 1983 and 1985. Member advisory committee Defense Policy Board 1987-2004. Member Committee on the Present Danger. Suspected of giving sensitive info to the Israelis. Co-founder Madison Group, which tried to infiltrate the State Department. Pentagon liaison to Le Cercle in the 1980s, along with the CIA's Ted Shackley, Fred Ikle and General Richard Stilwell. Director Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (with Woolsey, Cheney, Feith, etc.). Advisory board Center for Security Policy (with Woolsey, Feith, etc.). Head of the CPS spin-off Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf in 1990.
    1990s: Continued on the advisory committee of the Defense Policy Board. Since about 1992 a member of the editorial board of The National Interest, with Henry Kissinger, Conrad Black, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington. The magazine was funded by Hollinger, Inc. Director of Hollinger since 1994, co-chairman and director Hollinger Digital, and a very close friend of Hollinger owner Conrad Black (1001 Club). Once went to visit Netanyahu, whom Perle considers "an old friend", with Black. He never personally met Sharon, however. Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and the absolute elite served on the boards of Hollinger. Director Jerusalem Post, owned by Hollinger. Chairman of the Defense Policy Board (with Kissinger). Co-founder PNAC in 1998. First visit again to Bilderberg in May 2001 in the capacity of resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and a Hollinger representative (went with Black). Chairman Defense Policy Board July 2001-2003. Kissinger, General Jack Sheehan of Bechtel, Fred Ikle, James Schlesinger and James Woolsey were all serving on the board on 9/11. Members were advising Douglas Feith and indirectly Donald Rumsfeld four times a year at this point. Details of the meetings are classified.
    Post 9/11: Co-founder Trireme Partners in November 2001, with Conrad Black and Kissinger on the advisory board. On the advisory council of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq 2002-2003, together with James Woolsey and two PNAC founders, and under the chairmanship of George Shultz. Annual visitor of Bilderberg 2001-2005, where he pushed for war with Iraq and later Iran, in opposition to the majority of Bilderbergers (today on the steering committee). Advisory committee American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus, together with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank Gaffney, Alexander Haig, William Kristol, Robert McFarlane, Richard Pipes, Michael Ledeen, Caspar Weinberger and James Woolsey. Member Benador Associates, together with Lord Lamont, James Woolsey. Visitor Trilateral Commission in 2008. Anno September 2012: advisory board member of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies (founded in 2001), where James Woolsey is chairman of the leadership council. On the board of the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce, together with Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger and James Baker.
31. James Woolsey: Number 2 in ISGP's Superclass Index, right behind Henry Kissinger. The most connected neocon of all, much more so than even Richard Perle. CIA director from 1993 to 1995 and appears to have been CIA since his days at Yale. Major Pentagon ties since the early 1970s, especially to the Navy. Also linked to the absolute core of the liberal elite since the late 1980s through CSIS and other groups. Through Crescent Investment Management, of which he was vice chairman even before 9/11, in contact with Pakistanis close to the ISI and the Osama bin Laden network. James Abrahamson of Crescent was also on the board of Securacom, a WTC security contractor. Woolsey has numerous ties to all the shady parts of the conspiracy community.
32. Mansoor Ijaz: Co-founder of Crescent Investment with Cercle participant General James A. Abrahamson. Among his contacts over the years were Husain Haqqani, President Asif Ali Zardari, ISI Director General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, former prime minister Shaukat Aziz and Ehsan ul Haq (the ISI chief who replaced Mahmud Ahmed in October 2001). He brought James Woolsey, a vice chairman of Crescent at the time of 9/11, in contact with these elements. Ijaz was involved in the controversial negotiations with the Sudanese government to have bin Laden either extradited to the U.S. or exiled to another country.
33. James Abrahamson: Co-founder of Crescent Investment with Mansoor Ijaz and director of security firm Stratesec/Securacom in the years leading up to 9/11, which had contracts at the World Trade Center and counted Marvin Bush among the directors.
34. Porter Goss: Career CIA officer. Has always been very secretive about his CIA career from 1960 to 1971. Acknowledged to have worked at JM/WAVE for three months in 1963 and claimed to have known Shackley, despite being a very low level officer at the time. Certainly knew Shackley in the years prior to 9/11, as he was a member of the AFIO and both lived in Florida. Goss had been forced into retirement from the CIA due to a severe sickness and was a congressman from Florida from 1989 to 2004. The work of Daniel Hopsicker has linked Goss to CIA drug trafficking, once a favorite side project of Shackley. Goss is said to have been a regular at the Venice Airport in Florida in the 1990s when drug trafficking operations were ran from there. It was here, several years later, that Mohammed Atta and other pilots received flight training from two questionable Dutch flight school owners. Evidence of continued drug trafficking was all over the place, not the least when a Lear Jet of one of the flight schools was confiscated with 43 pounds (20 kg) of heroin on board in July 2000. Goss visited Pakistan on August 28, 29 and 30, together with Senator Bob Graham and Senator Jon Kyl. They met with President Musharraf and other leaders to get an impression whether or not it would be a good idea to relieve U.S. sanctions on Pakistan over its nuclear weapons program. In early September ISI General Mahmud Ahmed came to Washington, D.C. for further discussions and on the morning of 9/11 was actually having breakfast with Goss and Graham. What makes this a little bizarre is that Ahmed is said to have wired $100,000 to the 9/11 hijackers a few weeks before the event. Just as bizarre, considering this connection, in February 2002 both Goss and Graham were appointed to head the 9/11 Joint Intelligence Inquiry, after months of opposition to such an inquiry, including from Goss and Graham. Needless to say that they were very mild on the intelligence community. Goss was Bush's CIA director in 2004 and 2005.
35. Senator Bob Graham: Board member of the National Endowment for Democracy at the time 9/11 happened. With Goss and Kyl he spoke extensively to General Mahmud Ahmed two weeks before 9/11. For some reason Ahmed was fingered by the FBI as a financier of Mohammed Atta. Graham suspects Saudi involvement in 9/11.
36. Senator Jon Kyl: Shared 109th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Board member of the National Endowment for Democracy. With Goss and Graham he went to Pakistan. Co-chairman of the Center for Security with James Woolsey in the years after 9/11.
37. Thomas Kean: Shared 109th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. In the years before 9/11 Kean could be found on the boards of the CIA/State Department-linked National Endowment for Democracy and the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (Chechnya). On both boards he served with Zbigniew Brzezinski and especially the ACPC was loaded with neoconservative hawks. Himself a member of the liberal establishment. Chairman Carnegie Corporation of New York.
38. Lee Hamilton: 16th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. The most influential member of congress in recent times. At the time of 9/11 he was board member of the National Endowment for Democracy, together with Frank Carlucci.
39. General Mahmud Ahmed: Head of Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI from 1999 to October 2001. Pakistan's ISI is said to have maintained ties to Osama bin Laden, together with Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal (of Le Cercle) throughout the 1990s. Ahmed was considered pro-Taliban and was found out to have wired $100,000 to 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta through Saeed Sheikh, an Al Qaeda operative close to the Osama bin Laden circle. In Washington, D.C. on the morning of 9/11, having breakfast with Porter Goss and Senator Graham, who were part of a team that was trying to see if U.S. sanctions should be lifted from Pakistan. Removed from his position as ISI chief in October 2001 over his financing of the terrorist hijackers, despite the fact that the exact reason was not made public in the West.
40. Shaukat Aziz: Executive of Rockefeller-affiliated Citibank in Pakistan and the United States. Advisor to General Musharraf of Pakistan after his successful coup in 1999. Finance minister in Pakistan 1999-2007 and prime minister 2004-2007. Appointed to the international advisory council of Blackstone in. Jacob Rothschild and Wallenberg are co. Might be nothing, might be something.
41. Omar al-Bayoumi: In January 2000 he met with future 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar immediately after their landing in Los Angeles. Both men had come straight from the Kuala Lumpur al-Qaeda Summit. al-Bayoumi housed them, opened bank accounts for them at Riggs Bank, and took care of them. In July 2001 he left for England. On September 11 his proteges flew into the WTC.
42. Makram Majid Chams: According to Daniel Hopsicker, a contant of the Mohammed Atta group in Florida before the 9/11 attacks. Fled to Saudi Arabia where he went to work for U.S. defense contracter Titan Corporation, which appears to have questionable ties to drug trafficking and clandestine operations, much like Wally Hilliard, Rudy Dekkers and Arne Kruithof, the managers of the flight school Mohammed Atta and associates were taking flight lessons.
43. Esam Ghazzawi: BCCI financier and Saudi government-linked businessman. The person who hosted 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta in his Florida home, and suddenly fled the United States on August 30, 2001, leaving everything behind. The Saudi prince he was keeping money for in a BCCI account died under suspicious circumstances and was linked to financiers of terrorism.
44. Larry Mitchell: Oman-based CIA agent reportedly in contact with Osama bin Laden in July 2001, along with Prince Turki al Faisal.
45. Prince Turki al Faisal: Shared 71th place in ISGP's Superclass Index and by far the number 1 ranking in Saudi Arabia in terms of elite international connections. Saudi intelligence chief 1977-2001. Osama bin Laden worked for him in the 1980s against the Russians. Publicly Prince Turki has always maintained that he had no more contact with Osama bin Laden, but various sources say the exact opposite: that Prince Turki has met bin Laden on various occasions, that he arranged for family members to come and visit him and also that he was the main conduit of Saudi funds to Al Qaeda. To add to the mystery, he suddenly resigned or was fired as Saudi intelligence chief 12 days before 9/11. Supposedly Prince Turki tried to keep bin Laden from undermining the Saudi Kingdom. Update: partner in the Russian firm Far West, which was deeply involved with managing terrorist networks in the Caucasus, along with the CIA.
46. Adnan Khashoggi: Billionaire Saudi arms dealer involved in the Iran Contra and BCCI affairs, as well as many other scandals. Very close to the bin Laden family and Prince Turki. Partner in the Russian firm Far West, which was deeply involved with managing terrorist networks in the Caucasus, along with the CIA. Even separate from Far West he has been accused of drug trafficking. Reported business partner of Wally Hilliard, who owned the curious flight school where 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta was trained. Seems to have influenced the 2004 Toronto 9/11 International Inquiry, as John Gray, whose business was owned by Khashoggi and who had nothing to do with 9/11, was appointed as a keynote speaker - seemingly after a considerable donation had been made. It has been suspected that Khashoggi controlled the Genesis Communications Network, which airs the show of Alex Jones and, in the past, Rense. Khashoggi and an associate controlled a vast number of letter box companies that all began with the word "Genesis". That GCN is among them, is not certain, however.
47. Bandar bin Sultan: Saudi ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005. Through various intermediaries, his wife was sending a total of $75,000 to Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence officer who took care of two 9/11 hijackers in the United States. In fact, a later-released FBI memo explained that Prince Bandar himself was paying Al-Bayoumi on behalf of Saudi intelligence. Bandar bin Sultan was married to a sister of Prince Turki al Faisal. In effect it can argued that al-Bayoumi was under the direct supervision of incoming President Bush and his closest Saudi friends. Head of Saudi intelligence 2012-2014, but considered too pro-terrorist in his anti-Syria policy.
48. Khalid bin Mahfouz: Former BCCI director and business partner of Salem bin Laden, the 1001 Club member and half brother of Osama bin Laden. He and his family have been business partners of the Bush family and the Carlyle Group, the latter ran by George H. W. Bush and Frank Carlucci. Reported to have been a major money launderer for Al Qaeda, along with Prince Turki.
49. Osama bin Laden: Born in Saudi Arabia. Came from one of Saudi Arabia's most powerful families. Still today the family runs the Saudi BinLaden Group, a very large construction company. Recruited by Prince Turki in the 1980s and became a Mujahideen fighter in Russia. After the Cold War was over his Al Qaeda group became a terrorist organization with America as its biggest enemy. Bin Laden was exiled from Saudi Arabia in 1992 for his opposition to the Saudi-American partnership, especially during the Gulf War. Until early 1996 bin Laden and many of his followers lived in Sudan, but at that point was forced to leave for Afghanistan. Here he was welcomed by the Taliban. Primarily since mid 1996 bin Laden has been accused of involvement in various terrorist attacks, mainly against U.S. targets. Main suspect of having plotted 9/11.
50. Yeslam bin Laden: Half brother of Osama bin Laden. Controlled the Geneva-based Saudi Investment Corporation (SICO), a subsidiary of the Saudi Binladen Group which manages its worldwide interests. In 1999 a French investigator claimed that SICO was laundering money for the terrorist network of bin Laden. Yeslam also controlled Avcon Business Jets SA. Coincidentally, Yeslam had paid for a policeman's trip to the United States in order to take flight lessons at the exact same school where 9/11 ringleader and Flight 11 pilot Mohammed Atta and Flight 175 pilot Marwan al Shehhi were trained. Despite being westernized, his former wife claimed he was a religious extremist, but one who kept several mistresses on the side. She also stated that several bin Laden family members sympathized with Osama bin Laden and it would have been "unheard" of if the bin Laden family would have cut off Osama from the family's finances - which she didn't believe happened entirely.
51. Akberali Moawalla: One of 23 (or 25) persons, including 13 members of the bin Laden family who were allowed to leave on a charted flight that departed Logan airport on September 19, 2001. Business partner of Yeslam bin Laden and of the Saudi Investment Company (SICO). A Pakistani who, according to French investigators, had a joint bank account with Osama bin Laden which belonged to a company called Cambridge, a subsidiary of the Saudi BinLadin Group. French investigators discovered that in 2000 a sum of 241 million euros had been transferred from this account to someone of Pakistani national.
52. Shafig bin Laden: Another half brother of Osama bin Laden. Present as a guest of honor at the Carlyle Group meeting on 9/11. Flown out of the United States a week later.
53. George H. W. Bush: his family takes the 10th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Son of an important Brown Brothers Harriman partner who trade with the Nazis. Apparently allowed his oil business to be used as a CIA front. Played a very minor but curious role in the Kennedy assassination. CIA director 1976-1977. Became a close associate of CIA officers Frank Carlucci, Ted Shackley and Vernon Walters in the late 1970s. Reportedly these men plotted to take over the U.S. government by making Bush vice president to a candidate that appealed to the public - which turned out to be Reagan. U.S. vice president 1981-1989. U.S. president 1989-1993. His national security advisor Brent Scowcroft and secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger were Kissinger Associates employees, while his CIA director Robert Gates could get along really well with these men. Accused of being a pedophile by Franklin case victim Paul Bonacci. His family is deeply involved with the Knights of Malta-linked AmeriCares, along with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lawrence Eagleburger, Colin Powell and General Richard Stilwell. AmeriCares and particularly the related Covenant House network has been linked to two child abuse scandals and is said to have been a front for international child trafficking. Senior counselor/partner of the Carlyle Group 1993-2003, headed by Frank Carlucci. Honorary director AFIO, along with Carlucci, Helms and others - with Shackley being among the leading board members. His son, George W. Bush, was U.S. president 2001-2009.
54. Frank Carlucci: 15th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Roommate of Donald Rumsfeld at Princeton and his political mentor in the 1970s. Deep CIA insider close to Shackley, Bush and most likely Richard Helms. Vice chairman Carlyle Group 1989-1992, chairman 1992-2003, chairman emeritus 2003-2005. Trilateral Commission member. Close to the men who controlled the WTC impact and collapse floors. Along with Bush close to the Saudis.
55. James Baker: Shared 18th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Secretary of State under George H. W. Bush. With Bush and Carlucci present at the Carlyle meeting that involved Shafig bin Laden. Today on the advisory board of the Monument Capital Group in Washington, D.C. with Carlucci and Thomas McLarty, III (of Kissinger McLarty). One of three partners of the group is James Rothschild, director of J. Rothschild Capital Management ltd., a subsidiary of RIT Capital Partners, the firm headed by Jacob Rothschild - the strategic partner of Fuji Bank, the South Tower firm from which molten metal was seen flowing.
56. Ted Shackley: Controversial "retired" CIA spook who played a major role in running the AFIO and the secretive Cercle group, both registered in Florida, until his death in 2002. Protege of Richard Helms, with whom he most likely ran the operation to assassinate Kennedy in 1963. Linked to drug trafficking, pedophile entrapment networks, the European strategy of tension and other controversial affairs. Other at the AFIO around the time of his death included Richard Helms, Frank Carlucci, George H. W. Bush and James Woolsey. Shackley, Helms and George Bush maintained a crucial working relationship with Saudi intelligence chiefs Kamal Adham and Prince Turki bin Faisal, the latter with a curious relationship to Osama bin Laden.
57. Richard Helms: Shared 129th place in ISGP's Superclass Index if he would still be alive today. Comes from an elite Pilgrims Society family. Like the Dulles brothers, he is eastern establishment. CIA deputy director of operations 1962-1965. Almost certainly played a role in the Kennedy assassination, along with Ted Shackley. Deputy CIA director 1965-1966. CIA director 1966-1973. Ambassador to the Shah of Iran 1973-1977. Deeply involved in setting up and maintaining the covert CIA-Saudi relationship in the 1970s and 1980s. Mentor to Ted Shackley. Known to have visited CIA headquarters two weeks before 9/11. Honorary director of the AFIO until his death in 2002. Also a member of the OSS Society.
58. Oliver Stone: Director of the pro-conspiracy 1991 movie JFK and the 2006 anti-conspiracy movie World trade Center. Through the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association, since 1998 very close to David Rockefeller, Paul Volcker, John Whitehead, General Jack Sheehan, Carla Hills (AIG) and retired CIA directors Frank Carlucci and James Schlesinger. Does not support 9/11 Truth.
    
    Members of government on 9/11:
    
    
59. George W. Bush: Family shared a 10th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. President on 9/11. Employed Henry Kissinger as an advisor and appointed him initial chairman of the 9/11 Commission. In a speech to the United Nations he claimed that 9/11 conspiracy theories should not be tolerated.
    George H. W. Bush: Father of the president. Mentioned earlier. Former president and vice president of the United States, with ties to questionable Saudis and top level CIA officers. Part of the Kissinger group.
    Jonathan J. Bush: Brother of George H. W. Bush. Tied to the covert CIA-Saudi relationship through Riggs National Bank and one of its CIA-linked executives since 1976, Henry A. Dudley, Jr.
    The president's brothers may have ties to 9/11 as well:

    1. Jeb Bush: Governor of Florida in the years before and after 9/11. Personally helped the FBI confiscate the files of Wally Hilliard's Huffman Aviation immediately after 9/11. This is the CIA drug trafficking-linked flight school where WTC pilots Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi had taken flight lessons.
    2. Marvin Bush: Director of Stratesec/Securacom until 2000. The security firm had contracts at the WTC towers and was linked to the CIA and Al Qaeda through General James Abrahamson.
    3. Neil Bush: In business with Ken Good, who was in business with Mark Shubin, who in turn was in business with Wally Hilliard, the CIA and drug trafficking-linked owner of Huffman Aviation where Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi took flight lessons.
60. Dick Cheney: Shared 31th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. White House chief of staff 1975-1977. Knew vice president Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld and even Joseph Kasputys (of two WTC impact floors) very well since this period. Congressman 1979-1989. Contact of Andy Messing, a friend of Oliver North. Helped cover up Iran-Contra. Secretary of defense 1989-1993. Director Cercle-linked Jamestown Foundation 1992-1999, together with Zbigniew Brzezinski (1985-1995, 2001-2007), James Woolsey (1986-1989, 1992-1993, in later years) and others. Director Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs 1993-1999, together with James Woolsey (1988-1989, 1991-1993, after retirement as CIA director), Michael Ledeen, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. Trustee American Enterprise Institute 1995-2000 and executive 1998-2000. Director Electronic Data Systems 1996-2000 (James Baker continued on the board). Adviser to Lockheed Martin 1997-2000 (his wife Lynn was a director). CFR director in the 1990s. Director of Halliburton in 1996, CEO and chairman 1997-2000. Shared the Halliburton board with CSIS chairman. Member Trilateral Commission 1997-2000. Member U.S.-China Business Council in 2000.
61. Colin Powell: Shared 20th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Secretary of state on 9/11. 1990s: Served on the board of Gulfstream, together with Lynn Forester de Rothschild, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld. Board member of the Knights of Malta-linked AmeriCares, together with Prescott Bush, Jr. along with J. Peter Grace, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lawrence Eagleburger and General Richard Stilwell. AmeriCares and particularly the related Covenant House network has been linked to two child abuse scandals and is said to have been a front for international child trafficking. Also in the late 1990s on the board of the Forum for International Policy (FFIP), together with Lawrence Eagleburger, Brent Scowcroft, the CIA's Robert Gates, the CIA's John Deutch, Carla Hills (AIG), Condoleezza Rice and CFR's Richard Haass.
62. Condoleezza Rice: Shared 30th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. A primary protege of George Shultz and followed him on many corporate boards. As a key member of the Vulcans helped Shultz put together the Bush 43 government with Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and other neocons. Reportedly groomed by the CIA, which makes direct sense just by looking at her trusteeship of the Forum for International Policy (FFIP) in the 1990s.
63. Donald Rumsfeld: Shared 20th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Secretary of defense January 2001-December 2006. Roommate of Frank Carlucci at Princeton and a member of Cap and Gown. Congressman from Illinois 1963-1969. White House chief of staff 1974-1975, groomed by State Department/CIA officer Carlucci. Went to Bilderberg in 1975. Chairman G. D. Searle & Co. 1977-1985. Governor Atlantic Institute 1986-1988, together with Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, Baron Robert Rothschild, Davignon, Lord Roll, Lord Carrington, Agnelli, Madeleine Albright, Brent Scowcroft, Lawrence Eagleburger, etc. Director Jamestown Foundation (apparently 1990-2001), founded by CIA officers as William Casey and Donald Jameson with over the years directors as Alexander Haig, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Woolsey, Frank Carlucci, John McCain, Sam Nunn and others. In the late 1990s a director of Gulfstream Corporation, together with George Shultz, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger and Lynn Forester de Rothschild. Served on the CIA-linked H. Smith Richardson Foundation with James Woolsey, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington and Fred Ikle in the 1990s. Had a private breakfast meeting with Paul Wolfowitz, Congressman Christopher Cox and some others on the morning of 9/11. According to Cox, Rumsfeld said the country could be hit at any moment by a terrorist attack immediately before it happened. Soon thereafter apparently too busy with rescue efforts and getting briefed by the CIA to give shoot down orders, although at the same time it appears no one asked him for these orders. Again went to Bilderberg in 2002. Has visited the Trilateral Commission on occasion, also when serving as secretary of defense. Ended up in a heated debate about Afghanistan policy with George Soros at the Trilateral Commission in 2002.
64. Paul Wolfowitz: Shared 26th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Deputy secretary of defense 2001-2005 under Rumsfeld. Director of Policy Planning NSC 1981-1982. Assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs 1982-1986. U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia 1986-1989. Under secretary of defense for policy 1989-1993. Professor of international relations and dean of SAIS 1994-2001. First visit to Bilderberg in 1990, a regular since 1994, and before 9/11 a member of the steering committee. Co-author Trilateral Commission report 'Managing the International System Over the Next Ten Years: Three Essays'. Vulcan team for foreign policy of Bush. Director National Endowment on Democracy until 2001 (also at Freedom House). President World Bank 2005-2007.
65. Dov Zakheim: 22th place in ISGP's Superclass Index and, as a close associate of James Woolsey, among the politicians with the deepest Pentagon ties. Under secretary of defense (comptroller) May 2001-2004. Under his watch trillions of dollar (yes, indeed trillions) remained unaccounted for each year at the Defense Department. BA from Columbia University. Ph.D. from Oxford. Became a rabbi in 1979. Deputy undersecretary of defense for planning and resources 1985-1987. CEO of SPC International, a subsidiary of System Planning Corporation, 1987-2001. Various Pentagon relations. PNAC supporter. CFR and IISS since about 2000. Vice chairman Center for the National Interest May 2001-today, with James Schlesinger as advisory council chairman, Kissinger as honorary chairman and Maurice Greenberg as the present chairman. Member of the editorial board of the journal The National Interest, along with Richard Perle, Conrad Black, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington. Adjunct scholar Heritage Foundation. Senior associate/advisor CSIS. Part of the Vulcan team that put together George W. Bush's foreign policy. Member Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. 2008. Vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton 2004-2010, where he served with James Woolsey. Speaker at the Herzliya Conference. Co-U.S. vice chairman of the Global Panel with Sir Malcolm Rifkind, with Paula Dobriansky, James Woolsey, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Thomas Pickering, General Wesley Clark and Hans van den Broek are among the advisors.
66. Robert Mueller: Princeton educated. Member Defense Science Board until 2000. FBI chief since September 4, 2001. Failed to investigate 9/11. Grew close to George Tenet during his tenure as FBI director. At one point Peter Peterson and Jules Kroll attended a speech he gave at the Economic Club in New York. Member Alfalfa Club.
67. George Tenet: CIA director on 9/11. The one who appointed CIA deputy director of operations to the position of CIA station chief of New York in 1997. On the morning of 9/11 he was having breakfast with his mentor, Senator David Boren, who occupies a shared 129th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. After Tenet retired, he became managing director of Allen & Company. During his term as CIA director he already visited the Allen & Co.-organized Sun Valley Meetings. Herbert Allen III is a director of Business Executives for National Security, together with Maurice Greenberg. On the advisory board we can find Henry Kissinger, Michael Hayden, William Webster, General Peter Pace and Thomas Pickering.
68. Michael Hayden: Shared 118th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. NSA director 1999-2005. CIA director 2006-2009. To a degree involved in many liberal establishment outfits: the CFR, IISS, CSIS and the Atlantic Council. Joined the CIA- and neocon-linked Jamestown Foundation in 2011 and equally neocon Langley Intelligence Group Network of Newsmax in 2012. Principal at the Chertoff Group, headed by a former Homeland Security chief. Honorary director Association For Intelligence Officers (AFIO), along with James Woolsey, William Webster, George H. W. Bush, Frank Carlucci and Bobby Ray Inman. Anno 2012: advisory council Business Executives for National Security, along with Henry Kissinger, Thomas Pickering (used to help run Le Cercle with Shackley), General Joseph Ralston (Lockheed Martin), Admiral Vernon Clark (Raytheon; Rolls Royce; SRI International), General Peter Pace and William Webster (former FBI and CIA chief; AFIO; OSS Society; Homeland Security Advisory Council chairman).
69. Cofer Black: CIA station chief Sudan 1993-1995, during the initial Osama bin Laden controversies. Claimed bin Laden had tried to kill him in Sudan. Director CIA Counterterrorist Center (CTC)/ national intelligence officer for counterterrorism July 1999-July 2002. In charge of the CTC's bin Laden tracking unit in this period. Failed to prevent 9/11, but was promoted nevertheless. Dramatically emphasized that 300-400 CTC agents wasn't enough to protect the US "worldwide", but did not mention the FBI's domestic capabilities or those of allies. Black was heavily criticized for not passing on information to the FBI that 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar (of Flight 77; picked up and housed by a Saudi intelligence agent who was overseen by Saudi royals with clse ties to the Bush family) had entered the United States. The CTC didn't even put the two on a watch list until right before 9/11, despite knowing they arrived in the US from an Al Qaeda conference. Ran the CIA's extraordinary rendition flights to torture terrorists in third world countries. Ambassador at large and coordinator for counter-terrorism, State Department, under President George W. Bush December 2002 - November 2004. Vice chair Blackwater USA 2005-2008, where he continued his old anti-terrorist CIA projects for Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush. Chairman Total Intelligence Solutions, part of the same Erik Prince Group that controlled Blackwater and equally operated in coordination with JSOC ground and drone assassinations in Pakistan. He and Prince have held speeches to the AFIO.
70. Enrique Prado: Aide of Cofer Black at the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center, who took over as the CTC's chief of operations after 9/11. Already before that in the Osama bin Laden unit. Prado is a suspected Contra cocaine trafficker and mafia hitman. Post 9/11 he joined CIA front firm Blackwater USA (with Black) and Jefferson Waterman International's Crosshatch International, another CIA front firm (linked to the worldwide drug trade). He also became a special advisor to MITRE, also linked in this article to 9/11 through its 25-year chairman James Schlesinger, a former CIA director.
71. General James L. Jones: Shared 78th place in ISGP's Superclass Index. Commandant of the Marine Corps 1999-2003. Regular at the Center for Security Policy in the years before 9/11.
72. Richard Clarke: Liberal establishment-linked counter terrorism chief. Close to Morton Abramowitz, but post-9/11 also to James Woolsey at the Paladin Capital Group.
73. Jane Garvey: Head of the FAA 1997-2002, appointed by Bill Clinton. Director of Logan International Airport 1988-1991, from which the Flight 11 and Flight 175 departed on 9/11 and crashed into the WTC. After 9/11 she claimed: "This is a whole new world for us," even though the scenario of 9/11 was as old as the road to Rome. Ultimately responsible for the extreme delays in scrambling jet fighters and for hiring General Michael A. Canavan, the hijack coordinator at FAA headquarters on 9/11 who had an extensive JSOC background (which, in turn, is Opus Dei linked, according to Seymour Hersh) and was in Puerto Rico on 9/11 (the 9/11 Commission didn't ask who replaced him that day). She is also ultimately responsible for the all the reports that the FAA was protecting the activities of the CIA-linked terrorist flight school owners Wally Hilliard and Rudi Dekkers. Trustee MITRE Corporation since 2004, ran by former CIA director James Schlesinger, who was deeply tied to all the establishment 9/11 suspects. The MITRE board in general has major links to CSIS, the NSA, the CIA and NRO. In 2008 Garvey joined JPMorgan Chase, the bank of George Shultz, David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, for a mid-level manager position.
    
    GREAT BRITAIN:
    
74. Tony Blair: Shared 12th place in ISGP's Superclass Index for Britain and roughly about place 140 in the overall index. British prime minister 1997-2007. Joined the United States in the new War on Terror without asking questions. Appointed to the international council of JPMorgan Chase in 2008. He became chairman in 2010, thus following in the footsteps of George Shultz. Henry Kissinger is still on the board with him.
75. Sir Richard Dearlove: Head of MI6 1999-2004. Joined the international advisory board AIG in 2004, the firm headed by Maurice Greenberg and Henry Kissinger and which should be suspected of having played a role in bringing the World Trade Center towers down. Supporter of the Henry Jackson Society, patroned by James Woolsey and Richard Perle. MI6 station chief in Washington, D.C. 1991-1994.

Notes

1. Larry Silverstein, leaseholder building 7, in the September 2002 PBS documentary America Rebuilds (Youtube): "I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, told me they weren't sure if they were able to contain the fire. I said, "You know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to pull it." And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse."
2. July 31, 2003, The Guardian, 'Saudis to let CIA interview 9/11 suspect'.
3. April 27, 2022, CBS News, 'Newly released video shows 9/11 hijackers with alleged Saudi intelligence operative'.
4. *) September 27, 2001, No. 39, L'Hebdo, 'Islamic Financial Networks: Three Swiss Leads' ('Réseaux financiers islamistes: Les trois pistes suisses').
   *) September 26, 2001, Le Monde, 'Un frère Ben Laden aurait financé les cours de pilotage d'un policier français.' ('A brother of Bin Laden funded the pilot training of a French policeman').
5. Transcribed at the time from a YouTube video with Lindauer that I can't find back anno 2024. This author seems to have been the only one citing it.
6. *) October 30, 2004, Wall Street Journal, 'Uncertainties Soar At Ground Zero Freedom Tower Is Under Way, But Financing Plan Is Lacking For Rebuilding of Entire Site': "The first World Trade Center, completed in 1972, dumped millions of empty square feet of office space on a stagnant economy that couldn't absorb it. State agencies took much of the space at artificially low rents, creating a subsidy that hurt competing buildings. The result was a real-estate recession in downtown Manhattan and a financial drain on the Port Authority. It took almost three decades before the towers held enough market-rate tenants to make the complex a cash cow. Today, some worry the current rebuilding plan will run into similar problems. "I'm puzzled about whether the Freedom Tower makes sense architecturally" to attract office tenants, says Richard Ravitch, a former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and elder statesman of New York economic development, echoing sentiments of numerous real-estate experts, planners and people familiar with the scheme. "If rebuilding the economy of downtown is a high priority, then I don't think we are making all the intermediate decisions that are going to produce that result." As a sign of the difficult task the development faces, at least one major tenant has passed on moving there. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is building its own skyscraper -- similarly sized interms of square footage to the Freedom Tower -- directly across the street instead. It is slated to open around the same time as the Freedom Tower, in 2009. ... "It's got to be an economic success story, that's what it's all about at the end of the day," says Kevin Rampe, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., a city-state agency guiding the recovery. "Vacant buildings are not a community." But there is no denying that the Freedom Tower is going up when acres of office space are set to flood the sluggish downtown market. Silverstein has failed to attract tenants to 7 World Trade Center, a 1.7-million-square-foot office building adjacent to the Freedom Tower plot that is slated to open in late 2005. Together, 7 World Trade Center and the Freedom Tower will give Mr. Silverstein's company 4.3 million square feet he needs to rent out -- about as much space as was in one of the Twin Towers. Profound shifts in the real-estate market also suggest that the trade center faces an uphill battle. ... Another obstacle: The Freedom Tower's design, unlike that of most tall buildings, hasn't been guided by the regular rules of real-estate finance, but instead by the perceived need for a defiant symbol. "Skyscrapers in general are all about economics," says Carol Willis, the founder of the Skyscraper Museum in New York. "This is different. It's not that economics haven't played any role at all. But this building transcends the simple equation -- form follows finance." she says, though she remains optimistic that the building will be a success in the long run. Freedom Tower's planned location on the site -- farthest from subways and the heart of Wall Street -- exemplifies how finances have taken a back seat. ... Some at the Port Authority have resigned themselves to the fact that the Freedom Tower may not be a revenue generator. "We've decided that the Freedom Tower is a symbol of rebuilding," an official says. "It's like building the Statue of Liberty. It's not an economic proposal. The Freedom Tower is a monument. That's what we're building." If the tenants don't materialize, the four other towers will likely not get built in the near future. In their place, the Port Authority has planned two-story placeholder buildings that would contain retail stores, a potential source of revenue for the agency."
   *) April 14, 1981, The Evening Independent, 'New York May Sell Trade Center'
   *) April 24, 1981, Schenectady Gazette, 'Twin Towers Are Sold': "Since 1978, the state has occupied more than half of the building..."
   *) January 9, 1992, Daily News, 'Twin Towers Of World Trade Center May Be Put Up For Sale': "Officials in Gov. Mario Cuomo’s administration said Wednesday they would explore the idea of selling the World Trade Center and other state-owned facilities to private interests. Cuomo aide mary Ann Crotty said the buildings could fetch up to $1 billion, which is less than the amount invested by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to build the complex."
   *) January 31, 1996, Milwaukee Journal Sential, '2 towers, terrific view: Trade center may be sold': "Net income at the trade center has dropped from $51 million in 1992 to $40 million in 1993 and $8 million in 1994."
   *) May 31, 1998, New York Times, 'Commercial Property/Downtown; At the World Trade Center, Things Are Looking Up': "The leases were signed, one after another. Bankers Trust took 274,000 square feet, Aon Risk Services 396,000, Oppenheimer Funds 181,000, Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield 461,000 and, finally, J&H Marsh & McLennan committed to 361,000 square feet earlier this month. ... As the market for office space in midtown has tightened and rental rates increased, tenants have been looking to downtown as a cheaper alternative. ... But as a result of the last year's work, Ms. Nanninga, said the complex is over 90 percent occupied and expects to it reach the 95 percent mark by the end of the year. That, she said, would be about as full as the center is likely to get, since there is almost always someone moving in or out. ''Ninety-seven percent occupancy would be full,'' said Ms. Nanninga ... The cafeteria expansion is just a small part of the renovations going on at the trade center, where all 240 elevators and 70 escalators will be modernized with new controls for better service and shorter waiting times. The Port Authority has already spent $325 million on the 25-year-old center and expects to spend $400 million more before the upgrade is finished. ... Security overall has been tightened, with guards checking employee passes at the elevators. There is still underground parking, but it is available only to tenants who have an electronic card to open the garage door. ... Port officials have been upgrading the 300,000 square feet of retail space in the center, to make it more of a destination for shoppers, not just a service for tenants. ... The center is a natural retail destination, Ms. Nanninga said. ''We have 1.8 million visitors to our observation deck a year,'' she said. In addition, largely because of the conversion of nearby downtown office buildings to residences, there are 20,000 people who now live in lower Manhattan who add to the retail base."
   *) February 12, 2001, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey press release, 'Net lease of World Trade Center Just Business as Usual for Port Authority's Real Estate Director -- Cherrie Nanninga Credited with Shepherding Office, Retail Renaissance At Trade Center, Other Port Authority Facilities': "As Real Estate Director, a position Mrs. Nanninga has held since 1996, the occupancy rate at the trade center has risen from 78 percent to a healthy 98 percent, retail soared in the trade center's mall, and available office space in the Newark Legal Center has nearly been filled."
7. November 23, 1995, New York Times, 'Governors Tussling Again, With Port Authority Jobs at Stake': "Gov. George E. Pataki and Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, two Republicans who agree on most issues, are feuding again over the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey... The nominee for chairman, Lewis M. Eisenberg, was selected by Mrs. Whitman, who as New Jersey's governor traditionally fills that position. But Mr. Pataki has until Tuesday to veto the choice, and is threatening to do so. ... The quarrel has surprised some board members because Mr. Eisenberg is a well-known Republican who has close ties to Mr. Pataki, having served on his transition committee and raised money for his gubernatorial campaign last year. Mr. Pataki and his wife have even eaten at Mr. Eisenberg's home. Mr. Eisenberg, an investment banker, is also an adviser to Mrs. Whitman and is one of her appointees on the authority's 12-member board. ... Mr. Pataki's aides have said in recent days that Mr. Pataki was annoyed that Mr. Eisenberg did not meet with the New York Governor before Mrs. Whitman put his nomination to the board on Nov. 9."
8. American Security Council Foundation website (www.ascfusa.org) (accessed: December 2010 and September 2012). George Pataki on board of directors. Henry Kissinger and Christine Todd Whitman.
9. Christine Todd Whitman's maternal grandfather was a member of Wolf's Head at Yale and vice president of the Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank. Christine herself once worked in the campaign of Nelson Rockefeller (a Pilgrim). She married John R. Whitman, a long-time member of the Pilgrims Society, whose father, Charles S. Whitman, was an executive of the Pilgrims Society in the 1940s. In that period the executive board of the Pilgrims was headed by famous Morgan banker Thomas W. Lamont. Seeing these connections it all of sudden makes sense why Whitman was appointed to the board of United Technologies in recent years. Right-wing Pilgrims executives as Alexander Haig and William E. Simon could be found here in the past.
10. October 2, PR Newswire, 'Richard Perle to Receive 'Scoop' Jackson Award at Jerusalem Summit': "Richard Perle, a leading US strategist and past assistant Secretary of Defense under the Reagan Administration will receive the Annual Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson Award at the Inaugural Jerusalem Summit (Oct. 12-14), which will take place in Jerusalem. ... Joining RICHARD PERLE in Jerusalem will be fellow Americans DANIEL PIPES, ALAN KEYES, CAL THOMAS, FRANK GAFFNEY, JOHN BATCHELOR and MIKE EVANS. Israeli participants will include EHUD OLMERT, BENYAMIN NETANYAHU, UZI LANDAU, Rabbi BENI ELON, EFRAIM EITAM, URI LUPOLIANSKY and leading Knesset members, academics and businessmen. Organizers of The Jerusalem Summit are Israel's Government Ministry of Tourism, the Jerusalem Municipality, the Michael Cherney Foundation and the National Unity Coalition for Israel."
11. See note 460.
12. February 16, 2006, New York Sun, 'Furor Erupts Over Recordings of Saddam': "Two former CIA directors have resigned from the board of the organization planning tomorrow to make public secret recordings of Saddam Hussein and his advisers. In the last week both [CIA directors] John Deutch and James Woolsey abruptly left their positions at Intelligence Summit, according to its president, John Loftus, who said their departure is part of a campaign by the directorate of national intelligence to punish him for releasing the recordings. The reason both men gave for their resignations was new information they received regarding one of the summit's biggest donors, Michael Cherney, an Israeli citizen who has been denied a visa to enter America because of his alleged ties to the Russian mafia. [there's every indication they knew about this before the VISA refusal]"
13. See note 452.
14. December 19, 2006, National Journal, 'Kissinger, Peterson, 57 Major Donors Join Team McCain': "Henry Kissinger has agreed to become an honorary co-chair for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign in New York, McCain aides said. Along with Kissinger, McCain has won the support of Pete Peterson, a former Commerce Secretary, and John Whitehead, the former Goldman Sachs chair and Reagan admin official. [both were the other co-chairs]... McCain's exploratory committee unveiled the names of the 57 wealthy and famous donors who've agreed to serve on his NY, CT and NJ finance teams. They include Henry Kravis, a founding partner of the KKR conglomerate, John Lehman, the 9/11 commissioner and ex-Navy sec. and Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets. ... A side note: recall that Gov. Mitt Romney's aides, when discussing their candidate's foreign policy education, let it be known that Romney had spent time with Kissinger. ... Lewis M. Eisenberg [also mentioned as national co-chair in this article; chairman Port Authority during 9/11; director Lower Manhattan Development Corporation]... "
15. *) March 16, 2008, New York Times, 'McCain Visits Iraq to Meet With Officials': "Senator John McCain arrived in Iraq on Sunday on a trip that was billed as an official visit by a Congressional delegation ... Mr. McCain, Mr. [Joe] Lieberman and Mr. [Lindsey] Graham are also visiting Israel, London [at the Rothschild's] and Paris. Mr. McCain has said the trip is not primarily political."
    *) March 15, 2008, Washington Post, 'Senator's Supporters Are Invited to Lunch With a Lord': "Sen. John McCain plans at least one campaign event on his week-long congressional trip to Europe and the Middle East: a March 20 fundraiser in London. An invitation sent out by the campaign says the luncheon will be held at Spencer House, St. James's Place, "by kind permission of Lord Rothschild OM GBE and the Hon Nathaniel Rothschild." Tickets to the invitation-only event cost $1,000 to $2,300. Attire is listed as "lounge suits." The fundraiser will be limited to Americans, as foreigners are not permitted to donate to presidential candidates. McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said the campaign will reimburse Congress for the political portions of the trip, as well as the senator's flight home, because he is flying separately from the congressional delegation. "We are also paying for the fundraiser and his hotel that evening in London," Hazelbaker said. "We will reimburse the Treasury for the cost of a flight to London."
16. September 17, 2008, Huffington Post, 'Lynn Forester De Rothschild, Top Clinton Fundraiser, Backs McCain': "A top Hillary Rodham Clinton fundraiser threw her support behind Republican John McCain on Wednesday, saying he will lead the country in a centrist fashion and accusing the Democrats of becoming too extreme. "I believe that Barack Obama, with MoveOn.org and Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, has taken the Democratic Party _ and they will continue to _ too far to the left," Lynn Forester de Rothschild said. "I'm not comfortable there." Rothschild is also a member of the Democratic National Committee's Platform Committee. She said she would be stepping down from her position on the committee but will not switch political parties."
17. July 6, 2010, Arutz Sheva (Israel National News), 'Senators McCain, Lieberman, Graham Visiting PA in Ramallah': "Former White House candidates Senator John McCain and Joe Lieberman and Sen. Lindsey Graham spoke with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah Tuesday as part of a four-day "fact-finding tour." They are scheduled to meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and other Israel leaders on Wednesday, followed by a news conference. Sen. McCain was the Republican candidate running against Barack Obama two years ago, and Senator Lieberman, now an Independent, was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 2000, when Republican George W. Bush won his first term in office. The senators’ meetings with the PA came several hours before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama were scheduled to sit down for face-to-face talks at the White House."
18. AandE.com, about, (accessed: September 18, 2002): "A&E Television Networks is defying the notion that TV rots the brain. It offers a smorgasbord of programming in history, the arts, current events, and nature through its two main cable networks: A&E (more than 84 million subscribers) and The History Channel (more than 72 million subscribers). The company's flagship program is A&E's Biography, which has expanded into magazines, books, videos, and interactive media. A&E Television also operates two digital cable channels (Biography Channel, History Channel International) and a handful of Web sites. A&E is a joint venture of media giants Hearst (37.5%), Walt Disney's ABC Cable (37.5%), and General Electric's NBC (25%)."
19. Born in 1927. Son of George R., Sr. who was the son of William Randolph Hearst. Private business, 1946-48; staff LA Examiner, 1948-50, San Francisco Examiner, 1954-56; with LA Evening Herald-Express, from 1956, business manager, 1957, pub., from 1960, LA Herald-Examiner, from 1962; grp. head Hearst Real Estate; vice president Hearst Corp., 1977—, chairman, 1996—. President Hearst Foundation; director Randolph William Hearst Foundation. Named one of Forbes 400: Richest Americans, 2006—. Member VFW Clubs: Burlingame Country, Jonathan, California, Riviera. Son of George and Blanche (Wilbur) Hearst; Married Mary Thompson, April 23, 1951 (deceased December 1969); children: Mary, George Randolph III, Stephen T., Erin; Married Patricia Ann Bell, November 30, 1969 (div. November 1985).
20. November 1, 2005, (ASC founder) John M. Fisher, 'History milestones: American Security Council and American Security Council Foundation'
21. *) April 27, 2001, New York Times, 'Deal Is Signed To Take Over Trade Center': "The completion of the deal is the end of an effort begun three years ago by Gov. George E. Pataki of New York and Christie Whitman, then the governor of New Jersey, to privatize the huge 10.6-million-square-foot office complex. ... A group led by Larry A. Silverstein, a developer, and Westfield America Inc., an owner of shopping centers, signed a 99-year lease yesterday after working nearly 24 hours straight on the agreement."
    *) July 24, 2001, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey press release, 'Governor Pataki, acting governor DiFrancesco laud historic Port Authority agreement to privatize World Trade Center: "New York Governor George E. Pataki and New Jersey Acting Governor Donald T. DiFrancesco today hailed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's decision to privatize the management and operation of the World Trade Center, a world-renowned icon that for three decades has been New York City's most famous landmark. Silverstein Properties, Inc., and Westfield America, Inc. will lease the Twin Towers and other portions of the complex in a deal worth approximately $3.2 billion – the city's richest real estate deal ever and one of the largest privatization initiatives in history. "From my first days in office, I have pushed hard to privatize the management and operation of the World Trade Center because I believe that government is at its best when it focuses on its core mission. Today, as we make history, we can say: Mission accomplished," Governor Pataki said. "By sharpening the agency’s focus on our airports, seaports, bridges and tunnels, the Port Authority can improve services to all its customers..."
22. *) February 22, 2001, CNN archive, 'Vornado wins WTC lease'
    *) April 9, 2001, New York Observer, 'Silverstein Recovers: Dark Horse May Win World Trade Center': "Mr. Silverstein’s allies attribute the relative comity to his years of friendly coexistence with the Port Authority, which is his landlord at 7 World Trade Center, an office building he developed in the late 1980′s on Port Authority land. ... It can’t hurt either that when Mr. Silverstein sits at the bargaining table, he sees some familiar faces on the other side–Ben Needell, for one. Mr. Needell, a lawyer at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom, is one of the attorneys negotiating the deal for the Port Authority. Normally, he’s Mr. Silverstein’s lawyer. "All I’ll tell you is, Larry’s a great guy," Mr. Needell said. Another constant presence in the negotiations is Tim Ryan, an executive at J.P. Morgan Chase, which has been advising the Port Authority on the sale. A division of J.P. Morgan Chase also owns the old Equitable Building at 120 Broadway, which Mr. Silverstein manages and holds an option to buy for $200 million. Mr. Silverstein is also a friend of Governor George Pataki, who appoints half the authority’s board, and other Albany Republicans. Mr. Silverstein gave $15,000 to the Governor’s campaign committee last November, just as the bidding for the Trade Center was heating up. Mr. Silverstein gave $35,000 to the Senate G.O.P. and to majority leader Joseph Bruno last year."
23. November 21, 2001, Haaretz, 'Up in smoke': "Shortly after the events of September 11, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Larry Silverstein, a Jewish real estate magnate in New York, the owner of the World Trade Center's 110-story Twin Towers and a close friend, to ask how he was. Since then they have spoken a few more times. Two former prime ministers - Benjamin Netanyahu, who this week called Silverstein a "friend," and Ehud Barak, whom Silverstein in the past offered a job as his representative in Israel - also called soon after the disaster. Yaakov Terner, the mayor of Be'er Sheva, sent a letter of condolence. Many Israeli politicians are acquainted in one degree or another with the 70-year-old Silverstein. For 10 years, he tried to bring about the establishment of a free-trade zone in the Negev, until the project fell apart. ... In the afternoon of September 11, the Fire Department informed him that the smaller 7 World Trade Center building, which he owned, was going to collapse. It did so at 5:30 P.M., followed by buildings No. 4 and 5. Silverstein, who only six weeks earlier had carried out the largest real-estate transaction in the history of New York, was left with nothing."
24. January 16, 1997, New York Times, 'Paid Notice: Deaths: Silverstein, Etta': "Larry A. Silverstein, UJA-Federation's chairman of the board, and his wife, Klara Silverstein..."
25. June 2012, Mann Report, 'Larry Silverstein Hosts B'nai B'rith Real Estate And Guests At 7 World Trade Center': "Exuding enthusiasm and warmth, Larry Silverstein welcomed B'nai B'rith Real Estate and guests to a memorable luncheon and presentation on the 10th floor reception area of 7 World Trade Center, the fully leased, first completed building in the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site."
26. *) February 6, 2009, The Australian, 'Honour for Frank Lowy, king of the malls': "Rupert Murdoch paid the ultimate tribute to the life of his friend Frank Lowy last night, saying it had the makings of a movie. The chairman of News Corporation, publisher of The Australian, even suggested the Hollywood arm of his media empire could help out if the idea sounded attractive. "Frank is a scriptwriter's dream," said Mr Murdoch."
    *) August 6, 2007, Jewish Federations of North America (jewishfederations.org), 'Leadership briefing: Brian Tauber to chair UJC's breakthrough suite of next generation programs': "Lunch with a Legend, where participants can experience "a day in the life" of a business, policy or thought leader who is also a leading philanthropist. These gatherings, held in a variety of North American cities, include a spiritual component, networking opportunities and meeting at a site unique to the Legend. Previous Legends have included Bernie Marcus, Bob Kraft, Larry Silverstein, Charles Bronfman, Danny Greenspun and Lester Crown."
27. July 2007, American Australian Association, 'Australian Diaspora - Submission to the Australian Senate Inquiry', pp. 7, 12: "The American Australian Association was founded in 1948 to promote co-operation and understanding between the United States, Australia and New Zealand. ... Founders at the Inaugural Meeting at the University Club in New York City on July 19, 1946 included: Sir Keith Murdoch. Sir Randal Heymanson of Australian Newspaper Service Ltd. Mr. Alick McLean of the Hanover Bank. Mr. Russell Leffingwell Chairman of J.P. Morgan. Mr. Juan Trippe, Founder and Chairman of Pan American Airways. Hon. James A. Farley, Postmaster General. Mr. Edward Riley of General Motors Overseas Corporation. Mr. Ogden Reid, Publisher of the Republican, the New York Tribune. Mr. Neal Dow Becker. Mr. Herbert Bayard Swope. Mr. Charles Gamble of the Standard Vacuum Oil Co. Mr. E.C. Dyson of Dyson Kissner Corp. Mr. Floyd Blair of First National City Bank. Mr. Harry B. Van Sinderen, President of C. Tennant Sons. & Co. Mr. John M. Young, Founding Partner of Morgan Stanley & Co. These men were instrumental in founding the Association in 1948. Sir Keith Murdoch especially saw the greater importance of American and Australian relations, and then inspired the founding of the Association with United States business leaders. For most of its history the Association functioned with voluntary leadership and a part-time Executive Secretary and received substantial administrative support from Morgan Stanley & Co. ... Patrons: ... Maurice R. Greenberg ... Rupert Murdoch, AC / James D. Wolfensohn, KBE, AO. ....... [p. 12:] Benefit Dinner Honorees 1998 - Rupert Murdoch AC of the News Corporation 1999 - Jill Ker Conway of Lend Lease Corporation and Educator/Author 2000 - James D. Wolfensohn AO KBE of the World Bank 2001 - Geoffrey C. Bible of Philip Morris Companies 2002 - Peter S. Lowy of the Westfield Corporation 2003 - Douglas N. Daft of the Coca-Cola Company 2004 – Greg Norman AC of Great White Shark Enterprises [massive international company membership]"
    *) Annual report 2009, American-Australian Association, p. 40: "Benefit dinner – 5 February 2009 The most recent Benefit Dinner honored Frank Lowy AC, Executive Chairman and Founder, the Westfield Group at the Pavilion, AJC Royal Randwick Racecourse in Sydney. 2009 Dinner Chairmen included: Rupert Murdoch..."
28. www.inss.org.il (Institute for National Security Studies, accessed 2007-2012)
29. Israel Democracy Website, board of directors, idi.org.il/eabout1.htm (accessed: December 24, 1997).
30. Israel Democracy Website, international advisory council, http://en.idi.org.il/about-idi/international-advisory-council/ (accessed: December 26, 1997).
32. *) America Israel Friendship League website, U.S. national advisory board, (accessed: August 23, 2006): "John Brademas. Alfonse M. D’Amato ... Lawrence Eagleburger ... Rudolph W. Giuliani ... Vernon Jordan. Jack F. Kemp. Henry Kissinger. George P. Shultz. [Malcolm Hoenlein, Abraham Foxman, Paul Vallely among directors; Gen. Danny Rothschild is deputy chairman of the Israel Board]"
    *) America Israel Friendship League website, U.S. national advisory board, (accessed: January 6, 2009): "John Brademas. Alfonse M. D’Amato ... Lawrence Eagleburger ... Rudolph W. Giuliani ... Vernon Jordan. Henry Kissinger. George P. Shultz. [Malcolm Hoenlein, Abraham Foxman, Paul Vallely among directors; Gen. Danny Rothschild is deputy chairman of the Israel Board]"
33. *) December 5, 1999, New York Times, 'Paid Notice: Deaths Safra, Edmond': "The Officers, Board of Directors and staff of UJA-Federation of New York mourn the tragic loss of Edmond Safra, an extraordinary philanthropist and dear friend of the Jewish community."
    *) May 3, 2010, UJA Federation of New York, 'William and Phyllis Mack Honored With UJA-Federation Keepers of the Flame Award': "William and Phyllis Mack were honored by UJA-Federation of New York for their extraordinary philanthropic leadership, commitment, and impact. The Macks received the rarely given Alan C. Greenberg Keepers of the Flame Award at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan on Wednesday, April 28, 2010. They join a select group of philanthropists that includes the Tisch Families, Larry Silverstein, Edgar and Charles Bronfman, and the late Peggy Tishman, who have become the "keepers" of the hopes, dreams, and dignity of millions of Jews around the world."
34. September 10, 1982, PR Newswire: "Morton M. Lapidus, chairman of the board and president of Allegheny Beverage Corporation, has been named to the Board of Overseers of B'nai B'rith International, it was announced by Jack J. Spitzer, the organization's international president. ... Members of the Board of Overseers include: Edgar M. Bronfman, chairman of the board of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc.; Max Fisher, private investor and advisor to president Reagan; Jacob Levinson, chairman of the board of Ampal-American Israel Corporation; Ira A. Lipman, chairman of the board of Guardsmark, Inc.; Joseph Meyerhoff, chairman of the board of Magna Properties, Inc. and Edmond Safra, Honorary chairman of the board of Republic National Bank of New York."
35. *) September 12, 2001, The Record (Bergen County, NJ), 'Five men detained as suspected conspirators; maps connect them to attack; similar van was in Liberty Park' (from Lexis Nexis, this report was not copied by other newspapers): "About eight hours after terrorists struck Manhattan's tallest skyscrapers, police in Bergen County detained five men who they said were found carrying maps linking them to the blasts. The five men, who were in a van stopped on Route 3 in East Rutherford around 4:30 p.m., were being questioned by police but had not been charged with any crime late Tuesday. The Bergen County Police bomb squad X-rayed packages found inside the van but did not find any explosives, authorities said. However, sources close to the investigation said they found other evidence linking the men to the bombing plot. "There are maps of the city in the car with certain places highlighted," the source said. "It looked like they're hooked in with this. It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park. " Sources also said that bomb-sniffing dogs reacted as if they had detected explosives, although officers were unable to find anything. The FBI seized the van for further testing, authorities said. Sources said the van was stopped as it headed east on Route 3, between the Hackensack River bridge and the Sheraton hotel. As a precaution, police shut down Route 3 traffic in both directions after the stop and evacuated a small roadside motel near the Sheraton. Sources close to the investigation said the men said they were Israeli tourists, but police had not been able to confirm their identities. Authorities would not release their names. ... Sources said the FBI alert, known as a BOLO or "Be On Lookout," was sent out at 3:31 p.m. It read: "Vehicle possibly related to New York terrorist attack. White, 2000 Chevrolet van with New Jersey registration with 'Urban Moving Systems¬ sign on back seen at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ, at the time of first impact of jetliner into World Trade Center. "Three individuals with van were seen celebrating after initial impact and subsequent explosion. FBI Newark Field Office requests that, if the van is located, hold for prints and detain individuals. " FBI spokeswoman Sandra Carroll declined to comment on the incident late Tuesday. State police Lt. Col. Barry W. Roberson confirmed the traffic stop at a late night news briefing at state police headquarters in Trenton. He would not elaborate, however. Business records show an Urban Moving Systems with offices on West 50th Street in Manhattan and on West 18th Street in Weehawken. Telephone messages left at the businesses Tuesday evening were not immediately returned. Business records show the owner as Dominik Suter of Fair Lawn. A woman answering the telephone at Suter's home acknowledged he owned the company but refused to comment further. She also declined to identify herself. It was not clear Tuesday whether the van stopped by police is related to Suter's company. A business traveler staying at the Homestead Studio Suites Hotel said she watched state troopers drive the suspects away in a procession of state police cars about 5 p.m. The woman, who asked not to be identified, said the people detained appeared to be white men, but she could not give more details."
    *) September 15, 2001, The Record (Bergen County, NJ), 'Five hijack suspects had links to J.J.': "East Rutherford police stopped an Urban Moving Systems van on Route 3 Tuesday and detained five men inside, at least some of them company employees. The occupants said they were all Israelis. They were being detained because they are in violation of immigration regulations, and all have expressed a desire to leave the country on their own, according to an Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman. An employee of Urban Moving Systems, who would not give his name, said the majority of his co-workers are Israelis and were joking on the day of the attacks. "I was in tears," the man said. "These guys were joking and that bothered me. These guys were like, 'Now America knows what we go through.'"
36. *) December 13, 2001, New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety, Division of Consumer Affairs, 'State Granted Access to Moving Company's Storage Facility': "The State, at the same time, filed a lawsuit in Hudson County Superior Court against Urban Moving Systems and its owner Dominick Suter...According to the complaint, on or about September 14, 2001, Suter departed from the United States and left no one acting as an agent for Urban."
37. October 17, 2000, The Blackstone Group news announcement, 'Blackstone Acquires Debt on 7 World Trade Center': "Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, the global real estate investment and management arm of The Blackstone Group, L.P., announced today that it has purchased, from Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, the participating mortgage secured by 7 World Trade Center, a commercial office complex controlled by real estate developer Larry Silverstein... We are pleased to be a lender to Larry Silverstein, a seasoned real estate veteran, on one of Manhattan’s trophy properties..."
38. July 10, 2002, Wall Street Journal, 'Ailing Telecom Firms Find Demand for Prime Properties' (brief news): " But it's not clear whether Mr. Silverstein can use those proceeds to start building without first reaching an agreement with the mortgage holder on 7 World Trade Center, Blackstone Real Estate Advisors. Originally, when Mr. Silverstein developed the property in the 1980s, $449.4 million in debt was provided by Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association. In 2000, Blackstone bought the debt from TIAA, financing the purchase by selling $383 million in bonds in a private placement that was lead managed by Banc of America Securities LLC. Even if insurance proceeds are paid as construction moves forward, Mr. Silverstein could replace Blackstone by borrowing against these anticipated payments. There's also another advantage to finding a new lender: By taking advantage of the liberty-bond program that was approved by Congress to help New York recover from Sept. 11, Mr. Silverstein would wind up paying a lower interest rate than he's paying Blackstone. Given the large amount of equity Mr. Silverstein will put in the project with the insurance proceeds, he might be able to borrow money even before he announces major leases."
39. Larry Silverstein, leaseholder building 7, in the September 2002 PBS documentary America Rebuilds (Youtube): "I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, told me they weren't sure if they were able to contain the fire. I said, "You know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to pull it." And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse."
40. Even if one thinks that explosives were placed inside WTC 7 after the initial attacks, because it was decided that the building could not be saved anymore, there are still the testimonies of Barry Jennings and Michael Hess. Both of these testimonies can be found in part 1.
41. *) Wikipedia, 'List of tenants in One World Trade Center' (accessed: December 27, 2012). Largely based on CoStar Group info and distributed by CNN and other media outlets.
    *) October 31, 2004, Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, 'The Secret World Of Marsh Mac': "When Jeffrey W. Greenberg took the helm of notoriously secretive Marsh & McLennan Cos. (MMC ), a $12 billion financial-services company, on Nov. 18, 1999, analysts were happily buzzing that Greenberg was a gregarious, outgoing executive. ... But now it's MMC's top brass who are squirming. Being in the spotlight is highly uncomfortable for MMC -- long known as a patrician, white-shoe firm with an air so understated and secretive that at least one former exec likened it to working at the CIA. Its ranks have included Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, former Presidential Envoy to Iraq, who recently ran MMC's crisis-consulting business; Stephen Friedman, President George W. Bush's top economic adviser and former Goldman, Sachs & Co. (GS ) co-chairman, who was an MMC senior principal; Craig Stapleton, the husband of George W. Bush's cousin Dorothy, who was an MMC president; and Lord Lang of Monkton, a former British Member of Parliament who still sits on the board. Many Marsh and Putnam execs summer by the sea in ultra-wealthy and clubby Watch Hill, R.I."I'd Love to Talk...But" MMC certainly goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure loyalty. A former Putnam executive recalls being grilled by a company psychiatrist in a hotel room for hours during a job interview. Says the former exec: "Everyone has a Dr. [James] Terry story. He would ask questions like: 'What's the worst thing that ever happened to you?' 'What are your views on religion?' 'Who do you vote for?' They tell you they're looking for any signs of malfeasance or criminality. But they're also looking for people who will fit in, lockstep, at the company." An MMC spokeswoman claims that using a psychiatrist for screening purposes is "industry practice." Terry could not be reached for comment. Once they're in, most people who join MMC's upper echelons must sign binding noncompete agreements, say both current and former employees. "Each time you exercise stock options, you have to sign a new one," says one former exec. MMC calls this, "a generally accepted practice." Employees who leave MMC and then disparage it in public risk losing any deferred compensation to which they are entitled. One former MMC exec told BusinessWeek: "Gee, I'd love to talk to you. There's a lot to say. But they've got my money." Since moving to rival broker Willis Group Holdings Ltd. (WSH ), a former Marsh exec says he has been spied on by a private investigator who he suspects was Kroll Inc., which MMC bought in July for $1.9 billion. He says he believes MMC wants to ensure that former employees are not using its proprietary information. MMC would not comment without specific details. Another former exec says MMC constantly monitored internal phone calls. MMC says it is unaware of this."
42. April 9, 2005, Finfacts Team, ''White shoe' dissidents fail to knockout Morgan Stanley's Phil Purcell: "Former Morgan Stanley Chairman S. Parker Gilbert 71, who is one of the Group of Eight former executives seeking the ouster of the current Chairman and CEO Phil Purcell, is a stepson of Harold Stanley... Morgan Stanley has been a byword for WASP ["White Anglo-Saxon Protestant"] arrogance on Wall Street from its birth. It was the premier so-called "white shoe" [old-line aristocratic] financial house and it appears that Purcell's unwillingness to participate in the New York's toniest society circles, so important to the likes of Gilbert, are factors in the attempted coup d'état... Phil Purcell has said in a memorandum to staff that the "Sturm und Drang" generated by the media campaign against him, being orchestrated by the eight former executives, was making it difficult to explain the management shake-up that has brought his leadership to a crisis... One of the former Morgan Stanley executives leading the campaign against Purcell is S. Parker Gilbert Jr., 71, Chairman of Morgan Stanley from 1984 to 1990 who has been quoted as saying in reference to Purcell’s commuting at weekends to a suburb of Chicago: "If you run a big firm and you only are here a few nights a week, you miss things. The whole idea of these firms are relationships with other financial services firms and the New York corporate and social fabric." Gilbert’s father had been a senior partner at J.P. Morgan and he is currently a vice chairman of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art." Purcell announced on June 13, 2005 that he would retire as CEO and Chairman of the Board of Morgan Stanley, leaving with a severence package of $43 million in addition to his annual salary of $22 million.
43. September 22, 2000, Los Angeles Times, 'ence Services The Secret (Insurance) Agent Men': "Newly declassified U.S. intelligence files tell the remarkable story of the ultra-secret Insurance Intelligence Unit, a component of the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, and its elite counterintelligence branch X-2. Though rarely numbering more than a half dozen agents, the unit gathered intelligence on the enemy's insurance industry, Nazi insurance titans and suspected collaborators in the insurance business. But, more significantly, the unit mined standard insurance records for blueprints of bomb plants, timetables of tide changes and thousands of other details about targets, from a brewery in Bangkok to a candy company in Bergedorf. ... That insurance information was critical to Allied strategists, who were seeking to cripple the enemy's industrial base and batter morale by burning cities. ... The OSS insurance unit was launched in early 1943, long after it had become alarmingly clear that the Nazis were using their insurance industry not only to help finance the war but also to gather strategic data. ... The men behind the insurance unit were OSS head William "Wild Bill" Donovan and California-born insurance magnate Cornelius V. Starr. Starr had started out selling insurance to Chinese in Shanghai in 1919 and, over the next 50 years, would build what is now American International Group [AIG], one of the biggest insurance companies in the world. He was forced to move his operation to New York in 1939, when Japan invaded China. ... Starr's people and other insurance executives had intimate knowledge of the people involved in the global insurance business, so they were able to track potential collaborators."
44. January 16, 1983, New York Times Magazine, 'Casey and His CIA on the Rebound': "Mr. Casey and his wife of 40 years, Sophia, have a daughter, Bernadette, who is an actress. … According to aides, Mr. Casey addresses problems by consulting individually with close associates in the C.I.A. and a handful of outside friends, including Leonard H. Marks, a Washington lawyer and former head of the United States Information Agency; Charles Z. Wick, the current head of the U.S.I.A.; Maurice R. Greenberg, president of the American International Group Inc. … and Senator Paul Laxalt [of the American Security Council] …"
45. *) November 29, 2006, Editor & Publisher staff, 'Who Is Maurice Greenberg, Man Behind Bid for 'NY Times'?': "Greenberg has strong Republican connections -- friend of Henry Kissinger, once mentioned as a Reagan appointee to help run the CIA, and a funder of GOP candidates."
    *) February 12, 1995, U.S. World and News Report, 'Casey at the Bat; A Man of Influence; Lunch Partners; Late-Night Call; Keeping Tabs; Pressure Point; Egypt's Great Expectations': "Who was the driving force behind the selection of Gen. Michael Carns as the new CIA director? The answer: Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was struck by Carns's managerial skill as director of the 1,600-member JCS staff. As a result, Powell strongly recommended the ex-fighter pilot for the top CIA job and lobbied on his behalf on Capitol Hill and reportedly with President Clinton. The selection of Carns broke a stalemate between the White House and Capitol Hill over filling the CIA job. After Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch turned down the post, Clinton settled on Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, who had impressed the White House with her management skills at the Justice Department. But, the source says, Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the panel that must approve the nomination, advised the White House against sending up her name. Yet Specter's own candidate, Maurice Greenberg, chairman of American International Group [AIG], mustered little support, leaving the selection process at an impasse."
46. February 21, 2000, Business Wire, 'AIG Announces New Strategic Advisory Venture': "American International Group, Inc. (AIG), The Blackstone Group L. P. and Kissinger Associates, Inc. announced today the establishment of a new venture ... Henry Kissinger chairs both AIG's International Advisory Board and the advisory boards of several AIG-sponsored Infrastructure Funds. ... Henry Kissinger, Chairman of Kissinger Associates said, "Hank Greenberg, Pete Peterson and I have been close friends and business associates for decades.""
47. *) December 27, 2004, The Nation, 'Kissinger's Shadow Over the Council on Foreign Relations': "The Peterson-led Blackstone Group, according to its website, maintains a "strategic alliance" with Kissinger Associates to provide "financial advisory services to corporations seeking high-level strategic advice." Kissinger, likewise, is no stranger at Greenberg's AIG: In 1987 Greenberg appointed Kissinger chairman of AIG's international advisory group, where, according to Walter Isaacson's Kissinger: A Biography, he assisted the insurance giant with lucrative business deals in Argentina, Peru, Malaysia and South Korea. In turn, Peterson and Greenberg were excellently positioned to assist Kissinger at the Council on Foreign Relations. Both men have been exceedingly generous to the institution--contributing, Maxwell notes, "more than $34 million between them directly in personal donations and indirectly, via the privately-held Blackstone Group in the case of Peterson, and, in the case of Greenberg, via the Starr Foundation, of which he is chairman." Signs of Greenberg's largesse are evident at the council's 68th Street headquarters: there is a Greenberg Reception Room, a Greenberg Chair and a Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies. Greenberg and Peterson also have influence at Foreign Affairs magazine. Maxwell notes that both men have contributed to the endowment of the chair that Hoge holds as editor, which is named for...Peter Peterson."
    *) January 13, 1998, New Straits Times, 'Kissinger favours Washington helping to resolve woes': "Kissinger is now counsellor of Chase Manhattan Bank, chairman of the International Advisory Board of the American International Group..."
    *) Kissinger has been chairman of the international advisory board of AIG from 1987 to far after 9/11. Sept. 1, 2007, Business and Industry, 'Betting on Security's finest': "At present, Dr. Kissinger is chair of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm. He is also a member of the International Council of J. P. Morgan Chase & Company; chair of the International Advisory Board of American International Group, Inc.; and a counselor to and trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies."
48. *) Source unavailable through Google at the moment. Mentioned the November 2000 myself in a note taken from a Lexis Nexis article which mentioned Bremer's appointment to Marsh at the time. Don't have access to that database anymore.
    *) Proxy statement for annual meeting of shareholders, January 25, 2001, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (sec.gov) : "Former Ambassador Bremer joined Marsh McLennan Inc., the world's largest insurance broker, in 2000 as Managing Director, MMC Enterprise Risk."
    *) After 9/11 Bremer's counter-terrorism activities for Marsh increased. October 11, 2001, Business Editors and Insurance Reporters, 'Marsh Forms Crisis Consulting Practice Under Ambassador L. Paul Bremer': "Marsh Inc., the world's leading risk and insurance services firm, today announced it has established a crisis consulting practice that will respond to the need for integrated and comprehensive crisis solutions covering all aspects of a business's operations. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, one of the world's foremost authorities on terrorism, will serve as Chairman of the practice. Concurrently, Marsh and Control Risks Group LLC jointly announced an agreement to provide a full range of political risk assessment services for clients' worldwide operations."
    *) It's not clear from his Who's Who (digital) that he joined Marsh in 2000: "With Diplomatic Service, 1966; executive assistant to secretary US Department State [Kissinger], Washington, 1974-76, deputy executive secretary, 1979-81, executive secretary, special assistant to secretary of state [Alexander Haig and George Shultz], 1981—1983; deputy ambassador, chief of mission US Embassy, Oslo, 1976—1979; US ambassador to The Netherlands US Department State, The Hague, 1983—1986, amb.-at-large for counter-terrorism Washington, 1986—1989; managing director Kissinger Associates, 1989—2000; chairman National Commission on Terrorism, 1999—2001; chairman, CEO Marsh Crisis Consulting Co., 2001—2003; member Homeland Security Adv. Council, 2002—2004; presidential envoy to Iraq The White House, 2003; director Office of Reconstruction & Humanitarian Assistance Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad, Iraq, 2003—2004; chairman advisory board Global Secure Corp., Washington, 2009—"
49. Paul Bremer interview, NBC, 12:46, 9/11 (Youtube).
50. In late 2001, along with former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, Bremer co-chaired the Heritage Foundation's Homeland Security Task Force, which created a blueprint for the White House's Department of Homeland Security.
51. November 9, 2006, Blastgard International press release, 'BlastGard® International, Inc. Appoints L. Paul Bremer, III, Former Presidential Envoy to Iraq / Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority to its Board of Directors': "BlastGard International, Inc. (OTCBB: BLGA) has appointed L. Paul Bremer, III, former Presidential Envoy to Iraq / Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, to its Board of Directors. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, III served as Presidential Envoy to Iraq from May 2003 until June 2004. Prior to his assignment to Iraq, Ambassador Bremer had been Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Marsh Crisis Consulting Company and from 1989 to 2000, he was Managing Director of Kissinger Associates. Ambassador Bremer was a director of Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., Akzo Nobel NV, Vivid Technologies, Conner Peripherals, the Harvard Business School Club of New York and The Netherland-America Foundation. He served as a Trustee of the Economic Club of New York and on the International Advisory Boards of two Japanese firms, Komatsu and Chugai Pharmaceuticals."
52. *) Tokyo 1979, Trilateral Commission, 'Industrial Policy and the International Economy' paper (about the April 22-24, 1979 meeting), p. 8: "The Trilateral Process, Other consulted included the following: Kosuke Hiraoka, Vice President, Komatsu, Ltd."
    *) April 2002 Trilateral Commission list: "North American Group: Madeleine K. Albright ... Conrad M. Black ... Zbigniew Brzezinski ... André Desmarais ... John M. Deutch ... Jeffrey W. Greenberg ... Maurice R. Greenberg ... Robert D. Haas ... Carla A. Hills ... Richard Holbrooke ... Henry A. Kissinger ... Richard N. Perle ... Lee R. Raymond (Exxon) ... John D. Rockefeller IV ... David M. Rubenstein (Carlyle) ... Raymond G.H. Seitz ... George Soros ... Paul A. Volcker ... Robert S. McNamara [life trustee]... David Rockefeller [founder and honorary chairman] ... Former Members In Public Service: Richard B. Cheney ... Paula J. Dobriansky ... Richard N. Haass ... Paul Wolfowitz ... Pacific Asian Group: Kazurhiro Aoyagi, Executive Managing Director, KOMATSU, Ltd. ... Toru Hashimoto, Chairman of the Board, Fuji Bank, Ltd. ... Toru Kusukawa, Senior Councilor, Fuji Research Institute Corporation ... Masahiro Sakane, Executive Vice President and Executive Officer, KOMATSU, Ltd."
53. Wikipedia, 'List of tenants in Two World Trade Center' (accessed: December 27, 2012). Largely based on CoStar Group info and distributed by CNN and other media outlets.
54. Corporationwiki, Baseline Financial Services: "Joseph E. Kasputys Chairman at Baseline Financial Services, Inc. Waltham, MA. Robert G. Patterson President at Baseline Financial Services, Inc. New York, NY." Biographies of Kasputys often list him as a resident of Boston, of which Waltham is a suburb.
55. *) www.lmi.org/about_lmi.htm (accessed March 3, 2000): "Founded in 1961 at the behest of then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, LMI for many years served the U.S. Department of Defense almost exclusively. Beginning in 1994, we expanded our business with non-defense government and other nonprofit institutions."
    *) April 13, 1964, I.F. Stone's Weekly, Special Issue: 'The Military Industrial Complex at Work - How the Missile Makers Rob the Government' (accessed April 4, 2002): "The missile manufacturers have been robbing the government blind. This, in brief, is the finding of a Senate Government Operations subcommittee. ... The McClellan investigation showed that 30 years after cost-plus contracts were outlawed in the wake of the Nye revelations, virtually the same methods are still being used, now thinly disguised. Instead of eliminating the evils uncovered by these hearings, Secretary McNamara set up ("think-tank" style) a high-sounding Logistics Management Institute, with a board of trustees drawn from the universities. .. The Nye committee 30 years ago recommended nationalization of the armament business not only to stop"
56. *) LMI board of trustees, according to website www.lmi.org (accessed October 6, 2001): "Mr. Charles J. DiBona ... General Robert T. Herres, USAF (Retired) [NORAD; Joint Chiefs; Space Command] ... Dr. Joseph E. Kasputys ... Dr. Joseph S. Nye, Jr. ... Admiral Donald L. Pilling [former deputy chief of naval operations] ... General William G.T. Tuttle, Jr., USA (Retired) [president and CEO LHI] ..."
    *) LMI board of trustees, according to website www.lmi.org (accessed April 4, 2002): "The Honorable Paul G. Kaminski Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Technovation, Inc., and a senior partner in Global Technology Partners; Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Technology Strategies and Alliances; Former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology. Dr. Joseph E. Kasputys."
57. *) LMI board of trustees, according to website www.lmi.org (accessed Feb. 12, 1998): "Board of Trustees: ... Executive Committee: David Heebner, Chairman Charles J. DiBona. ... William G.T. Tuttle, Jr. ... Nominating Committee: Edmund T. Pratt, Jr. , Chairman ... Joseph S. Nye, Jr."
    *) Annual Report 2009, LMI: "Two members retired in 2009 after several years of service: Joseph E. Kasputys, a member of the Board since 1999 and Chair of the Audit and Finance Committee, and Joseph S. Nye Jr., a member since 1997 and former Chair of the Human Resources and Compensation Committee. Their guidance and counsel will be sorely missed".
58. *) Harvard Kennedy School of Government website, Dean's Council, (accessed November 1, 2012): "Members Chair Peter L. Malkin ... Membership (as of Aug. 2012): ... Joseph E. Kasputys ... Edward M. Lamont Jr. ... George W. Mallinckrodt ... David M. Rubenstein ... Members of the 2010-2011 Visiting Committee: ... John M. Deutch ... David M. Rubenstein. ... Honor Roll of Donors: ... Kennedy Circle: $25,000 and above: ... Joseph E. Kasputys ... Ann Huntress Lamont and Edward M. Lamont Jr. ... Peter G. Peterson ... Nathaniel Rothschild ... David M. Rubenstein ... Gary Winnick, in honor of David R. Gergen. ... Global Leaders Circle: $10,000–$24,999: ... David R. Gergen ... George W. Mallinckrodt ... Dean's Circle: $2,500–$9,999 ... John M. Deutch."
    Many of these names appear in previous years also. At the moment the online lists go back to 2008.
59. *) May 6, 2004, Harvard Gazette, 'A fond goodbye to dean, scholar, angler Nye': "There was something fishy about the farewell bash the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) threw for Joseph S. Nye Jr. last Thursday (April 29). ... Nye has been a member of the Harvard faculty since 1964. Currently the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations, Nye became dean of the Kennedy School of Government in 1995, after serving from 1993 to 1994 as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and from 1994 to 1995 as assistant secretary of defense for International Security Affairs. He had already decided to continue in government service rather than return to teaching when he received an offer to become KSG dean. The Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995 helped him make up his mind. He decided that the loss of confidence in government that had been brought to light by that event could be better addressed from the vantage point of academia than from within government itself. ... John Deutch, the Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and a friend of Nye's for 30 years... Deutch introduced videos from Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, personally thanking Nye for the work he had done while serving in their administrations. "You helped make the world a safer place," Carter said. "Joe, you got it right," said Clinton. "Just like you got it right for eight years at the Kennedy School of Government." ... Another video presented tributes by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright..."
    *) May 23, 2011, Harvard Kennedy School: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 'Joe Nye's answer to John Deutch on governance': . "You helped make the world a safer place," Carter said. "Joe, you got it right," said Clinton. "Just like you got it right for eight years at the Kennedy School of Government." ... Another video presented tributes by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright..."
60. *) Committee for Economic Development, ced.org/docs/tstlist.htm, (accessed Feb. 4, 1997): "CED Trustees: ... John Brademas ... Frank C. Carlucci ... John Diebold ... Joseph T. Gorman, chairman & CEO TRW Inc. ... Roderick M. Hills [husband of Carla Hills] ... Joseph E. Kasputys ... Peter G. Peterson ... Henry B. Schacht [Chase Manhattan; Rockefeller Foundation; Ford Foundation; Urban Institute] ... Walter V. Shipley [Chase Manhattan] ... George P. Shultz"
    *) Committee for Economic Development, ced.org/docs/tstlist.htm, (accessed Jan. 20, 1998): "CED Trustees: ... John Brademas ... Frank C. Carlucci ... John Diebold ... Joseph T. Gorman, chairman & CEO TRW Inc. ... Roderick M. Hills ... Joseph E. Kasputys ... Peter G. Peterson ... Henry B. Schacht ... Walter V. Shipley [Chase Manhattan] ... George P. Shultz"
    *) Committee for Economic Development, ced.org/docs/tstlist.htm, (accessed July 14, 1998): "CED Trustees: ... John Brademas ... Frank C. Carlucci ... John Diebold ... Joseph T. Gorman, chairman & CEO TRW Inc. ... Patrick W. Gross ... Roderick M. Hills ... Joseph E. Kasputys ... Peter G. Peterson ... Henry B. Schacht [Chase Manhattan; Rockefeller Foundation; Ford Foundation; Urban Institute] ... Walter V. Shipley [Chase Manhattan] ... George P. Shultz"
    *) Committee for Economic Development, ced.org/docs/tstlist.htm, (May 3, 1999): "CED Trustees: ... * denotes Lifetime Trustees ... John Brademas ... Frank C. Carlucci ... John Diebold ... Joseph T. Gorman, chairman & CEO TRW Inc. ... Patrick W. Gross ... Roderick M. Hills ... Joseph E. Kasputys ... Peter G. Peterson ... Henry B. Schacht ... Walter V. Shipley ... George P. Shultz*"
    *) Committee for Economic Development, www.ced.org/docs/trustees_6_01.pdf, (October 1, 2001): "CED Board of Trustees: ... * Life Trustee ... John Brademas ... Frank C. Carlucci ... John Diebold ... Joseph T. Gorman, chairman & CEO TRW Inc. ... Patrick W. Gross ... Roderick M. Hills ... Joseph E. Kasputys ... Peter G. Peterson ... Henry B. Schacht ... * George P. Shultz ... CED Honorary Trustees: ... Robert O. Anderson ... A.W. Clausen ... Richard L. Gelb ... Katharine Graham ... George C. McGhee ... Ruben F. Mettler ... "
    *) Committee for Economic Development, www.ced.org/docs/trustees2004_05.pdf, (March 7, 2005): "CED Board of Trustees: ... * Life Trustee ... John Brademas ... Frank C. Carlucci ... John Diebold ... Joseph T. Gorman, chairman & CEO TRW Inc. ... Patrick W. Gross ... Roderick M. Hills ... Joseph E. Kasputys ... Peter G. Peterson ... * George P. Shultz ..." (only Schacht is gone. Carlucci would leave in 2004/2005 period)
    *) Committee for Economic Development, www.ced.org/docs/trustees.pdf, (January 25, 2009): "Members of the 2008 board of Trustees: ... Co-Chairmen: Joseph E. Kasputys [and] Donald K. Peterson ... Members: ... John Brademas ... Joseph T. Gorman ... Patrick W. Gross ... Peter G. Peterson ... * George P. Shultz ..." (only Schacht is gone)
    *) June 22, 2011, PRNewswire, 'Roger Ferguson, President and CEO, TIAA-CREF, Named as CED Co-Chair': "The Committee for Economic Development (CED) has named Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer of financial services firm, TIAA-CREF, as a new co-chair. ... Mr. Ferguson succeeds Dr. Joseph Kasputys, Founder of IHS Global Insight, Inc. and Chairman of China Monitor, Inc., who has served as CED Co-Chair since June 2008. ... At all times, Roger was a very informed and wise observer of the American economic scene, both the private and public sectors," said Peter G. Peterson, Chairman and Founder of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Mr. Peterson is CED’s longest-serving Trustee."
    *) Committee on Economic Development website (accessed: October 30, 2012), February 2012 Trustees document: "Committee for Economic Development | Board of Trustees | February 2012: ... Co-Chairmen: ... Donald K. Peterson ... Executive Committee ... Patrick W. Gross ... CED Trustees: ... John Brademas ... Joseph Kasputys ... ... Peter G. Peterson ... George P. Shultz ..."
61. *) December 10, 2003, Hustler's interview with Greg Palast, 'Fixing the Fixed Voting Machines': "HUSTLER: Who owns and manufactures these machines? PALAST: iVotronics is owned by a company called ES&S [Election Systems and Software], founded by Senator Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator from Nebraska. Hagel became senator after Nebraska installed his voting machine. It was quite extraordinary, because you ended up with a Republican candidate winning in black districts in Nebraska. So obviously Chuck took his voting machine out for a test spin and did quite well. HUSTLER: He owns part of this company? PALAST: He's out of it now, but he founded it. HUSTLER: What about Diebold? PALAST: Diebold is another Republican-connected company. Here's the problem with privatizing democracy: Every single elections expert I've spoken to on this planet said there is nothing close to a paper ballot for safety, because you can count it in public and you can see how people voted. But there's a second aspect to this little computer game that I don't want to leave out, because no one's watching this one. That is, in Florida, the key to the theft of the White House was the removal of tens of thousands of voters from the voter rolls before the elections. They were purged on the grounds that they were felons. In fact, 97% of the people on that list were innocent of any crime except voting while black. The Florida Republicans did that by using a computer program to purge the files of people they considered suspects. You'd think they would avoid that system, but in fact the Help America Vote Act is going to require that, by the 2004 election, every state imitate the Florida system of computerizing, centralizing and purging their voter rolls. So we're going to take the fix that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris engineered, and we're going to run that across the country, and we're going to have 50 Katherine Harris' with their fingers on the registration buttons. HUSTLER: Recently Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold voting machines, promised to deliver votes to Bush. PALAST: The CEO of Diebold, who has become one of Bush's big donors, promised at a fund-raiser to help deliver the vote to Bush in Ohio. I hope that it gives someone pause about using his machines, but apparently not."
    *) October 15, 2012, Greg Palast for FireDogLake, 'It's Magic': "In a tight contest in Georgia, Diebold machines simply refused to operate and record votes in several black precincts. According to the company, the machines don’t work well in very humid, hot conditions. "Well, what do you think we get in Georgia in July!" the losing candidate, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, told me. In the white precincts, voting was held in air-conditioned suburban school gyms."
    *) November 17, 2004, Scoop - Independent News, 'Complete US Exit Poll Data Confirms Net Suspicions' (shows the unusual changes in exit poll data and the final election results: Iowa, Ohio, Florida, New Mexico) [link]
62. US Committee for the Institute for the Study of Conflict document (photocopy: 2011, David Teacher, 'Rogue Agents', p. 321): "The US Committee for the Institute for the Study of Conflict was formed during 1974 and officially launched at the first meeting of the Committee members in Washington, DC, on 3 March, 1975. ... The Members of the Committee are: The Hon. Mr. George W. Ball ... Mr. Frank R. Barnett ... Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski … Mr. John Diebold ... Ambassador Robert Komer ... Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. … Professor Richard Pipes … Mr. Kermit Roosevelt..."
63. George Shultz: Joined the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (part of the Rockefeller sphere of influence) as professor of industrial relations in 1957 and served as dean of the school from 1962 to 1968. One of the main organizers of the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council in 1973 (along with David Rockefeller). President and director of the Bechtel Group 1974-1982, 1989-2006. Chairman of the Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan/JPMorgan Chase international council from the 1990s to 2009.
64. *) 2004, Laura Flanders, 'Bushwomen: How They Won the White House for Their Man', p. 57: "Shultz served on the Chevron board before Rice joined it. In quick succession she followed him to Transamerica board, where she served for eight years, and later the Charles Schwab board, where she and Shultz served concurrently. At J.P. Morgan Chase she became a member of the International Advisory Council, which Shultz directed."
    *) Investing.businessweek.com, George P. Shultz: "Shultz served in the Marine Corps from 1942 to 1945. Dr. Shultz serves as the Chairman of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s International Advisory Council ... He has been Director Emeritus at Charles Schwab Corp. since 2005. ... He served as a Director of Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation since November 1991. ... He served as a Director of The Charles Schwab Corp. from 1997 to December 31, 2004. Dr. Shultz is the Advisory Council Chairman of the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency at Stanford University, Chairman of the MIT Energy Initiative External Advisory Board, and the Chairman of the Energy Task Force at Hoover Institution."
    *) Condoleezza Rice, official curriculum vitae, p.3: "Director, Board of Directors, Schwab Corporation, July 1999 - 2000. [Shultz there from 1997-2004] Member, International Advisory Council, J.P. Morgan, 1995 - 2000. Director, Board of Directors, Chevron Corporation, 1991 - 2000 [Shultz here since 1989 and recommened Rice's appointment] • Director, Board of Directors, Transamerica Corporation, 1991 - July 1999 • Director, Board of Directors, Hewlett-Packard, 1991 - 1993"
    *) National Women's History Museum, Condoleezza Rice (1954-): "Beginning in 1981, Rice taught political science at California's Stanford University. She became known as a specialist on the Soviet Union, and in 1989, when Republican George H. W. Bush became president, she began serving in federal government, where her knowledge of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin became especially helpful. She returned to Stanford in 1991, but was mentored by George P. Schultz, Secretary of State during the Reagan administration. He helped her obtain board memberships with Chevron, Transamerica Corporation, and Hewlett-Packard. "
65. Paul Wolfowitz worked under Secretary of State George Shultz as 8th Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (1982-1986) and 10th United States Ambassador to Indonesia (1986-1989).
66. *) November 30, 1989, New York Times, 'Talking Deals; A Buyout Firm Becomes Friendly': "Some partners in Forstmann, Little's existing funds worry about potential conflicts. The new fund will buy large blocks of publicly traded stock - as much as 10 percent - in companies in exchange for a seat on the board. ... Mr. Forstmann is lining up a group of high-level executives to serve as an advisory board for the new fund. Among the chief executives who have been asked to sit on this board are Michael D. Eisner of Walt Disney, Drew Lewis of Union Pacific and Anthony F. J. O'Reilly of H. J. Heinz, as well as George P. Shultz, the former Secretary of State." Shultz left government in January 1989.
    *) October 05, 1990, New York Times, 'Business People; Rumsfeld Becomes Chief At General Instrument': "Mr. Rumsfeld is also an investor in the company. He said yesterday that about a year ago he became a member of Forstmann Little's advisory board, made up of top executives, and got to know the Forstmann operation."
    *) October 9, 1992, New York Times, 'Abroad at Home; Death At Bush's Door': "At a private meeting last month former Secretary of State George Shultz spoke in passionate terms about the human disaster taking place in what was Yugoslavia. He deplored the American Government's failure to do more to stop Serbian attacks on Bosnia. There are many ways for the United States to influence the Serbs, Mr. Shultz said -- many more options than we have tried. One possibility, he said, is to bomb Serbian munitions depots. Mr. Shultz spoke Sept. 19 at a management meeting of Forstmann Little & Company, a Wall Street investment firm of whose board he is a member."
    *) August 12, 1993, New York Times, 'MCI's President Quits in a Surprise Move': "In a separate interview today, Mr. Rumsfeld, 61, made it clear that he was stepping down as chairman and chief executive of General Instrument because he was eager to move on -- probably back into politics. ... Mr. Rumsfeld, a limited partner at Forstmann Little, took charge of General Instrument in 1990."
    *) October 27, 1995, New York Times, 'Powell Consults 2 Conservatives and 2 Financiers About a '96 Run': "Among others whom General Powell has spoken with [is]Theodore J. Forstmann ... A spokeswoman for Mr. Forstmann, Anna Cordasco, said: "They are friends. I know that they are in contact. More importantly, I know that Mr. Forstmann holds General Powell in the highest esteem and thinks he's a great American.""
    *) November 4, 1995, New York Times, 'As Powell Ponders, Friends And Family Proffer Advice': "Another important Powell booster is Theodore J. Forstmann, a leveraged-buyout specialist who controls, among other concerns, the company that makes Gulfstream jets. Mr. Forstmann, who is worth several hundred million dollars, runs an annual conference at Aspen, Colo., at which General Powell has made major speeches. When General Powell was in Europe on his book tour, Mr. Forstmann flew there to meet with him and urge him to make a Presidential announcement soon."
    *) September 17, 1996, www.secinfo.com, Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.: "Theodore J. Forstmann has served as Chairman of the Board of the Company since November 1993. ... Colin L. Powell has been a director of the Company since May 1996. ... Donald H. Rumsfeld has been a director of the Company since January 1993. ... George P. Shultz has been a director of the Company since November 1991. ... Robert S. Strauss has been a director of the Company since April 1993."
    *) May 14, 1998, www.secinfo.com, Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.: "Henry A. Kissinger, age 74, has been a director of the Company since December 1997. ... Colin L. Powell, age 60, has been a director of the Company since May 1996. ... George P. Shultz, age 77, has been a director of the Company since November 1991. ... Robert S. Strauss has been a director of the Company since April 1993. ... Directors whose terms end at the 1999 annual meeting of stockholders: Robert Anderson, age 77, has been a director of the Company since March 1990. He has served as Chairman Emeritus of Rockwell Corporation since February 1990. Mr. Anderson is also a director of Optical Data Networks, Inc., ... Lynn Forester [de Rothschild], age 43, has been a director of the Company since March 1997. She has been President and Chief Executive Officer of FirstMark Holdings, Inc., since 1984. ... Theodore J. Forstmann, age 58, has served as Chairman of the Board of the Company since November 1993 and is Chairman of the Company's Management Committee. ... Robert S. Strauss, age 79, has been a director of the Company since April 1993. ... Mr. Strauss is also a director of Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. and Hollinger International Inc. ... Directors whose terms end at the 1999 annual meeting of stockholders: ... Donald H. Rumsfeld has been a director of the Company since January 1993."
67. Bush and Shackley were working together since the early 1960s in the Cuban project, with Carlucci joining them in the late 1970s when these men were largely running the CIA. Bush, Carlucci and Shackley continued their CIA work through private enterprise in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s:
    *) 2005, Joseph Trento, 'Prelude to Terror', pp. 17-18, 53, 131: "Most of Robert Crowley's work in managing the CIA's connections with business was with huge corporations like International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) and Ford. But, he explained, "sometimes we would suggest someone go off on their own. Sometimes the Agency needed more control. It was much easier to simply set someone up in business like Bush and let him take orders." ... Sherwood confirmed that Bush's specific role was "to provide cover to allow our people to set up training facilities and invasion launch points against Cuba in the 1960-61 period. ... We had to pay off politicians in Mexico, Guatemale, Costa Rica, and elsewhere. Bush's company was used as a conduit for these funds under the guise of oil business contracts. We used his company to find Cuban refugees jobs. Bush wasn't even told what the money was for, although he damn well knew what we were up to." John Sherwood went to great pains to point out that Bush's role was not covert. "He never did any spying, he simply helped his government arrange to place people with oil companies he did business with. ... The major breakthrough was when we were able, through Bush, to place people in PEMEX--the big Mexican national oil operation."
    *) Gene Wheaton again (January 4, 2002, to Matt Ehling on Declassified Radio): "Ted Shackley and Vernon Walters and Frank Carlucci and Ving West and a group of these guys used to have park-bench meetings in the late 70s in McClean, Virginia so nobody could overhear their conversations. They basically said, "With our expertise at placing dictators in power," I’m almost quoting verbatim one of their comments, "why don’t we treat the United States like the world’s biggest banana republic and take it over?" And the first thing they had to do was to get their man in the White House, and that was George Bush."
    * In the early 1980s men as Gen. Richard Stilwell and Richard Perle, who were working under deputy defense secretary Frank Carlucci, visited Ted Shackley's Cercle group.
    *) 2005, Joseph J. Trento, Prelude to Terror, pp. 124-125: "Turner's hiring of Frank Carlucci to replace Hank Knoche was manipulated by Shackley and Bush," William Corson said.3 Carlucci was close to Donald Rumsfeld, who had engineered Bush's appointment by President Ford. Carlucci also had total loyalty to General Richard Secord... and Erich von Marbod. ... According to Shirley Brill, Carlucci and Shackley were also very close friends. Shackley and Clines knew Carlucci from the Chile operations. ... Shackley, according to Soghanalian, had later worked with Calucci in setting up Portugal as a major arms transshipping point for the Middle East. "They played Turner like a violin to get Carlucci the job," Shirley Brill said. ... Weisz told him that "George Bush and James Angleton had been instrumental in putting Weisz where he was.""
    *) 2005, Joseph Trento, Prelude to Terror', p. 283: "In the early 1980s, George Bush helped Shackley get established in Kuwait and in the oil business as a consultant. Shackley started Theodore Shackley and Associates and several other companies, which he used as a cover for his work for Bush. For the first time in his life, he was making large amounts of money. … He even told friends that he still had hopes of becoming DCI someday in a future Bush administration. The admiration of Israel by the neocons was shared by Ted Shackley."
    *) George H. W. Bush was a senior counselor of the Carlyle Group 1993-2003, under the chairmanship during all this time of Frank Carlucci.
    *) 2002, Volume XXV, Number 1 and 2, AFIO magazine Periscope: "2001 donors [life members]: ... Inman, Bobby R. ... Gittinger, John W. ... Hugel, Max ... Jenkins, Carl E. ... Schlesinger, James R. ... Shackley, Theodore ... Spencer, Jr. Thomas R. ... Wannall, W. Raymond ... Webster, William H. ... Wedemeyer, Albert D. ... 26 Anonymous Donors... Special volunteers of time & talent: ... Shackley, Ted; Spencer, Jr., Thomas R. ... New Member Sponsors for 2001: ... Angleton, James ... Critchfield, James; Critchfield, Lois ... Spencer, Thomas ... Corporate partners 2001: Du Pont Investment Bankers, Hill & Associates, Institute of World Politics, ... Lockheed Martin (M&DS), ... Motorola, ... SAIC, ... TRW. ... Current Members of the AFIO Board of Directors: Honorary Board of Directors: Co-Chairmen: Hon. George H. W. Bush; Hon. Gerald R. Ford; Mr. John Barron; Hon. Shirley Temple Black; Hon. Frank C. Carlucci; Dr. Ruth M. Davis; Adm. Bobby R. Inman, USN (Ret); Professor Ernest R. May; Mr. John Anson Smith; Hon. William H. Webster; Hon. R. James Woolsey. ... Board Members: ... Mr. Theodore G. Shackley; Thomas R. Spencer Jr., Esq. ... Present Board Members Re-elected for Another Term in 2002: Ted Shackley (Ret)... Officers: President: Mr. S. Eugene Poteat [confirmed Gulf of Tonkin incident was used by White House as a false flag event.]"
68. Frank Carlucci is listed as a member of the Trilateral Commission on a 1993 and 2003 membership list (but not a 1998 one).
69. *) January 14, 1998, Miami Herald, 'Coalition forms to urge withdrawal of Cuban embargo': " A group of business, government and religious leaders announced Tuesday the creation of a coalition to press for ending the U.S. ban on sales of food and medicine to Cuba. The group, called Americans for Humanitarian Trade With Cuba, includes David Rockefeller, chairman of his family's trust; Archer Daniels Midland chairman Dwayne Andreas; and former U.S. officials Carla Hills, President Reagan's trade representative, and Lloyd Bentsen, President Clinton's first treasury secretary. With little more than a week before Pope John Paul II travels to Cuba, the coalition is seeking to portray the 36-year U.S. trade embargo as inhumane and unworthy of U.S. ideals, calling it the harshest in the world. The pope has also criticized the trade ban, which raises Cuba's costs by forcing it to rely on more-distant exporters. ... Retired Army Gen. John J. Sheehan, former head of the U.S. Atlantic Command, recalled that he supervised processing of nearly 40,000 Cuban refugees seeking U.S. asylum at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, beginning in 1994. Many were children suffering from malnutrition, he said. ..."
    *) July 28, 1999, Cubanet.org, 'Cuban Americans Storm Washington Demanding Lawmakers End USMedicine and Food Embargo on Cuba': "PRNewswire -- A jumbo jetliner of over 200 Cuban Americans from Miami working to end the US food and medicine embargo on Cuba will land in Washington, DC, today for a press conference with elected officials at 12:30, House Triangle, Capitol Lawn, and Hill meetings. The visit tops a recent chain of events analysts say is provoking lawmakers' to remove humanitarian restrictions from current embargo policy. ... Americans For Humanitarian Trade With Cuba is a national bipartisan coalition of American business, political, Cuban American, medical, labor and religious leaders focused solely on restoring sales of U.S. food and medical supplies to Cuba. Based in Washington DC, AHTC has 25 State Councils across the US, many chaired by Cuban Americans. Advisory Council: Carla Anderson Hills ... Dwayne Andreas ... Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. ... Frank C. Carlucci ... A.W. Clausen ... Francis Ford Coppola ... Richard E. Feinberg ... Mark O Hatfield ... Elliot L. Richardson ... David Rockefeller ... James Rodney Schlesinger ... General John J. Sheehan (retired) ... Oliver Stone ... Paul A. Volcker ... John Whitehead ... Source: Americans For Humanitarian Trade With Cuba."
    *) May 20, 2004, PRNewswire, 'Prominent American Leaders Call Upon Administration to Lift All Restrictions on Humanitarian Trade and Travel to Cuba': "A bipartisan group of prominent business leaders, ex-government officials, elected officials and humanitarian leaders from across the nation today, in an open letter to President Bush, called on the administration to work with the majority of members of Congress who seek to lift all restrictions on humanitarian trade and free travel to Cuba. ... The letter was issued by Americans For Humanitarian Trade With Cuba (AHTC) ... [Letter signed by:] David Rockefeller ... Carla Anderson Hills ... Paul Volcker ... Frank Carlucci ... James Schlesinger ... John Whitehead ... General Jack Sheehan ... Peter H. Coors ... Craig L. Fuller ... Francis Ford Coppola ... Oliver Stone ... A.W. Clausen..."
    *) April 26, 2005, PR Newswire, 'US American Industry gets prepared for Cuba; foundation of an official "US-Cuba Trade Association"': "PR Newswire - More than thirty companies, state agencies, and organizations from 19 states announced the official formation of the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association (USCTA). ... The Association's Board of Advisors, chaired by William D. Rogers, former Assistant Secretary of State and a Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates, includes David Rockefeller; Carla Hills ... Frank Carlucci ... James Schlesinger ... A.W. Clausen..."
    *) www.uscuba.org/manager.htm (accessed October 6, 2012): "Board of advisors: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State, Colin Powell; David Rockefeller, Rockefeller Center Properties; Carla Anderson Hills, Former U.S. Trade Representative; Frank Carlucci, Former Secretary of Defense; A.W. Clausen, Former CEO, Bank of America; Former President of World Bank; Craig Fuller, Former Chief of Staff for VP Bush; James Schlesinger, Former Director of CIA and former Sec. of Defense; ... [the rest of the board not interesting] ... Francis Ford Coppola, Producer/Director; Oliver Stone, Producer/Director."
70. 2010 comments from Oliver Stone at the Santa Barbara Film Festival: "As [Robert] Parry said in his Consortium News website - I don't know if you are familiar with it - he was very involved in the 1980s and he just goes on about in very great detail how the right has bought the media from the 1970s with a conserted effort ... and now they've bought into the net heavily. So they are everywhere. And they have big money. And whereas the so-called liberals have not been able to purchase and hang in there for the fight. So it's over in that educational sense." Parry is an illogical anti-9/11 Truther.
71. *) Noam Chomsky on 9/11 (Youtube, 'Noam Chomsky Debunks 9/11 and JFK Murder', accessed: December 27, 2012): "Every authoritarian regime [Russia; China; Indonesia; Israel] in the world gained from 9/11. ... The less violent ones, say like England or the United States or France, immediately impose what they call "protection against terrorism acts" of one kind or another. Which has nothing to do with terror but a lot to do with discplining their own populations. ... Did [the Bush administration] plan it in any way or know about it? This is extremely unlikely. For one thing they had to be insane to try something like that. If they had, it is almost certain it would have leaked. It's a very poor system. Secrets are very hard to keep. So something would have leaked out very likely and if it had they would had they would have all been before a firing squads and that would have been the end of the Republican Party forever. ... There's a big industry in the United States on the left as well - you should see some of the emails I get - ... that is trying to demonstrate - various books coming out, like best sellers in France and so on - that this was all fake, that it was planned by the Bush administration and so on. If you look at the evidence, anybody who knows anything about the sciences would instantly discount that evidence. ... Now, when you take a natural event, not something that is controlled [which also usually has a lot of unexplained aspects], most of it will be unexplained. ... And even it were true, who cares? I mean, it doesn't have any significance. It's a little bit like the huge energy that has been put out on trying to figure out who killed John F. Kennedy. Hmm, I mean, who knows? Who Cares? I mean, plenty of people get killed all the time. Why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy? If there was some reason to believe there was a high level conspiracy it might be interesting, but the evidence against that is overwhelming. And after that, if iut happened to be a jealous husband, the mafia, what difference does it make? It's just taking energy away from serious issues..." Chomsky wrote 'Rethinking Camelot', a 1993 book that tried to disprove the theory that Kennedy had any intention of withdrawing from Vietnam by casting him as an agressive, violent right-wing of the same ilk as Ronald Reagan. Supposedly written by a moderate right-winger, the book is extremely vicious and irrational from beginning to end. Throughout the book one finds little sentences as "Kennedy's war", "Kennedy's terrorist war", "Kennedy's CIA" and "Kennedy's incipient radicalism". As ISGP's article on the Kennedy assassination demonstrates, these arguments make no sense at all.
    *) Grag Palast on 9/11: "We spent a long time very carefully looking at that [controlled demolition] and that just didn’t happen. … When I say there’s zero evidence, there’s just stone cold nothing there. Now, I’m sorry Lenny, that’s all I can tell ya. … We have to be very careful when we talk about 9/11 Truth … that we don’t come up with these goofball theories that are so easily disprovable that they discredit questions raised about the administration." Palast was an economics student of Milton Friedman at the Rockefeller's University of Chicago. Since around the turn, Palast has cooperated with Joseph Stiglitz, a former economic advisor to Bill Clinton and the chief economist at the World Bank. Stuglitz initially helped Palast expose the policy of the World Bank and IMF to force third world countries in privatizing and selling off all their national assets. Interestingly enough Stiglitz is very close to the David Rockefeller, George Shultz, Peter Peterson, Henry Kissinger, Conrad Black, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Maurice Greenberg, Paul Volcker, Carla Hills, Alan Greenspan and Jacob Wallenberg (so many of the key men described here as 9/11 suspects). Stiglitz can also be found at the Eurasia Foundation (Carlucci, Lee Hamilton, Madeleine Albright, James Baker) and Resources for the Future (Laurance Rockefeller, John Deutch).
    *) September 15, 2010, Robert Parry for Consortium News, 'America's Decoupling from Reality': "...these activists, who became known as '9/11 truthers,' threw out all the evidence of al-Qaeda’s involvement... cherry-picked a few supposed 'anomalies'... recycled many of the Right's sophistry techniques... Some supporters of the "inside-job" theory may have simply been destabilized by all the years of right-wing disinformation. Reality and real evidence may have lost all currency, replaced by a deep and understandable distrust of the nation's leaders and the news media."
    *) September 10, 2006, Alexander Cockburn on ZNet, 'The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts': "You trip over one fundamental idiocy of the 9/11 conspiracy nuts -- -- the ones who say Bush and Cheney masterminded the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- in the first paragraph of the opening page of the book by one of their high priests, David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor. ... It's awful. My in-box overflows each day with fresh "proofs" of how the WTC buildings were actually demolished... It's the same pattern with the 9/11 nuts, who proffer what they demurely call "disturbing questions", though they disdain all answers but their own ... Anyone who ever looked at the JFK assassination will know that there are endless anomalies and loose ends. Eyewitness testimony... is conflicting, forensic evidence possibly misconstrued, mishandled or just missing. But in my view, the Warren Commission, as confirmed in almost all essentials by the House Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s, had it right and Oswald fired the fatal shots from the Schoolbook Depository [untrue, the HSCA concluded there had been a second shooter who fired the final shot]. The evidentiary chain for his guilt is persuasive, and the cumulative scenarios of the conspiracy nuts entirely unconvincing."
    *) Wearechange.org interview with Oliver Stone (Youtube, 'Oliver Stone on Obama and 9/11 Truth', December 27, 2012): "There was an investigation and there was a lot of damning evidence in it, but they didn't go all the way. I don't think there is much to be gained by that [a 9/11 Truth film of Charly and Martin Sheen]. The larger issue is what Bush did with the initiatives he got and the chaos he created."
72. June 26, 2003, The Economist, 'The Carlyle Group: C for capitalism': "ON the day Osama bin Laden's men attacked America, Shafiq bin Laden, described as an estranged brother of the terrorist, was at an investment conference in Washington, DC, along with two people who are close to President George Bush: his father, the first President Bush, and James Baker, the former secretary of state who masterminded the legal campaign that secured Dubya's move to the White House. The conference was hosted by the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that manages billions of dollars, including, at the time, some bin Laden family wealth. It also employs Messrs Bush and Baker. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, when no one was being allowed in or out of the United States, many members of the bin Laden family in America were spirited home to Saudi Arabia. The revival of defence spending that followed greatly increased the value of the Carlyle Group's investments in defence companies. ... Carlyle really only took off after it hired Frank Carlucci, a former secretary of defence and deputy director of the CIA, in 1989. Mr Carlucci was able to open doors in Washington that had hitherto been closed to the firm, allowing it to participate in many lucrative deals."
73. Jamestown Foundation (jamestown.org), 'About', 'Board members': "Patrick W. Gross, Board Member: ... He is non-executive chairman of the board of two companies whose principal owners are private equity firms: Baker & Taylor, Inc [Baker & Taylor Holdings, Inc.], owned by the Carlyle Group..."
74. wolftrap.org/foundation/boardlist.html (accessed: September 15, 2000): "Officers and Directors: Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Honorary Chairman; Mr. Thomas W. Hoog, Chairman, Hill and Knowlton; ... Mrs. Marcia Myers Carlucci ... Mr. Patrick W. Gross; ... Emeriti Directors: The Hon. Gerald R. Ford..."
75. worldaffairsdc.org/OurHistory.aspx (accessed: July 8, 2014): "In 1980, the Foreign Policy Association consolidated its operations into its New York City headquarters and established the World Affairs Council of Washington, DC to continue operations in the nation’s capital. FPA Board members Patrick Gross and Philip Odeen co-founded the new entity and both served as Chairman of the Council’s Board of Directors."
76. *) sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/870763/0000912057-97-012636.txt (accessed: July 8, 2014): "BDM International Inc. ... April 11, 1997 ... [Directors:] Frank C. Carlucci, 66, Chairman and Director: Mr. Carlucci has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Company since October 1990... Mr. Carlucci has been Chairman of the Board and a Managing Director of The Carlyle Group, L. P. ("Carlyle"), a Washington, D.C.-based private merchant bank, since 1993 and served as Vice Chairman of Carlyle from 1989 to 1993. ... Walther Leisler Kiep, 71, director... Philip A. Odeen, 61, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director..."
    *) dbb.defense.gov/Portals/35/Documents/Members/Odeen,%20Phil.pdf (accessed: July 8, 2014): "Mr. Odeen serves on the Board of Directors of Booz, Allen Hamilton, a leading strategy and technology consulting firm owned by the Carlyle Group."
77. See note 198 for details.
78. Stubblebine, a veteran of the remote viewing projects and UFO abduction phenomenon, has been interviewed for various 9/11 documentaries in which he claims that Flight 77 could not have hit the Pentagon.
79. *) Stubblebine and Stolarik worked together at BDM until Stubblebine left in 1990 and later, in the mid 1990s, at Space Applications Corporation.
    *) businessweek.com (accessed: July 8, 2014): "Mr. Stolarik spent 20 years at BDM International, Inc. ... Michael G. Stolarik ... Mr. Stolarik served as the President of QinetiQ's Mission Solutions Group from March 2007 to April 2009. He served as Chief Operating Officer of QinetiQ North America Operations LLC since April 2009. He was Vice President and General Manager of BDM's Communications and Data Systems Division from 1987 to 1989, and Vice President of Information Systems from 1985 to 1987. He also served as BDM's Chief Information Officer in 1994 and 1995. ... He serves as a Director of Professional Services Council [with Mantech people, a firm with deep ties to the CIA]."
    *) businessweek.com (accessed: July 8, 2014): "Michael G. Stolarik: ... President and Chief Executive Officer of Space Applications Corporation."
    *) people.equilar.com/bio/michael-stolarik-analex-corp./salary/81935 (accessed: July 8, 2014): "From [March] 1995 through 1997, he was President and CEO of Space Applications Corporation."
    *) courts.state.va.us/opinions/opncavtx/1915944.txt (accessed: July 8, 2014): "Court of Appeals of Virginia ... Albert N. Stubblebine, III v. Geraldine M. Stubblebine ... July 23, 1996 ... Following his retirement from the Army, the husband [General Albert "Bert" Stubblebine] worked for a private sector defense contractor, BDM International, Inc. He was employed as a vice president for intelligence systems. After six years of employment, he was forced to retire from that position in August 1990 [when Carlyle and Frank Carlucci took over the company]. ... Following his second retirement, the husband served as a member of the board of directors of several small consulting companies. ... In addition to those activities, the husband acted as a part-time consultant to two government contractors during his retirement. The first consulting contract with a company called ERIM required him to consult four days a month and ended because of a lack of government funding. The second consulting contract was with Space Applications Corporation (S.A.C.) [of Stolarik, formerly also of BDM, but also under Carlucci], another defense contracting company. The contract required him to consult two days a month. The evidence proved that this contract expired and was not renewed by the company."
80. *) people.equilar.com/bio/michael-stolarik-analex-corp./salary/81935 (accessed: July 8, 2014): "From 2002 to 2003, he was the Executive Vice President of Titan Corporation's Technical Resources Sector."
81. May 11, 2006, Daniel Hopsicker for Madcow Morning News, 'San Diego Defense Firm Titan Corp. Link to 5.5 Ton Cocaine Bust in Mexico': " The MadCowMorningNews has uncovered evidence implicating a San Diego defense contractor, The Titan Corporation, in fraud involving the shadowy St. Petersburg FL company involved in last month’s mysterious 5.5 ton cocaine seizure in Mexico. Titan is already embroiled in major scandals which include the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison and conviction and a $28 million fine for fixing a Presidential election in the African state of Benin. The company is also receiving attention for its role as the biggest campaign contributor of disgraced former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. A MadCowMorningNews investigation of Titan Corp. also revealed that the firm has a curious and so-far unexplained connection to Mister X [Makram Majid Cham], a mysterious Lebanese man who provided assistance to Mohamed Atta and other terrorist hijackers in Venice Florida before the 9.11 attack. Mister X, who owned a convenience store in Venice, befriended and assisted the terrorist hijackers before disappearing after the 9.11 attack, leaving behind a thriving Kwik-Check mini-market which has since stood abandoned in the heart of the Venice business district. Evidence in SEC filings recently brought to our attention reveal what happened to Mister X: he went to work for Titan. According to documents filed by the company, Mister X was a contractor working for Titan Corp in Saudi Arabia as recently as last year. FAA motto in connected dope busts: Don't Ask Don't Tell? Even more bizarre is the discovery of the embattled San Diego defense contractor’s inexplicable involvement with SkyWay Aircraft of St Petersburg, FL., a company recently in the spotlight of unwanted attention as the last clear user and owner of "Cocaine One," the DC9 recently caught carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine. The burning question: Who owned the DC9 airliner busted in Mexico? The current answer: Nobody knows. Almost a month ago The MadCowMorningNews requested complete records from the FAA on both DC9’s which had once been controlled by SkyWay and partner Royal Sons LLC. Although we check the mailbox every day, with varying feelings of hopefulness, to date they have not responded. Perhaps it's a simple matter of not being cleared for that information. Nor is anyone else, apparently, which is small consolation... What business did Titan Corp. have with SkyWay Aircraft? We still don't know. As we will see, Titan put out a press release fraudulently plumping the prospects of the soon-to-be-completely-insolvent SkyWay, a company which had no products and no prospects. SkyWay did however possess two DC9’s sitting around tricked out to look like Dept of Homeland Security aircraft. Were individuals in Titan's executive management aircraft enthusiasts? Apparently, yes. The individual at Titan with a yen for SkyWay's wild blue yonder has ties to another subject of current scandal: Brent Wilkes. Small world. Welcome to The Official Dusty Foggo Memorial SkyBox In May of 2004 Titan Corp. announced in a press release a major purchase from SkyWay, a penny stock fraud company about to go bankrupt amid accusations by investors of fraud after they discovered the firm had nothing but non-existent products to show for its two year cash burn of almost $40 million. Somebody's doing damage control, because on Titan's page of press releases on its website, this release, curiously enough, is the only one missing. ... Titan officials did not return phone calls seeking comment on why a billion dollar defense contractor with sensitive government defense and intelligence contracts had loaned its name and prestige to a soon-to-be-bankrupt firm whose owners were at that moment said to be stripping it of everything not nailed down. One thing the two firms did have in common was that both were major contributors to the Republican Party. In addition to padding the Duke-ster’s pockets for those late-night poker cum hooker-fests at the Watergate Hotel, Titan was a major contributor to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, who returned the favor in a mock-heroic defense of Titan’s employees accused of torture and rape at Abu Ghraib prison."
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid.
84. >*) Ibid.
    *) January 5, 2000, The Guardian, 'Abu Ghraib abuse firms are rewarded As prison ringleader awaits sentence, defence contractors win multi-million Pentagon contracts': "Two US defence contractors being sued over allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison have been awarded valuable new contracts by the Pentagon, despite demands that they should be barred from any new government work. Three employees of CACI International and Titan - working at Abu Ghraib as civilian contractors - were separately accused of abusive behaviour. The report on the Abu Ghraib scandal implicated three civilian contractors in the abuses: Steven Stefanowicz from CACI International and John Israel and Adel Nakhla from Titan. Stefanowicz was charged with giving orders that 'equated to physical abuse', Israel of lying under oath and Naklha of raping an Iraqi boy. It was also alleged that CACI interrogators used dogs to scare prisoners, placed detainees in unauthorised 'stress positions' and encouraged soldiers to abuse prisoners. Titan employees, it has been alleged, hit detainees and stood by while soldiers physically abused prisoners. Investigators also discovered systemic problems of management and training - including the fact that a third of CACI International's staff at Abu Ghraib had never received formal military interrogation training. Despite demands by human rights groups in the US that the two companies be barred from further contracts in Iraq - where CACI alone employed almost half of all interrogators and analysts at Abu Ghraib - CACI International has been awarded a $16 million renewal of its contract. Titan, meanwhile, has been awarded a new contract worth $164m."
85. businessweek.com (accessed: July 8, 2014): "Michael G. Stolarik ... Mr. Stolarik served as the President of QinetiQ's Mission Solutions Group from March 2007 to April 2009. He served as Chief Operating Officer of QinetiQ North America Operations LLC since April 2009. He was Vice President and General Manager of BDM's Communications and Data Systems Division from 1987 to 1989, and Vice President of Information Systems from 1985 to 1987. He also served as BDM's Chief Information Officer in 1994 and 1995."
86. May 7, 2007, Salon, 'George Tenet cashes in on Iraq': "And [since October 2006] Tenet is the only American director on the board of QinetiQ, the British defense research firm that was privatized in 2003 and was, until recently, controlled by the Carlyle Group, the powerful Washington-based private equity fund. Fueled with Carlyle money, QinetiQ acquired four U.S. companies in recent years, including an intelligence contractor, Analex Inc."
87. January 30, 2008, QinetiQ, 'QinetiQ appoints US Admiral as non-executive director': "QinetiQ Group plc, the international defence and security technology company, is pleased to announce the appointment of retired Admiral Edmund P. Giambastiani, Jr as an independent non-executive director to the QinetiQ Board with effect from 1 February 2008. Admiral Giambastiani is replacing Mr George Tenet who is stepping down from the Board of QinetiQ Group plc and joining the Board of QinetiQ North America following his appointment as Managing Director of Allen and Company LLC in New York City. Between 2005 and 2007 Admiral Giambastiani was the second highest ranking military officer in the United States, serving as the seventh Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ... Giambastiani's distinguished naval career included assignments as Special Assistant to the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence, Senior Military Assistant to the US Defense Secretary and Commander, US Joint Forces Command. He also served as NATO's first Supreme Allied Commander Transformation... [and on the board of MITRE]."
88. September 8, 2006, American Forces Press Service, 'Vice Chairman: 9/11 Underscored Importance of DoD Transformation': "Adm. Edmund G. Giambastiani Jr., the most senior military officer serving in the Pentagon today who was present during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, recalls the painful irony of the day. Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant on Sept. 11 and remembers the significance of a Pentagon breakfast Rumsfeld hosted to discuss the Quadrennial Defense Review with congressional leaders. The QDR looks ahead to future defense challenges to face the Defense Department and the nation, and Giambastiani remembers discussion of a potential surprise attack on the United States and the threat to be posed by non-state actors using asymmetrical warfare techniques. As the meeting was wrapping up at about 9 a.m., someone passed Giambastiani a note informing him that an aircraft had slammed into New York's World Trade Center. Only after learning that a second aircraft had hit the second tower did Giambastiani realize that many of the theoretical events Rumsfeld and the senators had just discussed were unfolding before their eyes. "There was a lot of conjecture. But when only one happens, you think it may be an accident," he said. "Obviously, a second tower was hit, (and) it was no longer an accident. Because you don't have two separate towers hit by two aircraft by accident." Giambastiani and Rumsfeld both went back to their offices to work, keeping their eyes on television sets that showed the World Trade Center in flames. Undersecretary of Defense Steve Cambone, who was a special assistant to Rumsfeld at the time, came to Giambastiani's office to discuss the Pentagon as a potential target and their course of action if it was attacked. Minutes later, at 9:39 a.m., that attack came. Giambastiani heard the explosion in his office, on the far side of the massive Pentagon building, and felt the ground shake. He walked through his doorway toward the secretary's office, and his eyes met Rumsfeld's. As Rumsfeld proceeded directly to the crash site, where he helped first responders triage those injured in the attack, Giambastiani went to the National Military Command Center to prepare it to become the Pentagon's command post for dealing with the crisis. "We were working on air defenses and … finding out if there were any potential further attacks," he said. "But we were also, frankly, starting to think about what the implications of these civilian aircraft attacks were -- not only on New York City, but also on the Pentagon and … on Pennsylvania." At about 6 that evening, Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, who held Giambastiani's current job at the time but was acting in the chairman's job, held a Pentagon press briefing to discuss the day's events and answer questions. "We wanted to send a message to al Qaeda, and we wanted to send a message to the American people and to the people around the world that they understood that (terrorists) may have attacked the Pentagon, they may have attacked the United States, but they would probably regret doing this," Giambastiani said."
89. November 30, 2012, Heritage.org, National Security: Independent Quadrennial Defense Review Panel Needed: "The QDR became law in 1996, and the Pentagon has conducted QDRs in 1997, 2001, 2006, and 2010. Unless Congress changes the law, the fifth QDR will face a uniquely constrained fiscal environment. ... Twice in the past, Congress mandated independent panels to review the QDR: in 1997, chaired by Phillip A. Odeen, and in 2010, co-chaired by Stephen J. Hadley and William J. Perry."
90. August 13, 2004, Los Angeles Times, 'Rumsfeld and Bush Failed Us on Sept. 11': "Donald Rumsfeld, one of the chief opponents of investing real power over purse and personnel in a new national intelligence chief, told the 9/11 commission that an intelligence czar would do the nation "a great disservice." It is fair to ask what kind of service Rumsfeld provided on the day the nation was under catastrophic attack. "Two planes hitting the twin towers did not rise to the level of Rumsfeld's leaving his office and going to the War Room? How can that be?" asked Mindy Kleinberg, one of the widows known as the Jersey Girls, whose efforts helped create and guide the 9/11 commission. The fact that the final report failed to offer an explanation is one of the infuriating holes in an otherwise praiseworthy accounting. Rumsfeld was missing in action that morning — "out of the loop" by his own admission. The lead military officer that day, Brig. Gen. Montague Winfield, told the commission that the Pentagon's command center had been essentially leaderless: "For 30 minutes we couldn't find" Rumsfeld. For more than two hours after the Federal Aviation Administration became aware that the first plane had been violently overtaken by Middle Eastern men, the man whose job it was to order air cover over Washington did not show up in the Pentagon's command center. It took him almost two hours to "gain situational awareness," he told the commission. He didn't speak to the vice president until 10:39 a.m., according to the report. Since that was more than 30 minutes after the last hijacked plane crashed, it would seem to be an admission of dereliction of duty. Rumsfeld's testimony before the commission last March was bizarre. Asked point-blank by Commissioner Jamie Gorelick what he had done to protect the nation — or even the Pentagon — during the "summer of threat" preceding the attacks, Rumsfeld replied simply that "it was a law enforcement issue." That obfuscation — was the FBI expected to be out on the Beltway with shoulder-launched missiles? — has been accepted at face value by the commission and media. Rumsfeld is in charge of NORAD, which has the specific mission of protecting the United States and Canada by responding to any form of air attack. The official chain of command in the event of a hijacking calls for the president to empower the secretary of Defense to send up a military escort and, if necessary, give shoot-down orders. Yet President Bush told the panel he spoke to Rumsfeld for the first time that morning shortly after 10 a.m. — 23 minutes after the Pentagon was hit and moments before the last plane went down. It was, says the report, "a brief call in which the subject of shoot-down authority was not discussed." As a result, NORAD's commanders were left in the dark about what their mission was. When fighters were told to scramble from Langley, Va., they were sent not to cover Washington but on a fool's mission to tail and identify American Airlines Flight 11, which was already boiling the first Trade Center tower to the ground. Why wasn't Rumsfeld able to see on TV what millions of civilians already knew? After the Pentagon was attacked, why did he run outside to play medic instead of moving to the command center and taking charge? The 9/11 report records the fatal confusion in which command center personnel were left: Three minutes after the FAA command center told FAA headquarters in an update that Flight 93 was 29 minutes out of Washington, D.C., the command center said, "Uh, do we want to, uh, think about scrambling aircraft?" FAA headquarters: "Oh, God, I don't know." Command center: "Uh, that's a decision somebody's going to have to make probably in the next 10 minutes." But nobody did. Three minutes later, Flight 93 was wrestled to the ground by heroic civilians. How is it that civilians in a hijacked plane were able to communicate with their loved ones, grasp a totally new kind of enemy and weaponry and act to defend the nation's Capitol, yet the president had "communication problems" on Air Force One and the nation's defense chief didn't know what was going on until the horror was all over? The failures of 9/11 were not inherent in the system; they were human failures. Yet, so far, no one has been fired, which leaves the 9/11 families — and all of us — in a conundrum. The inaction of both the president and the Defense chief under the ultimate test offer little reassurance to a nervous nation under the shadow of new terror warnings. Before we attempt to revamp the entire security system, shouldn't our government look first at why the people in charge failed to communicate or coordinate a response to the catastrophe?"
91. See note 82.
92. See note 84 .
93. February 9, 2011, Mother Jones, 'On 9/11, Rumsfeld Fiddled While Cheney Ran the Country': "For a moment, Rumsfeld dropped his generally arrogant stance, and instead looked as if he were about to cry as he recalled the agony he went through in making the decision [to shoot down the planes of 9/11]. It might have been a poignant moment, were it not for the fact that Rumsfeld didn’t make the decision. It was Vice President Dick Cheney who made it. And it was Cheney who was running the country that morning, with a confused Rumfeld watching from the sidelines. When the nation is threatened, it is the President, the Commander-in-Chief who must make the decision to engage the military. Under the law, he orders the Secretary of Defense to implement his commands down through the military chain of command. While President Bush was being shuttled around from bunker to bunker on the morning of September 11, 2001, supposedly out of cell phone contact at times, Rumsfeld was next in line. But Rumsfeld’s role on 9/11 has always been a mystery. In his new book, on page 339, the former secretary of Defense casts a little light on what he did that morning . Feeling the Pentagon shake when American Airlines Flight 77 hit at 9:38, and seeing the smoke, Rumsfeld, by his own report, rushed into the Pentagon parking lot, which was in chaos amid frantic rescue efforts and treating the wounded. Then he returned to his office. He spoke briefly to Bush, who was on Air Force One flying around somewhere in the southeast, who wanted to know about the damage to the Pentagon. From there Rumsfeld went to the military command post in the basement. And there, he writes, heeding the advice of General Dick Myers, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who was also in the room, he raised the threat level to a state of alert, and launched fighters to protect Air Force One. Rumsfeld was supposed to be removed to a secret site, but he says he was "unwilling to be out of touch during the time it would take to relocate me to the safe site.’’ Shortly afterwards, he writes, "the Vice President reached me by phone.’’ Cheney reportedly told Rumsfeld, "There’s been at least three instance here where we’ve had reports of aircraft approaching Washington…A couple were confirmed hijacked. And pursuant to the President’s instructions I gave authorization for them to be taken out." In fact, there is considerable doubt as to when Cheney actually received "the President’s instructions," and considerable evidence that he acted on his own volition, as even the timid 9/11 Commission report makes clear. But in any case, his orders clearly violated the military chain of command–something Rumsfeld failed to point out, according to his own account of the subsequent conversation."
94. *) Washington, '91: A Comprehensive Directory of the Key Institutions and Leaders of the National Capital Area, Eighth Annual Edition, p. 115: "Council for Excellence in Government ... Frank A. Weil [vice chairman Atlantic Institute; vice chairman Asia Society; director NDI], Chairman, Board of Trustees; Mark A. Abramson, President ... Other trustees: ... Joseph E. Kasputys ... David O. Maxwell ... Suzanne H. Woolsey [until about 2007]."
    *) 1997 document Council for Excellence in Government: "Board of Trustees: Honorary Co-Chairs: President George Bush. President Jimmy Carter. President Gerald R. Ford. Chair: John D. Macomber. Vice Chairs: Suzanne H. Woolsey. Treasurer: Joseph E. Kasputys. Secretary: Robert H. Craft. Trustees: … William H. Draper, III ... Patrick W. Gross ... Elliot L. Richardson ... John C. Whitehead."
    *) www.excelgov.org/people/board_trustees.htm (accessed Dec. 10, 2000): "Board of Trustees: Honorary Co-Chairs: President George Bush. President Jimmy Carter. President Gerald R. Ford. Chair: John D. Macomber. ... Vice Chairs: Patrick W. Gross. Suzanne H. Woolsey. Treasurer: Joseph E. Kasputys. Secretary: Robert H. Craft, Sullivan & Cromwell. ... Trustees: ... Lee H. Hamilton ... John C. Whitehead."
    *) www.excelgov.org/people/board_trustees.htm (accessed Aug. 18, 2001): "Board of Trustees: Honorary Co-Chairs: President George Bush. President Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton. President Gerald R. Ford. Chair: John D. Macomber. ... Vice Chairs: Patrick W. Gross. Suzanne H. Woolsey. Treasurer: Joseph E. Kasputys. Secretary: J. T. Smith, Covington & Burling ... Trustees: ... Robert H. Craft ... Lee H. Hamilton ... John C. Whitehead."
    *) September 18, 2008, Council for Excellence in Government, 'Testimony of Patricia McGinnis, President and CEO Council for Excellence in Government Before the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia U.S. Senate': "Board of Trustees HONORARY CO-CHAIRS President George H.W. Bush President Jimmy Carter President William Jefferson Clinton CHAIR John D. Macomber VICE CHAIRS Patrick W. Gross Maxine Isaacs TREASURER Joseph E. Kasputys SECRETARY J.T. Smith II TRUSTEES Jodie T. Allen Dennis W. Bakke Colin C. Blaydon Richard E. Cavanagh William F. Clinger Jr. Abby Joseph Cohen Robert H. Craft Jr. Thomas Dohrmann William H. Donaldson Cal Dooley Leslie C. Francis William Galston Dan Glickman Lee H. Hamilton Edwin L. Harper James F. Hinchman Arthur H. House Suzanne Nora Johnson Gwendolyn S. King Susan R. King Robert G. Liberatore Kenneth Lipper Norman Mineta Edward Montgomery Susan K. Neely Sandra Day O’Connor Tom Ridge Charles O. Rossotti George P. Shultz Rodney E. Slater John C. Whitehead James Lee Witt PAST CHAIRS AND VICE CHAIRS Alan K. Campbell Louis J. Gambaccini David O. Maxwell William A. Morrill Paul H. O’Neill Frank A. Weil PRESIDENT AND CEO Patricia McGinnis."
95. January 27, 1976, Office of the White House Press Secretary, 'The White House': "The President [Ford] today announced his intention to nominate Joseph E. Kasputys, of Jamaica, New York, to be an Assistant Secretary of Commerce. His area of responsibility will be Administration. He will succeed Henry B. Turner who resigned effective September 20, 1974. He has been an Assistant Secretary of Commerce since June 1975. Born on August 12, 1936, in Jamaica, New York, Mr. Kasputys received his A. B. degree magna cum laude from Brooklyn College in 1959. He received his M. B. A. with high distinction from Harvard Graduate School of Business in 1967. He was awarded a Ph. D. from the Harvard Business School in 1972. He joined the United, States Navy in 1956. During 1955-56, Mr. Kasputys was with the Lockheed Aircraft Service Corporation, International. He became Chief of the Computer Training Division of the United States Navy Corps School from 1963 to 1965. He was Deputy Director for Data Automation at the Department of Defense from 1967 to 1969. During 1969-70, he was Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Comptroller). He became Director of the Office of B>licy and Plans at the Maritime Administration in 1972 and was named Assistant Administrator for Pollcy-and -Administration in 1973, serving until 1975. Mr, Kasputys is married to the {ormer Marilyn Kennedy and they have four children. They reside in Potomac, Maryland."
96. Daily diary of President Gerald R. Ford, White House (at the Gerald R. Ford Foundation): "Economic/Energy meeting, July 18, 1975, Cabinet Room. Participants: The President, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Vice President. William E. Simon... Alan Greenspan... Arthur F. Burns... Henry Kissinger... Brent Scowcroft... Richard B. Cheney... Joseph E. Kasputys... ".
97. Hitachi Foundation, 'History' (accessed: December 27, 2012): "In 1985, with the leadership of Mr. Katsushige Mita, then president of Hitachi, Ltd., this Japan-based global corporation established The Hitachi Foundation in the United States. ... Elliott L. Richardson, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor for his unparalleled commitment to public service, became the founding Chairman of The Hitachi Foundation. ... In 1998, Joseph E. Kasputys, a noted leader in business and government and founding member of the Foundation's Board, became The Foundation's second Chairman of the Board." Kasputys was chairman of the board until 1998. Some years later he reappeared as a director.
98. March 16, 2012, The Grand Expert, 'Former U.S Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates Receives Hitachi Foundation's Richardson Award': "Former U.S Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates accepted the 2012 Elliot L. Richardson Prize for Excellence in Public Service in a March 14th ceremony in Washington, DC. ... Joe Kasputys, who served with Richardson in government and was recruited by him to the Hitachi Foundation Board, opened the evening’s event with a moving tribute. "Somewhere, Elliot Richardson is smiling," said Kasputys. ... Previous recipients of this award are Colin Powell, Alice Rivlin, George Schultz, Norman Mineta, Sandra Day O'Connor, Lee Hamilton, George Mitchell, James Baker, and Tom Kean."
99. *) Trilateral.org: "The former Japanese Group of the Trilateral Commission was widened in 2000 to become the Pacific Asian Group."
    *) 1998, Trilateral Commission, 25 year anniversary document, p. 1: "Toru Hashimoto"
    *) March 1, 1998, list of Trilateral Commission members gives the names of Toru Hashimoto and Toru Kusukawa.
    *) Berlin 1998, Annual Meeting of the Trilateral Commission (march 21-23), pp. 43-44, Toru Kusukawa speech, "What Will Happen with the Euro?".
    *) London 2001, Annual Meeting of the Trilateral Commission (March 9-12): "[Speaker] Toru Kusukawa is Senior Counselor, Fuji Research Institute Corporation and former Japanese Delegate to the APEC Business Advisory Council (1998–2000)."
    *) April 2002 Trilateral Commission list: "North American Group: Madeleine K. Albright ... Conrad M. Black ... Zbigniew Brzezinski ... André Desmarais ... John M. Deutch ... Jeffrey W. Greenberg ... Maurice R. Greenberg ... Robert D. Haas ... Carla A. Hills ... Richard Holbrooke ... Henry A. Kissinger ... Richard N. Perle ... Lee R. Raymond (Exxon) ... John D. Rockefeller IV ... David M. Rubenstein (Carlyle) ... Raymond G.H. Seitz ... George Soros ... Paul A. Volcker ... Robert S. McNamara [life trustee]... David Rockefeller [founder and honorary chairman] ... Former Members In Public Service: Richard B. Cheney ... Paula J. Dobriansky ... Richard N. Haass ... Paul Wolfowitz ... Pacific Asian Group: Kazurhiro Aoyagi, Executive Managing Director, KOMATSU, Ltd. ... Toru Hashimoto, Chairman of the Board, Fuji Bank, Ltd. ... Toru Kusukawa, Senior Councilor, Fuji Research Institute Corporation ... Masahiro Sakane, Executive Vice President and Executive Officer, KOMATSU, Ltd."
    *) Peter Peterson, by the ways, seems not to be among the Trilateral Commission members it appears. But his Peterson Institute has been represented by C. Fred Bergsten (director) and David Walker (president and CEO).
100. 2010, James D. Wolfensohn, A Global Life, pp. 218-219: "Before the decade was out, we established a joint venture with Fuji Bank in Japan--called Fuji-Wolfensohn International--to serve clients doing business in Japan, as well as to service some of the special needs of Japanese companies operating in the United States. Under the leadership of Fuji's dynamic president, Toru Hashimoto, and its head of international activities, Toru Kusukawa, we developed a modest business out of New York and made lasting friendships."
101. March 2, 1992, PR Newswire, 'James D. Wolfensohn Incorporated and St. James's Place Capital Plc. form a joint venture':: "James D. Wolfensohn Incorporated, the New York investment banking firm, and J. Rothschild & Company Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of St. James's Place Capital plc, announce the formation of a joint venture called "J. Rothschild, Wolfensohn & Co". ... Paul A. Volcker, the chairman of James D. Wolfensohn Incorporated, will serve as chairman of the board which will include James D. Wolfensohn, the founder and chief executive of the Wolfensohn firm, and Lord Rothschild and Sir Mark Weinberg from the J. Rothschild Group. Lord Rothschild and Wolfensohn will be vice chairmen of the board. ... [Wolfenshohn:] "Together with our Fuji-Wolfensohn joint venture, we are now in a position to best serve our clients in each of the three major global marketplaces."
102. *) 2000, Upscale: The Successful Black Magazine, p. 52'': "Board memberships [of Vernon Jordan] include American Express, Dow Jones, J. C. nny, Revlon, Sara Lee, Xerox, Union Carbide, Fuji Bank and Ryder."
     *) Secinfo.com (August 28, 2001, Xerox Corp.): "Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. Age: 65 Director since: 1974. ... Member of the International Advisory Board of DaimlerChrysler; Fuji Bank and Barrick Gold."
     *) Secinfo.com (April 19, 2002, Asbury Automotive Group, Inc.): "Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., age 66, is currently a Managing Director of Lazard Freres & Co. Prior to joining Lazard, Mr. Jordan was a senior executive partner with the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, L.L.P., where he remains of counsel. Mr. Jordan's corporate and other directorships include: America Online Latin America, Inc., American Express Company, Callaway Golf Company, Clear Channel Communications, Inc., Dow Jones & Company, Inc., Howard University, J.C. Penny Company, Inc., Revlon Inc., Sara Lee Corporation, Shinsei Bank, Ltd. (Senior Advisor), Xerox Corporation, LBJ Foundation, International Advisory Board of DaimlerChrysler, Fuji Bank and Barrick Gold. Mr. Jordan is a graduate of DePauw University and the Howard University Law School."
103. Vernon Jordan was a long time trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. As for Jordan's Rothschild ties: April 16, 2001, New York Times, 'Look Out for Financial Shock Waves From the Telecom Crisis': "An example of how the telecom quicksand has caught even the cleverest investors is a privately held telecom company called FirstMark Communications International. Founded in 1998 by a dynamic New York businesswoman named Lynn Forester, FirstMark planned to develop broadband services across Europe. ... FirstMark seemed like a sure thing. Its board included such luminaries as Henry Kissinger, Vernon Jordan and Microsoft guru Nathan Myhrvold. And Ms. Forester was something of a celebrity herself, especially after her marriage to international banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild last year."
104. Lord Jacob Rothschild and Henry Kissinger shared the four-man board of the Open Russia Foundation. Both men are also known to have visited the United Nations Association together.
105. *) June 6, 2007, Financial News, 'Lord Rothschild nominated to Blackstone board': "A member of the Rothschild UK banking dynasty and a former prime minister of Canada have been nominated to serve on Blackstone Group's board of directors, as the private equity firm prepares for its $4bn (3bn) flotation. Lord Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild, of the eponymous European banking family, has agreed to become one of three independent directors at the private equity firm, according to Blackstone's amended initial public offering prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Lord Rothschild is chairman and founder of RIT Capital, a London-listed investment trust. Last year he also co-founded the UK fund management firm Spencer House Capital Management, his latest in a line of financial services and investment management ventures. Brian Mulroney, who was Canada's 18th prime minister from 1984 to 1993 and leader of the country's Progressive Conservative Party, has also agreed to be on the firm's board."
     *) http://www.blackstone.com/the-firm/our-people/jacob-rothschild (accessed: December 27, 2012): "Lord Jacob Rothschild is a Member of the International Advisory Board. Lord Rothschild is Chairman of RIT Capital Partners, an investment trust company listed on the London Stock Exchange. He has been a founding partner and investor in a number of financial service companies including Global Asset Management, a money manager, and St James’s Place Capital, a unit linked life assurance company."
106. July 1, 1997, Security Solution magazine, 'World Trade Center': "Today, before anyone can gain access to the World Trade Center's sub-grade parking garages, they must meet a host of security requirements and pass through a system of access control devices that makes extremely unlikely the recurrence of a blast such as the one that rocked the complex, killing six people and injuring 1,000. Now, only monthly tenant parking is allowed in the underground garages, and drivers must "register" along with their vehicles. They can enter and exit the parking lots at six strictly controlled access points, where their presence is: * recorded by surveillance cameras; * detected by vehicle ground loop detectors; * controlled by manned, bullet-resistant guard booths, motorized gate arms and anti-ram barriers; and * read by proximity card and electronic vehicle identification (EVI) tag readers. And that's just for starters. If a vehicle stalls, or fails to arrive at its assigned parking space within a predetermined amount of time, a special program will alert the main security command station as well as satellite command centers. If the vehicle proceeds right to its assigned parking area, it will pass still a third security station and another EVI reader that regulates parking lot capacity loading and vehicle reallocation when one lot is full. If the security system picks up an irregularity, the vehicle will not be able to enter or exit the underground parking complex. Would-be terrorists will find it no easier to gain access by foot. Tenants and employees have to put their photo ID/proximity cards on turnstiles to gain entrance to the four buildings in the complex - the Twin Towers and Buildings 4 and 5 - managed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. All visitors must wait to be issued time- and date-sensitive visitor badges with magnetic stripes that indicate clearly which floors or buildings they are authorized to enter. Not even the mail chutes are easily accessible; they have been fitted with narrow steel slots to preclude the depositing of large packages and bulky letters that could contain bombs. ... "After the bombing, we had the top security consultants in the nation, Kroll Associates, do a complete security analysis for us, and we followed their recommendations," says Douglas G. Karpiloff, program manager, security systems for the WTC. A 26-year veteran of the Port Authority, Karpiloff, a Certified Protection Professional, was general manager of tenant services after the bomb went off. He is responsible for the overall facility management of the $50 million security improvement program: $15 million in completed interim improvements and $35 million for permanent improvements, from the 250 multi-ton perimeter planters that prevent vehicles from crashing into the buildings, to the network of fiber optics and copper that will connect the redundant PCs and their multi-task, multi-user operating system to the lobby, parking and perimeter access control systems, alarms, intercom and CCTV systems. ... He is a man with a mission who speaks with pride of the innovations and subtleties of the WTC's security system. "We've developed a real team approach to security here," he explains. "Our outstanding engineering department, with Fred Ng and Paul Salvatore, oversees final design and field construction with support from their consultant, Analytical Systems Engineering Corp. Our information systems department, with Vic Guarnera, works on the software systems side of the house. My second-in-command, George Tabeek, and I concentrate on delivering a working system that balances security and tenant needs. Hermon Banks focuses on day-to-day operations, supported by Mike Hurley, manager of fire prevention, life safety and emergency services." Fire prevention and life safety Each of the four buildings the Port Authority oversees has a stand-alone Class E Pyrotronics fire safety system with its own PC-based file server and operating system. The system controls the complex's smoke detectors, which, upon sensing smoke, emit a small electronic signal that is sent to a local control device, or alarm, which transmits a coded signal to the computer that tells fire officials where to respond. The signals are sent to on- and off-site alarm monitoring stations. Hurley, a 17-year veteran of the Port Authority, is responsible for all aspects of fire prevention, life safety, emergency preparedness, fire command, code enforcement, training and fire department liaison. ... The parking access control system at the WTC was manufactured and installed by Ensec Inc., Boca Raton, Fla. The Enworks EN2000 system has a redundant host configuration and supports full function work stations. It is designed to integrate vehicle and driver access control, alarm monitoring and the parking security intercom. HID proximity card readers and Amtech Smart Pass Readers read drivers' proximity cards and Auto Vehicle Identification (AVI) tags on car windshields. The system is meant to be "failsafe," ensuring that both the driver and the vehicle together are authorized to gain entry to the parking garage, a feature about which Karpiloff is particularly excited. "The person and the vehicle are enrolled as pairs," he explains. "The driver is registered for a particular vehicle. When the proximity card reader and the AVI reader information match, the system opens the gate and allows the vehicle to enter from the street. Once the vehicle and driver are in the environment, we check further to make sure they have arrived at the assigned location." But before the vehicle even enters the parking garage, vehicle ground loop detectors - loops of signal wire that set up a radio field - pick up the vehicle's presence and work in conjunction with the AVI and proximity card readers to transfer relevant information to that particular parking lot entrance. Also included in the system is a series of Delta Scientific Corp. anti-ram hydraulic barriers. When the system allows entry, the gate arm goes up, and the anti-ram devices go down below the surface. If a vehicle is denied access, the anti-ram barriers go up, and the gate arm does not allow entry. Separate remote processors for alarms are integrated with the access control system and cause alarms to go off if a security breach is picked up. "The remote processors support all the information necessary to control the vehicle and the driver, to handle any duress features we have installed, along with some 25 exceptions. They can handle more than 2,500 cardholders," explains Vic Guarnera, project manager for the information services department (ISD). "In addition, all the alarms are sent back to a workstation, which is attached to the main file server. The person at the workstation responds to and analyzes the alarms, determines appropriate action, and may communicate with the person at the access or alarm point." There are manned security booths at the entrance/exit points as well. "We have six ramps at which entry and exit can be reversed," says Guarnera, "and guards at those ramps provide extra security for the sub-grade parking area. Any alarm that sounds is displayed on the ramp monitor at the guard's booth as well as on a display event monitor in the parking security office where the clerk enrolls new parkers and vehicles or changes access requirements." Remote processors for access control and alarms at the parking garages, and workstations at the guard booths, parking office, visitor centers and security command center and other areas, are connected to a main, redundant file server. Guarnera says the Port Authority's ultimate objective for integration of the security system is to have the lobby and vehicle access control systems integrated together. That will first be accomplished by an interface between the parking and turnstile systems, and at a later date, they will be fully integrated. "We are using an off-the-shelf environment as much as possible for the permanent operating system," he says. "It must be robust enough to support a system of this size with more than 100 turnstiles, 250 controlled and monitored doors and hundreds of CCTV cameras. It must be able to handle a database that reflects the 45,000 tenant/employee volume we have plus 5,000 to 6,000 visitors per day." The system integration will allow the two systems to share information on a full-time, real-time basis by way of a channel or dedicated communications linkage. Alarms from the parking system will be integrated with alarms from the turnstile access control system, and one proximity card will be used for both parking and turnstile access control. The CCTV system Construction is well under way on the installation of an expanded, upgraded CCTV system of covert and overt pan/tilt/zoom, alarm-point cameras. The camera system's American Dynamics matrix switchers will be able to function alone and will also be integrated with the PC computer system. "We're putting in an upgraded, high-resolution, color CCTV system," says Karpiloff. "The parking entrances and exits and the visitor center areas are already under continuous CCTV monitoring, both covert and overt. ... Cameras, he says, are placed in critical locations within the complex, such as machine rooms, computer areas, visitor areas and other sensitive locations. "High-powered, 400-line SVHS video recorders support the CCTV system," Karpiloff adds. "If someone tries to force a door or a gate, a video buffering feature, which stores images for a certain period of time, will have recorded the person even before he or she tries to force entry." Visitor center, lobby and tenant access control Banks manages the complex's security programs, which include a contract guard force of more than 300 people. ... The lobby access control system is not yet completely automated, but Banks points out that visitors must approach one of the visitor's desks in each of the four buildings, show their identification, and explain where they're from and who they're visiting. The present system records their destination, the date and time arrived, and archives the information for a year. "I get a printout monthly of every visitor by tower, tenant and category - announced, unannounced and courier," says Banks. "I can recall the information at any time. In fact, I just had a request for information on a visitor from last spring, and someone is searching the database as we speak." >From a PC in his office, Banks monitors the visitor's desks for managerial and security information such as how long it takes the operators to process visitors. He also examines reports generated by the database. Tenants, employees, long-term visitors and contractors are using color-coded ID cards until the lobby access control system is fully automated. Long-term visitors are issued a Polaroid ID3000 system card that is examined by guards upon entry and, when held under special lighting, reveals if there has been tampering. "All tenant contact names are in a central database and we have issued photo IDs to tenants, employees, long-term visitors and contractors," says Karpiloff. The lobby access control system will include Perey turnstiles. New, Motorola Indala proximity cards will be issued, which will be read by Motorola Indala readers when the holder places them just above the turnstiles. Visitors will be issued plastic photo ID cards with magnetic stripes that they will swipe through readers. The contractors for the permanent security system are E.J. Electric and Electronic Systems Associates, both of New York. Securacom, Woodcliff Lakes, N.J., is responsible for system integration. Also, ASSA of Brooklyn, N.Y., is installing a new key system. The UL437-approved, high-security cylinders and keys contain a proprietary keyway. ... Since the bombing, little has stayed the same at the World Trade Center. Before that devastating day, it was an open complex, closed only on weekends. Today, it is a closed complex, since eyes have been opened to the importance of access control."
107. *) September 12, 2001, Newsday.com, 'Heightened Security Alert Had Just Been Lifted': "The World Trade Center was destroyed just days after a heightened security alert was lifted at the landmark 110-story towers, security personnel said yesterday. Daria Coard, 37, a guard at Tower One, said the security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past two weeks because of numerous phone threats. But on Thursday, bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed. ... "People were flying out of the windows; there was nothing we could do," Joyner said. "People were pulled from the top floors by the wind tunnel created.""
     *) http://www.novareinna.com/bridge/sirius.html (accessed: December 28, 2012): "Police K9 Sirius, Badge Number 17...a four-and-a-half-year old, ninety pound, easygoing, yellow Labrador Retriever...was an Explosive Detection Dog with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department. Sirius, along with his partner, Police Officer David Lim, were assigned to the World Trade Center in New York, where their primary duty was to check vehicles entering the Complex, clear unattended bags and sweep areas for VIP safety. Sirius, who began work at the World Trade Center on July 4, 2000, was the only police dog to perish during the attack on the Twin Towers."
     *) Youtube, 'Can Bomb Dogs Smell Thermite?' (accessed: December 28, 2012) (telephone interview with a explosives detection dog handler from World Dogs International: "There are hundreds of thousands of explosives. And quite honestly, we do about 16." Explains that dogs can be trained to pick up on on thermite mixtures, but it appears the dogs aren't trained for that usually.
108. July 1, 1997, Security Solution magazine, 'World Trade Center': ""After the bombing, we had the top security consultants in the nation, Kroll Associates, do a complete security analysis for us, and we followed their recommendations," says Douglas G. Karpiloff, program manager, security systems for the WTC. A 26-year veteran of the Port Authority, Karpiloff, a Certified Protection Professional, was general manager of tenant services after the bomb went off. He is responsible for the overall facility management of the $50 million security improvement program..."
109. *) September 1, 1994, New York Times, 'A Midlife Crisis at Kroll Associates': "For years, Kroll Associates was Wall Street's private eye, specializing in digging up dirt in heated takeover battles. When merger mania cooled, Kroll kept its grip on the top rung by snaring such high-profile assignments as a request by the Kuwaiti Government to search for Saddam Hussein's hidden riches and revamping security at the World Trade Center after the 1993 terrorist bombing."
     *) July 1, 1997, Security Solution magazine, 'World Trade Center': ""After the bombing, we had the top security consultants in the nation, Kroll Associates, do a complete security analysis for us, and we followed their recommendations," says Douglas G. Karpiloff, program manager, security systems for the WTC. A 26-year veteran of the Port Authority, Karpiloff, a Certified Protection Professional, was general manager of tenant services after the bomb went off. He is responsible for the overall facility management of the $50 million security improvement program..."
110. January 20, 2002, Margie Burns for American Reporter (the first (award-winning) online newspaper), 'Secrecy surrounds a Bush brother's role in 9/11 security': "According to its present CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company [Securacom] had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down."
111. December 31, 1998, annual report, Kroll-O'Gara (sec.gov): "Howard I. Smith: has been Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Comptroller of AIG since 1996. From 1984 until 1996, Mr. Smith was Senior Vice President and Comptroller of AIG. ... He became a director of Kroll-O'Gara in December 1997. ... Howard I. Smith (2)(4) 1,444,212 [shares] - 6.9[%] ... American International Group, Inc. (2) 1,444,212 [shares] - 6.9[%] ... Jules B. Kroll (2)(3) 2,879,991 [shares] - 13.8[%] ... Thomas M. O'Gara (2) 2,433,652 [shares] - 11.7[%] ... (4) Consists of 1,444,212 shares held by AIG. Mr. Smith disclaims any beneficial interest in these shares."
112. November 16, 1999, Business Courier, 'Kroll-O'Gara security company sold for $475M in cash': "Most of the security services firm Kroll-O'Gara Co. is being acquired by a New York-based private equity fund for about $475 million in cash. This comes less than two months after the company said it might be sold amid rumors of a power struggle among senior officers. Blackstone Capital Partners III Merchant Banking Fund LP is buying 90 percent of Kroll-O'Gara at $18 a share. Vice chairman and director Thomas O'Gara and his brother, president and director Bill O'Gara, will no longer be officers or owners the company they helped build into one of the security industry's biggest consolidators."
113. secinfo.com, Kroll Inc., SEC File 0-21629, filed on December 23, 1999: "The plaintiffs allege that Kroll-O'Gara's officers and directors breached their fiduciary duties by negotiating an inadequate acquisition price and by failing to engage in arms-length negotiations. The consolidated Ohio actions also allege that Blackstone Capital Partners III and AIG aided and abetted the directors' and officers' alleged breaches of fiduciary duties."
114. February 6, 2001, Insurance Journal, 'AIG Offers Kroll Personal Security Services to Private Clients': "AIG announced that it was expanding its working relationship with Kroll Associates, the international security firm, and that its Private Client group would offer the firm’s "personal security services to high net worth individuals and their families." Kroll works closely with AIG for corporate clients, counseling their personnel and providing its expertise as part of AIG’s Kidnap, Ransom and Extortion policies. Their goal is to implement preventative measures in order to avoid incidents as much as possible. The new service for wealthy individuals consists of similar protective services, and also includes background checks on prospective employees, ongoing surveillance and training courses in driving, firearms safety and self-defense. Part of AIG’s Private Client Group protection extends to electronic identity theft as well. "Kroll will evaluate an insured’s computer usage and offer programs designed to mitigate the risk of electronic identity fraud and other electronic intrusions that can compromise the assets and personal security of an insured," said the announcement. Under its working arrangement with AIG, Kroll is called in to supervise crisis management when an incident occurs. In its expanded role the company will now provide those services to private individual holders of AIG policies, providing global protection, for which there is an ever increasing need."
115. October 25, 2005, Business and Industry, Jeffrey W. Greenberg Resigns as Chairman and CEO of MMC; Michael G. Cherkasky Named President and CEO: "The MMC Board of Directors has accepted the resignation of chairman and chief executive officer Jeffrey W. Greenberg. The Board has named Michael G. Cherkasky as president and chief executive officer of the company and elected him to the Board of Directors. Mr. Cherkasky will also continue in his current role as chairman and chief executive officer of the company's risk and insurance services subsidiary Marsh Inc."
116. Cherkasky left Marsh in 2008. After failing to buy back his firm, Jules Kroll began his own company, K-2 Intelligence, with his son. Cherkasky served as CEO of Altegrity in the 2010-2011 period.
     *) August 3, 2010, Altegrity press release (www.altegrity.com), 'Altegrity and Marsh & McLennan close Kroll acquisition': "Altegrity, Inc., an industry-leading provider of information solutions to its clients around the world in the areas of screening, risk analysis, and security solutions, and Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc. (NYSE: MMC), the global professional services firm, today announced the completion of the acquisition of Kroll Inc. by Altegrity."
117. October 31, 2004, Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, 'The Secret World Of Marsh Mac': "Employees who leave MMC and then disparage it in public risk losing any deferred compensation to which they are entitled. One former MMC exec told BusinessWeek: "Gee, I'd love to talk to you. There's a lot to say. But they've got my money." Since moving to rival broker Willis Group Holdings Ltd. (WSH ), a former Marsh exec says he has been spied on by a private investigator who he suspects was Kroll Inc., which MMC bought in July for $1.9 billion. He says he believes MMC wants to ensure that former employees are not using its proprietary information. MMC would not comment without specific details. Another former exec says MMC constantly monitored internal phone calls. MMC says it is unaware of this."
118. November 5, 1997, De Groene Amsterdammer (small weekly magazine), 'Het Wereld Natuur Leger' ('The Worldwide Nature Army'). Includes an interview with Kevin Dowling (Dutch). www.groene.nl/1997/45/rz_wnf.html
119. arlingtonassociates.com (website disappeared in December 2012 while writing this article). All cited text could be found on the 'about' page.
120. March 25, 2004, Business Wire, 'Kroll Launches High Risk Security Business Headed by Alastair Morrison; SAS Veteran and Founder of DSL Becomes Chairman and CEO of New Kroll Subsidiary': "Kroll Inc. (NASDAQ: KROL), the global risk consulting company, has formed a new company dedicated to addressing the security needs of corporate and government clients operating in high risk areas. Alastair Morrison, a British Special Air Service (SAS) veteran and recognized leader in the global security industry, has joined Kroll as chairman and chief executive of its new London-based subsidiary, Kroll Security International Ltd. "The intense hostility that corporations and government agencies face in diverse world regions has created an unprecedented demand for services to ensure the security of people, property and operations," said Michael Cherkasky, Kroll president and chief executive officer. "Kroll's global infrastructure, reputation in security, and success on Iraqi assignments positions us to play a key role in this vital area. With Alastair Morrison leading the charge, we are confident that we will provide special value to clients and serious competition to the niche players in high risk security." Morrison, who was decorated for his role in the successful rescue of airline passengers held hostage at Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1977, co-founded Defence Systems Limited (DSL) in 1981. As chairman and chief executive officer, he built DSL into a $50 million international security business before selling it to Armor Holdings in 1997. DSL assignments during his tenure included security for the United Nations, U.S. and U.K embassies, and multinational oil and mining companies in hot spots worldwide. Morrison will develop and manage similar high-risk, high-profile assignments in his new role, Cherkasky said. Joining him is Jerome J. Pomerance, who served as executive managing director and vice chairman of Kroll from 1983 to 1991 and who will focus on business and product development in the North American market. Morrison and Pomerance together hold a 12 percent equity interest in the new Kroll subsidiary. "Kroll has a sterling reputation in the security industry and the global business community," said Alastair Morrison. "With the timing right for launching a high risk security business, Kroll is the partner of choice. I am delighted that we are joining forces to build a new, preeminent brand in international security." Kroll Security International will operate as a unit of Kroll's Consulting Services Group (CSG) reporting to CSG Vice President Frank Holder, who heads investigations, intelligence and security worldwide. Its services will include security risk management and training, crisis management and response, asset protection, and transportation risk management and logistics, among others. "The new venture builds upon our current contracts; however, our long-term mission is to support the security needs of organizations operating in current and emerging high risk environments anywhere in the world," Holder said. "Primary targets for our services are the hundreds of multinational corporations that are already clients for other Kroll services." Morrison will be based at Kroll's Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) regional headquarters in London and coordinate closely with EMEA Regional Head Anne Tiedemann. He will assume responsibility for overseeing the Iraq assignments and other security services currently managed by the region, including Kroll's global Kidnap for Ransom practice. His new unit will also manage the security services work conducted in Kroll's Latin America & Caribbean and Asia-Pacific regions as well as Kroll's strategic alliance with iJET Travel Risk Management."
121. November 1, 2004, Security Management, 'Working in a War Zone': "Aldwin Wight, head of Iraqi operations for Kroll, says that before going into any high-risk area, it is important to gauge the level of violence and conflict to determine which areas are safe and which areas should be avoided. ... For example, earlier this year Kroll was asked to provide security for Iraqi Army recruiting stations; one of the stations was located in Baghdad, with another 13 planned around the country. After evaluating the security situation, Kroll advised the government that it would be unwise to build the 13 additional recruiting stations, because they would create an obvious target for terrorist insurgents eager to derail the new government. (This has since proven to be an accurate prediction.) The company suggested alternative methods for recruiting that didn't include stations. By advising against building the 13 stations, Kroll missed out on a fairly lucrative business opportunity, but Wight says that they evaluated the situation objectively and determined that it was not in the client's best interest to create the stations, which also meant that Kroll employees were not put into a dangerous situation unnecessarily."
122. *) January 31, 1997, The Guardian, 'SAS linked to rogue force in South Africa': "The SAS has been linked to violence by a 'third force' that threatened to undermine South Africa's transition to majority rule, in a report considered so explosive it was suppressed by Nelson Mandela... It confirms the involvement of commando units in random violence, the use of poison - supplied by the Seventh Medical Division - by hit squads, and the supply of arms and training to the Zulu-dominated Inkatha movement... The truth commission document says evidence was given to Gen Steyn that destabilisation of the government and neighbouring countries was planned 'to enable the military to step in credibly to create order'. Preparations for this allegedly involved stockpiling arms in countries which included Kenya, Zambia, Mauritius and Portugal, to create 'springboards' for possible military action. It said there was 'a suggestion that there was close contact with the British SAS'... As reported by the Guardian, a group of SAS officers working for a private security firm in Britain [KAS] were hired by wealthy conservationists in the late 1980s to come to South Africa to fight elephant and rhinoceros poachers. They became involved with local intelligence agencies and reportedly took part in paramilitary training. The British security firm, Kas Enterprises, was owned by Sir David Stirling, the founder of the SAS, and taken over after his death by Sir James Goldsmith. The security firm's SAS mission to South Africa was headed by Ian Crooke, who led the SAS..."
     *) The South African aspect of this group mainly consisted of intelligence General Christoffel van der Westhuizen, who liased with the American Security Council.
123. July 23, 2000, Sunday Herald, 'SAS founder exposed as Nazi admirer': "IN the annals of SAS mythology, there is only one legendary figure credited with the formation of the most famous special forces unit in the world - David Stirling. But there was another man there at the birth of the Special Air Service; a man who even Stirling said was the real mastermind behind the elite regiment - Jock Lewes. Until now, Lewes was effectively cut from history, relegated to just a few footnotes in regimental papers. So why did Lewes, who during the 30s and 40s was a legend in his own lifetime, fall out of favour and lose his place in the history book? The answer is simple - Lewes was a Nazi sympathiser. Until the true horror of Germany's genocidal plans for European Jews became clear, Lewes was charmed and awed by Hitler's socialist policies. Lewes' nephew, the historian John Lewes, has drawn on his uncle's previously unpublished personal journals as the basis for a new book, Jock Lewes, Co -Founder of the SAS. The book shows that Lewes was not only the key figure behind the establishment of the unit, but also a man who openly flirted with Nazi extremism. Lewes died in the African desert, aged only 28, as bullets from a German Messerschmitt fighter tore into his body just months after he and Stirling established the SAS in 1941. Stirling said of Lewes: "Jock could far more genuinely claim to be the founder of the SAS than I." Even at Oxford University, Lewes was openly flirting with the far-right, and was known to wear regalia linked to Oswald Mosley's fascist party. As a student and graduate, Lewes spent time in Nazi Germany. An admirer of the physical prowess of the Hitler Youth, he was once mistaken for a member of the Nazi youth group by a Belgian train conductor. At the time he was carrying a knife worn by members of the Hitler Youth bearing the legend 'Blut und Ehre' or 'Blood and Honour' inscribed in the handwriting of Goebbels. Lewes was attracted to the idea of German self-sufficiency and the nation's industriousness under Hitler, although he had a few reservations about the Nazi party's rampant nationalism. However, as his nephew and biographer says: "This did not prevent him from befriending newspaper barons, generals' widows ... and a beautiful Nazi girlfriend.""
124. March 25, 2005, Financial Times, 'Lunch with the FT: No offence taken': "High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/54c31cc6-9b5c-11d9-815d-00000e2511c8.html#ixzz2GNmGwlnf As a waiter leads me to the table where Alastair Morrison is sitting, I brace myself for a bone-crushing military hand grip and a sergeant-major greeting. I needn’t have worried. For a former SAS hardman - famous for storming a Lufthansa airliner in 1970s Mogadishu and liquidating the hijackers onboard - he has a pleasant, soft-spoken way about him. Immaculately dressed in a dark blazer and tie, he sits in a neat, self-contained manner, his back against the wall. I find myself leaning nearly halfway across the table to hear what he is saying. More Lunch with the FT Lunch with the FT Shane Smith Lunch with the FT Tyler Cowen Chai with the FT Ratan Tata Lunch with the FT Magnus Carlsen Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Morrison pioneered the modern-day private military industry (a term he dislikes), which has since burgeoned into a multi-billion pound global business. "I never envisaged the market growing to this size," he says, shaking his head. A former second-in-command at Britain’s elite Special Air Services regiment and counterterrorism expert, Morrison set up a ground-breaking company called Defence Systems Limited in 1981. DSL was a commercial success and became the template for dozens of companies set up since to provide security in the world’s hairiest areas. Morrison may have managed to remain largely out of the public eye - unlike his friend Tim Spicer, the retired British colonel who was embroiled in mercenary scandals in the 1990s - but he has been a continuous presence in the industry and a force behind many of the companies now operating in Iraq: Erinys, Hart Group, ArmorGroup and Kroll."
125. Ibid.
126. September 25, 2003, Damien McCrystal, City Editor for The Sun, 'Spooky tale from Salzburg; City Insider': "Across my desk come details of a hush-hush gathering in Salzburg of a spooky collection calling itself Le Cercle. Members come from around the world and seem to be dominated by Right-wingers with an interest in the security services. Britain is represented by, among others, spy writer and former Tory MP Rupert Allason, Tory Deputy Leader Michael Ancram, Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Alan Duncan, former GEC and Warburg director Sir Ronald Grierson, Lord Lamont, Lt Col Tim Spicer of Aegis Defence Services and Sir Stephen Lander, former head of MI5. Is this a new Bilderberg group in the making?"
127. 1995, Gerald James (James used be a banker at Barings, a member of the highly influential Monday Club, and all his career moved in very high intelligence and financial circles. In the late 1980s his company was among those picked by "the cabal" to be sacrificed in the Iraqgate scandal in order to protect the real movers and shakers), 'In the Public Interest', pp. 154-155: "Various people are on record as to Kock's role in Intelligence. The CIA/State Department referred to him as SIS (MI6). Gerald Bull has said that he was a member of MI5 - 'He's a Yarpie - a South African. He works for the Midland Bank arms department, but he's also part of MI5 like Cuckney.' When I mentioned this to Lt.-Col. Colin Mitchell, former MP, late of the Argylls and now with Halo Trust, a charitable company involved in clearing mines from territories like Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Ethiopia and Mozambique, he told me, 'No, he was MI6.' In an unguarded moment Richard Unwin [friend of Stephen Kock; intelligence and arms company insider] told me that Kock, in his more active days, had been head of Group 13. The Foreign Office is said to draw Group 13 operatives from the SAS as well as from private security firms. Its duties involve 'service to the nation' of a kind only given to the most ruthlessly experienced SAS officers [assassinations]. Kock certainly still moved in such circles when he was working for Astra, and was close to former SAS personnel and men active in the private security business, including Major Peter Hamilton, a former Military Intelligence man who has admitted having 'spent much of his life in the Security and Intelligence world', and was linked to the 'highest echelons of British Intelligence'. Hamilton's firm, Zeus Security Consultants, provided services to the government, as did Defence Systems Ltd., the firm of another of Kock's friends, SAS Major Alastair Morrison MC. Viscount Monckton [his father attended a number of Pilgrims Society meetings], who acted as one of Kock's patrons in 1967, was a director of Morrison's company, and Morrison was an associate, too, of Jonathan Aitken [intel-connected; unofficial arms negotiator; head of the private, hard-right intelligence group Le Cercle] both before and at the time that Aitken was director of Astra's BMARC [1980s]... Years later I bumped into Peter Shore [important politician and Privy Council member] in the changing rooms of the Roehampton Club... What I actually said to Shore was, 'Why has the main witness not been interviewed [in the Pergau Dam/ Malaysian arms deal affair]?' Shore, assuming that I meant Thatcher, began to reply - 'It's her prerogative as Prime Minister..." When I interrupted, telling him I meant Kock, Shore's telling response was, 'But that is another level of government altogether.'"
128. May 18, 2000, London Stock Exchange Aggregated Regulatory News Service, 'Petra Diamonds Ld Proposed Acquisition etc': - "The Directors of Petra are pleased to announce the proposed acquisition of Oryx Natural Resources ("Oryx"), proposed name change to Oryx Diamonds Limited, proposed admission to trading on AIM and the interim results to 31 December 1999. ... ("Petra" or "the Company") to become a significant player in the diamond industry. The Directors of Petra ("the Directors") believe that central and southern Africa host some of the best diamond deposits in the world and that the Company should continue to focus in these areas. The Directors believe that the potential rewards are substantial even in the face of continuing political challenges. The Directors believe that a strategic merger with another diamond producer will generate future growth for the Company. The Directors believe that the acquisition of Oryx ("the Acquisition") will create an enlarged group ("the Enlarged Group") with the potential to become a significant force within the diamond market. ... As at 31 December 1999, Oryx had net assets of $13,514,246 and recorded a net loss of $2,485,754 from its formation in May 1999 until 31 December 1999. Oryx is a private limited company duly incorporated under the laws of the Cayman Islands. Oryx has the commercial right to explore and exploit a diamond exploration concession ("the Concession") located southwest of Mbuji Mayi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a region regarded as one of the most diamondiferous in the world. ... Immediately prior to Admission Volker Ruffer will resign as a Director of Petra. The Proposed Directors will be appointed Directors of Petra with effect from Admission. Proposed Directors Thamer Al Shanfari - Proposed Executive Chairman (aged 32 years). Thamer Al Shanfari will have overall executive control of the Enlarged Group. ... [Shanfari] owns a private investment house, Oryx International Investments LLC, and a number of private companies in the industrial and oil industries. He is currently Managing Director and Chairman of Oryx. ... Geoffrey White - Proposed Deputy Managing Director (aged 39 years) ... He is based in Oman at the Oryx Group head office and is involved in the development of a range of projects within the Sultanate and globally. He is currently Deputy Managing Director of Oryx. ... Justin Longley - Proposed Operations Director (aged 34 years) Justin Longley holds an MBA from Imperial College, London, and a BSC ( Hons) Geology from University College, London. Recent experience prior to becoming the technical and country manager for Oryx included operational and management experience in the diamond industry in Angola as country manager for Diamond Works. ... Ambassador Frances Cook - Proposed Non-Executive Director (aged 54 years) Ambassador Frances D. Cook has worked on the African continent for over 20 years."
129. *) November 19, 2001, BBC, 'Oryx Natural Resources: An apology': "In the story, we stated that frontmen for Osama Bin-Laden owned shares in an international mining company called Oryx Natural Resources. It was also stated that Mohammed Khalfan, who is in jail for the 1998 bombings of the American Embassies in Africa, was the same man as Mr Kamal Khalfan, a shareholder in the company. We were wrong about both Oryx and Mr Khalfan. Oryx Natural Resources is part of the Oryx Group, which has interests in banking, hotels and construction. Neither Oryx nor Mr Khalfan has any connection with Bin-Laden, the Al-Qaeda network or the American Embassy bombings in Africa."
     *) November 25, 2001, The Observer, 'Business: Media: BBC blinded by dazzle of diamonds': "The company is not difficult to find in Oman and its telephone number is in international directory inquiries. Originally the story had been offered to the Sunday Times, which turned it down. Much of the information had been supplied by Brian Johnson-Thomas, a diamond expert who says he has worked for the UN Security Council. How Johnson-Thomas unearthed the story is a mystery. Kal Fhan's name seems to have been gleaned from the Oryx prospectus issued when the company attempted to float last year, but how Johnson-Thomas made the link with Khalfan and al-Qaeda is unknown. Johnson-Thomas maintains the bulk of his story is true and that he has just returned from South Africa with fresh documents that prove his original allegations. He says he will use the new documents in his own time. Johnson-Thomas declined to discuss the origins of the story or who tipped him off. … Until recently a firm with strong links to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe held a 20 per cent stake in Oryx. The Oryx Group's chairman, Thamer Al Shanfari, is reported to be a close friend of Mugabe."
     *) March 11, 2002, The Guardian, 'Media: Beebie-jeebies': "An interview with FO minister Peter Hain was included in the report, in which he explained the government's concerns that profits from "conflict diamonds" were being channelled to al-Qaida. While he did not mention Oryx, ministers were keen to underscore the global threat of terror to justify military action in Afghanistan."
     *) October 27, 2002, The Observer, 'Business & Media: Oryx 'link to Mugabe army': "A United Nations Security Council report lists a number of damning allegations against Oryx, including a claim that it smuggled diamonds out of the Congo, and channelled money to the Zimbabwean military. It recommends sanctions against Oryx unless the firm can refute the allegations."
     *) November 28, 2002, The Guardian, 'BBC news staff sent on legal crammer after Oryx blunder': "The BBC quickly admitted the libel and apologised; for the past year, the two sides have been haggling over a a financial settlement. Last week Oryx unexpectedly accepted a BBC offer of £500,000, plus about £300,000 towards its costs. The sum is significant, but much lower than the £10m-£12m demanded by Oryx. With the BBC's own costs, the corporation's bill for the blunder is thought to top £1m. There is speculation that Oryx settled the case because of accusations raised in a UN report that it acted as a Congolese front for Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwean Defence Force. But Oryx bitterly contests the conclusions, and is formally challenging them."
     *) March 16-18, R. T. Naylor, Counterpunch, 'From 007 to Osama The Political Economy of Diamonds': "These changes in commercial strategy were firmly cemented into place once the "al-Qaeda"-meets-conflict-diamonds tale grabbed the spotlight. This is not to suggest there was no "evidence." For one thing there was the discovery by the BBC that a twenty-eight-year-old al-Qaeda "member" named Mohammed Khalfan, arrested in Africa for involvement in the 1998 embassy bombings, was a leading shareholder of a Congolese diamond mine. The actual shareholder turned out to be Kamal Khalfan, a man in his sixties–the BBC publicly apologized and paid £500,000 in damages to his company. But that was not the end of such evidence. There were also abundant stories about a couple of Lebanese Shi’a diamond dealers "linked to" and "connected with" al-Qaeda–somehow they had missed the fact that at the time they were financially supporting bin Laden, his Taliban allies in Afghanistan were engaged, allegedly with the help of Arab auxiliaries, in massacring that country’s Shia population. The Lebanese dealers later claimed (probably correctly) that rumors of their bin Laden association were spread by business rivals seeking to discredit them. Just who those rivals might be can perhaps be inferred from the fact that the UN found a group of ex-Israeli Air Force pilots moving smuggled diamonds from Angola, Sierra Leone, and Liberia and that one of the first acts of a post-conflict government of Sierra Leone was to arrest Israeli Reserve-Colonel Yair Klein. Klein, who had won undying fame in the late 1980s for training narco-militias on behalf of Colombian drug lords, had arrived in Sierra Leone to sell "security services" to Israeli diamond traders trying to recover territory lost to the Lebanese Shiah in an earlier round of diamond wars. There were a few other problems with the Usama-sells-conflict-diamonds story. For one thing, how did an organization supposedly spearheaded by a Saudi "Wahhabi fundamentalist" make a breakthrough into an area where most of the population in the trade was Shi’a Muslim from Southern Lebanon? True, those intent on the tale of al-Qaeda peddling conflict diamonds could resurrect the fatuous but widely believed "link" between al-Qaeda and Hizbullah. But even that begged a few questions. It was never clear from any of the sensationalist stories if Hizbullah was supposed to be actually running "cells" of diamond dealers or just getting contributions from time to time from members of the Lebanese Diaspora who made money in diamonds, or real estate, or selling powdered milk and cans of tuna. Furthermore Hizbullah was never a serious presence in West Africa. To the extent Lebanese Shi’a in the region have any consistent political preferences, it would be not for the radical Hizbullah but the far more mainstream and rival AMAL movement, whose leader, senior Lebanese politician Nabih Berri, was born in Sierra Leone."
130. 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Welcome to Terror Land: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida' (digital)
131. I remember checking the website back in 2010 or so. It has disappeared since then.
132. See note 122.
133. *) September 19, 2004, Sunday Times, 'MI6 chief’s nephew was partner of coup leader': "A CLOSE relative of a former head of MI6 has emerged as having business links with Simon Mann, the former SAS officer involved in the plot to overthrow the head of an oil-rich African state. Justin Longley, the nephew of Sir Richard Dearlove — chief of MI6 at the time the coup attempt was staged last March — was a friend and associate of Mann, the Eton-educated former soldier jailed for seven years in Zimbabwe last Friday. Longley was working closely with Mann on goldmining, forestry and engineering ventures in Africa. He visited the continent as a representative of Logo Logistics, the company through which Mann later financed the attempt in March to overthrow Teodoro Obiang Nguema, president of Equatorial Guinea. One mining venture in Sudan also involved Sir Mark Thatcher, who was arrested last month by South African police and accused of being among the backers of the coup. ... Documents seen by The Sunday Times show Longley — the son of Dearlove's sister — and Mann were corresponding on ventures in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon and Angola. Longley accompanied Mann on a trip to Sudan in December 2002 to inspect a mining and forestry area that could have yielded millions of pounds worth of gold and teak. A report of the visit identified Mann as "CEO of Logo while Justin Longley is a senior project manager". At one point Mann wrote to Longley about the fantastic potential wealth in an African gold deposit: "The grade is awesome — ounces per ton." Longley was connected with several business ventures that the Foreign Office was aware of or intervened in. He worked with Mann at DiamondWorks, an Angola-based diamond mining enterprise, in the 1990s. The company had links through investors to Sandline International, the private military company that supplied arms to unseat a group of rebels who had seized power in Sierra Leone. The Foreign Office knew in advance of the operation. Longley also worked as a manager for Oryx Natural Resources, the mining concern that had controversial links to Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe. Oryx’s attempts to get a London stock exchange listing collapsed when the Foreign Office criticised the company’s plans for mining in the Congo — a source of "blood diamonds". Oryx denied any wrongdoing. ... As well as Dearlove, Longley had uncles from both sides of his family in MI6. His mother was headmistress of Roedean, the girls' public school. He also had connections with other members of the coup conspiracy. He was a close contact of Greg Wales, who allegedly helped plan the mission. Longley is said to have regarded Wales as a "spook" and described him to an acquaintance as a man with influential connections in Washington who "worked for the CIA and the commercial wing of the Republican party". In February, Wales met a senior Pentagon official in the Africa department and was in touch with an analyst who worked for the CIA. Longley left Angola in 1998 after a diamond mine where he was working was attacked by suspected Unita rebels. Eight mining personnel were killed, 24 injured and 10 went missing — presumed taken hostage during the raid. He now works with a relative of Mann for a technical services company based in Brighton, East Sussex. Last week he declined to comment in detail on his relationship with Mann. "I have no comment on Simon Mann and the allegations against him. My relationship with him was through DiamondWorks," he said. "I was general manager and he was chief operations officer. That is public record. I’ve got nothing further to say in any way, shape or form, and I would be very disappointed if any of this discussion appears in the press.""
     *) November 27, 2009, Money Week, 'Tony Buckingham: murky past of a mercenary turned oil baron': "Buckingham claims to have severed his racier connections, says The Sunday Times. Yet Logo Logistics – the company used by Mann to recruit mercenaries and supply military equipment and ammunition – is based at the same business address as two other firms connected with Buckingham companies. It seems an 'unfortunate' coincidence."
134. sandline.com, Comment by Sandline International, 14 March 2000, Book entitled 'Mercenaries - an African Security Dilemma': "Fact: ... a quick search at Companies House would have proven that ... EO was incorporated in the UK by Eben Barlow [alone]. ... Fact: Branch Energy is not and never has been a subsidiary of EO. ... Fact: Branch Energy is wholly owned by DiamondWorks Limited... Fact: EO has never owned shares in any Branch company. ... Fact: Mr Buckingham has never been a director of Sandline. ... Fact: Sandline was registered in 1996. The three [Barlow, Mann, Buckingham] did not register the company. ... Fact: Sandline was not incorporated by these individuals. Tony Buckingham was the inspiration behind Sandline, Tim Spicer is its Chief Executive, Michael Grunberg has acted as a consultant and Nic van den Bergh was the leader of the team sub-contracted from EO to undertake some of the work in Papua New Guinea. Neither Eben Barlow nor Simon Mann have ever had any involvement with Sandline. ... "
135. February 20, 2008, The Guardian, 'Yesterday in parliament': "Julian Lewis (New Forest E) attacked as an "outrageous breach" of human rights the extradition of a Briton accused of plotting to overthrow an African government. He said the removal of ex-SAS officer Simon Mann from Zimbabwe to Equatorial Guinea was illegal and claimed Equatorial Guinea's president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, had "promised to sodomise him, skin him alive and drag him through the streets". But Miliband said Mann's treatment in prison was being monitored and authorities had told the British government he would be "treated well in detention". The first priority was Mr Mann's welfare."
136. See note 127.
137. March 14, 2005, Sunday Times, 'South Africa 'was told of Thatcher coup plot': "Mann, a former SAS officer and friend of Sir Mark, was arrested in Zimbabwe last March with an aircraft containing 66 mercenaries en route to Equatorial Guinea. ... In the statement, Mr van der Westhuizen said: "I encouraged du Toit to walk away from both Simon Mann as well as the coup idea. He told me he was worried because Simon had told him that the investors had spent too much money on the project and that the investors would definitely kill them if they have to withdraw from the project." ... Du Toit’s wife, Belinda, whose brother is in jail in Zimbabwe because of the plot, claims in the documentary that her husband only ignored his doubts about his involvement in the coup because he was threatened by Mann. "If he doesn’t do what Simon and the others want, his life would be worth nothing, so would his family," she told the film-maker James Brabazon, a friend of du Toit."
138. See note 127 .
139. aegisworld.com (Accessed: March 23, 2009)
140. October 5, 2002, PRNewswire, 'GlobalOptions Announces New Senior Advisory Board Members': "GlobalOptions, Inc. today announced new members to its Senior Advisory Board, which is chaired by Admiral William J. Crowe, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The world-class experts provide counsel to the company and are available to assist clients. The Board includes: - Admiral William J. Crowe, Chairman -- Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Ambassador to Great Britain. - Honorable R. James Woolsey, Vice Chairman -- Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Undersecretary of the Navy. - Honorable Everett Alvarez* -- Former Deputy Administrator of the Veterans Administration and Deputy Director of the Peace Corps. - Ambassador Francis D. Cook -- Former U.S. Ambassador to Burundi, Cameroon, and the Sultanate of Oman. - Honorable Robert L. (Bob) Livingston* -- Former Speaker Designate for the U.S. House of Representatives and Assistant U.S. Attorney. - Sir Richard Needham -- Former Minister for Trade for Great Britain, Minister in Northern Ireland, and Member of Parliament. - Ronald B. Richards* -- Former Chief Operating Officer of In-Q-Tel, Inc. and former President of Panasonic Strategic Ventures Company. - Harvey Schiller* -- Former Executive Director of the U.S. Olympic Committee and former head of Turner Sports and YankeeNets. - General Gordon Sullivan* -- Former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army and President and Chief Operating Office of the Association of the Army. - General John H. Tilelli* -- Former Commander-in-Chief for all U.S. forces in South Korea and Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. - Honorable William H. Webster* -- Former FBI Director, former Director the CIA, and judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. "
141. executiveaction.com/seniorboard (accessed: December 29, 2012): "Senior Advisory Board: ... R. James Woolsey - Chairman ... Judge William Sessions – Vice Chairman ... Sir Richard Needham ... Celia Sandys ... Rear Admiral James Stark (ret.)" Neil C. Livingstone is chairman and CEO.
142. *) Annual Report 1999 Charles Schwab Corporation: "[George P. Shultz] is also Chairman of J.P. Morgan's International Advisory Council."
     *) JP Morgan Chase, annual report 2001: "The heritage Chase and J.P. Morgan international advisory councils were established in 1965 and 1967, respectively. With the creation of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., a new council drawing on the membership of the two predecessor councils was formed in January 2001. ... The Council meets approximately every eight months to discuss relevant issues of international concern and interest. Early in 2001, David J. O’Reilly, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ChevronTexaco Corp., joined the Council. At year-end, The Rt. Hon. The Lord Howe of Aberavon and Peter K.C. Woo retired from the Council. ... JPMorgan Chase International Council: Hon. George P. Shultz, Chairman of the Council. ... Mohammed Ali Abalkhail Former Minister of Finance & Economy Riyadh, Saudi Arabia ... Giovanni Agnelli [retired from council this year] ... Jean-Louis Beffa ... Hon. Bill Bradley [Senator; Allen & Company] ... Sir Christopher Hogg [Multinational Chairman's Group] ... Hon. Henry A. Kissinger ... Mustafa V. Koc [Turkey] ... Hon. Lee Kuan Yew ... The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney ... David J. O’Reilly [chairman and CEO of Chevron] ... David Rockefeller ... Jürgen E. Schrempp Chairman of the Board of Management DaimlerChrysler A.G. ... Cees J.A. van Lede [Shell history; Akzo Nobel; Carlyle Europe; Heineken; Philips; Bilderberg ;1001 Club] ... Board of directors: Stephen A. Schwarzman President and Chief Executive Officer The Blackstone Group... National advisory board: David F. DeVoe, Chief Financial Officer, News Corporation."
     *) JP Morgan Chase, annual report 2009: "JPMorgan Chase International Council: Hon. George P. Shultz, Chairman of the Council. ... Riley P. Bechtel ... Jean-Louis Beffa ... The Rt Hon. Tony Blair ... André Desmarais ... Hon. Henry A. Kissinger ... Hon. Lee Kuan Yew ... Minoru Makihira [Mitsubishi] ... The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney ... David J. O’Reilly [chairman and CEO of Chevron]..."
     *) JP Morgan Chase, annual report 2010: "JPMorgan Chase International Council: Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, Chairman of the Council. ... Khalid A. Al-Falih President and Chief Executive Officer Saudi Aramco ... Kofi Annan ... Riley P. Bechtel ... Hon. Bill Bradley [Senator; Allen & Company] ... Carla A. Hills ... Hon. Henry A. Kissinger ... Mustafa V. Koc [Turkey] ... Hon. Lee Kuan Yew ... Akio Mimura, Representative Director and Chairman Nippon Steel Corporation ... Sir John Rose [CEO Rolls Royce] ... Cees J.A. van Lede [Shell history; Akzo Nobel; Carlyle Europe; Heineken; Philips; Bilderberg ;1001 Club] ... Board of directors: Lee R. Raymond, Retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Exxon Mobil Corporation"
     *) More lists in the Pilgrims Society membership/bio list.
143. November 22, 2000, Property and Casualy.com, 'Cohen joins AIG global trade & political risk operation': "American International Group says that David Cohen has joined its AIG Global Trade & Political Risk Insurance Company as vice president. Cohen joins AIG Global after a 34-year career with the United States Central Intelligence Agency, where he served in both the operational and analysis arms of the Agency, including postings as Deputy Director for Operations and Associate Deputy Director for Intelligence. John Salinger, president, AIG Global, said, "David Cohen's wealth of operational and analytical experience will further strengthen AIG Global's position as the preeminent political risk insurance underwriting company. He will consult with clients to identify and assess political risks to projects, assist in the development of strategies to address problems, and work with those clients to assure the best possible execution of those strategies." AIG Global provides political risk and trade credit insurance in the United States and overseas."
144. *) August 1, 1995, Los Angeles Times, 'New Chief of CIA Espionage Is Named': "CIA Director John M. Deutch filled one of the most politically sensitive posts in the U.S. intelligence community Monday, naming David Cohen, a 53-year-old career CIA official, to head the agency's clandestine espionage arm. Cohen's appointment as the CIA's deputy director of operations had been the source of widespread speculation within the intelligence community in recent days. It represents a modest break with tradition, since he has spent most of his career on the analytical, rather than the clandestine, side of the agency. ... Cohen is a Boston native who joined the CIA in 1966. He put in a stint in clandestine operations earlier in his career but most recently has been serving as the CIA's associate deputy director for the Directorate of Intelligence, which conducts analysis. If Deutch had gone outside the agency to fill the post, the move would have been viewed as much more revolutionary."
     *) November 22, 2000, AIG press release, 'David Cohen has joined AIG Global Trade & Political Risk Insurance Company as Vice President': "American International Group, Inc. (AIG) has announced that David Cohen has joined its AIG Global Trade & Political Risk Insurance Company (AIG Global) as Vice President. Mr. Cohen joins AIG Global after a 34 year career with the United States Central Intelligence Agency, where he served in both the operational and analysis arms of the Agency, including postings as Deputy Director for Operations and Associate Deputy Director for Intelligence."
145. January 25, 2002, New York Times, 'Ex-C.I.A. Spy Chief to Run Police Intelligence': "A former spy master with the Central Intelligence Agency joined the New York Police Department yesterday to serve as its deputy commissioner for intelligence, a new position that was created to help steer the department through the post-Sept. 11 world. The new deputy commissioner, David Cohen, spent 35 years in the C.I.A., including two years, 1995 to 1997, as director of operations, a post in which he oversaw the agency's espionage around the world. ... Mr. Cohen will report directly to Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. ... The former spy was clearly not used to publicity. Asked his age, he allowed only that he is between 28 and 70. Asked if he ever worked in the C.I.A.'s office in the World Trade Center, he laughed and said, ''You're going to have to ask C.I.A. where their offices were.''"
146. August 24, 2011, NPR, 'NYPD Intelligence Unit Seen Pushing Rights Limits': "Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the New York Police Department has become one of America's most aggressive gatherers of domestic intelligence. Its intelligence unit, directed by a retired CIA veteran, dispatches undercover officers to keep tabs on ethnic neighborhoods — sometimes in areas far outside their jurisdiction. The existence of the Intelligence Division & Counter-Terrorism Bureau has been public knowledge, but many of its operations were kept secret. An investigation by The Associated Press has uncovered new details about how the unit, led by Deputy Commissioner David Cohen, works. "The lesson of 9/11 to the NYPD was, 'We can't sit back and just let the federal government tell us how to keep us safe or what intelligence we need to know or who might be after us,'" AP reporter Matt Apuzzo tells Morning Edition guest host David Greene. "We have to take responsibility for this ourselves, and we're going to go to wherever we need to go to get this information.""
147. Oct. 17, 2011, Associated Press, 'What's the CIA doing at NYPD? Depends whom you ask': "The CIA's deep ties to the NYPD began after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when CIA Director George Tenet dispatched a veteran officer, Larry Sanchez, to New York, where he became the architect of the police department's secret spying programs. While still on the agency payroll, Sanchez, a CIA veteran who spent 15 years overseas in the former Soviet Union, South Asia, and the Middle East, instructed officers on the art of collecting information without attracting attention. He directed officers and reviewed case files. Sometimes, officials said, intelligence collected from NYPD's operations was passed informally to the CIA. ... Sanchez was on the CIA payroll from 2002 to 2004 then took a temporary leave of absence from the CIA to become deputy to David Cohen, a former senior CIA officer who became head of the NYPD intelligence division just months after the 9/11 attacks. In 2007, the CIA's top official in New York complained to headquarters that Sanchez was wearing two hats, sometimes operating as an NYPD official, sometimes as a CIA officer. At headquarters, senior officials agreed and told Sanchez he had to choose. He formally left the CIA, staying on at the NYPD until late 2010. He now works as a security consultant in the Persian Gulf region."
148. jwidc.com/people/profiles/ (accessed: December 30, 2012): "Profiles Click to learn more about: Charles E. Waterman, President and Chief Executive Officer. Samuel M. Hoskinson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. ... Crosshatch International, LLC — Security and Intelligence: ... Enrique Prado; Larry Sanchez ... JWI Board: ... Daniel C. Arnold ... Samuel Hoskinson ... Charles Waterman."
149. *) 1991, Bo Gritz (ISA and Delta Force commander), 'Called to Serve', p. 370. Khun Sa's interpreter, in the presence of all Khun Sa's top men, names Ted Shackley, Santos Trafficante (mafia boss), Richard Armitage, Daniel Arnold (CIA station chief in Thailand), and Jerry Daniels (CIA agent) as his former partners in the dope trade. This is recorded on video and audio tape.
     *) www.escapefromparadise.com/NewFiles/cia.html: 'Dan Arnold aka Daniel C. Arnold Ex-CIA Chief of Station in Thailand Lobbyist for Burma & Strange Bedfellow of S. P. and Hin Chew Chung': "We were able to track down only one photograph of Dan Arnold, which is reproduced in Escape from Paradise, under license from the Associated Press, but for print, only. The press service caption for that photograph reads, "Daniel Arnold, former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Bangkok, answers questions at a news conference in Bangkok on Thursday, January 25, 1996. Arnold and two other former U.S. government officials came to the defense of a Thai politician who has been denied a visa to the U.S. because he is suspected of drug trafficking.""
150. Akron Community Online Resource Net (ACORN), Ralph McGehee (book: 'Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA') paper, CIABase: "77-95 the new do David Cohen began his CIA career in the east asia division, responsible for the disastrous estimates of viet cong strength in vietnam, and fought off internal critics such as sam adams and ralph mcgehee. per "intelligence" sources, Cohen apparently "bent with the wind" and supported agency-biased estimates. "U.S. news & world report" said Cohen was "a company man ... who will find out what way the wind is blowing and then go with it." his most noted role as analyst was as senior intel directorate manager and reviewer of the april 1985 CIA assessment supporting kgb involvement in ali agca's 1981 attempt to assassinate pope jean paul ii. the report was "ordered" by CIA director william casey and his assistant, robert gates, and was so biased that the CIA itself criticized it in its july 1985 "Cowey report". Cohen was also one of six CIA analysts to testify before the senate select committee on intel during the 1991 confirmation hearing of gates as CIA director. Cohen supported gates and became associate director of intel. his appointment as ddo in no way spells reform and "scrubbing down" the do. intelligence - a computerized intelligence newsletter published in france 9/11/95 15"
151. *) Akron Community Online Resource Net (ACORN), Ralph McGehee (book: 'Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA') paper, CIABase: "DCI Deutch appointed last month a 30-year agency veteran David Cohen to the politically-sensitive post of deputy director of operations (ddo) where he will oversee ops. Deutch was given good marks by the press for picking "an agency man" and for putting an "analyst" rather than a "covert operator" in charge of the "dirty tricks" directorate. Cohen will be working with four associate deputy directors: U.S. army general David barrato (who will continue as head of covert actions), David edger (intel ops), paul redmond (counter-intel) and christine wiley (personnel). that gen. barrato has kept his job is to be a clear indication that Deutch is not going to "scrub down" CIA dirty tricks, to maintain and reinforce CIA-pentagon ties, and to "box in" Cohen at his new post."
     *) 1990, Bart Hagerman, 'U.S.A. Airborne: 50th Anniversary, 1940-1990', p. 468: "Brigadier General James A. Guest, (former commander of the JFK Special Warfare Center and School, and prior commander of the 5th Special Forces Group)"
152. 2008, Robert Wallace (foreword by George Tenet), 'Spycraft', preface.
153. 2002, Andrew F. Smith (foreword by Henry Kissinger), 'Rescuing the World: The Life and Times of Leo Cherne', p. 169.
154. 2009, Christopher Dickey, 'Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force--The NYPD', p. 36: "In May 1997 The New York Times ran an editorial titled "The Warrior Spies," suggesting Tenet "needs a deputy director for operations able to make change stick. David Cohen, the incumbent, is wobbly and should be replaced." Tenet moved Cohen to New York City as the CIA's "senior representative" (read: "New York station chief") to serve there until he retired. In 2000, at age fifty-seven and after thirty-five years in the CIA, Cohen took a job in political risk underwriting with the global insurance firm American International Group. Ray Kelly didn’t really know David Cohen well, but when he called him in November 2001 he knew just how to play him. They'd met in passing after Kelly left the police force, when Cohen was "the CIA guy in New York." Kelly thought that background made him just the kind of guy to transform the intelligence division of the NYPD into an operation with enough glbal vision to protect the city from global threats. "It wasn't too hard," Kelly told me. "I know from people who leave government that, particularly when there is a crisis, they want to get back.""
155. January 25, 2002, New York Times, 'Ex-C.I.A. Spy Chief to Run Police Intelligence': "Mr. Cohen said the Police Department might try to infiltrate terrorist cells, the way it sometimes infiltrates drug gangs and the Mafia. If a cell ''requires penetration, within legal bounds, it will be done,'' he said. The former spy was clearly not used to publicity. Asked his age, he allowed only that he is between 28 and 70. Asked if he ever worked in the C.I.A.'s office in the World Trade Center, he laughed and said, ''You're going to have to ask C.I.A. where their offices were.'' When it was over, he joked about the meeting with reporters: ''It's the first press conference I've ever been to. It was sort of like my bar mitzvah.''"
156. Kurt Sonnenfeldt.
157. *) June 24, 1993, New York Times, 'Washington Talk; Some Old Hands Shape A New Research Group': "Brent Scowcroft, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, joined Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Mr. Bush's second Secretary of State; Robert M. Gates, his Director of Central Intelligence; Carla A. Hills, his Trade Representative, and sundry other former officials, repackaging themselves as a nonprofit, nonpartisan group called the Forum for International Policy. ... Not surprisingly, a number of the group's members work primarily for, well, research organizations. "I'm one of the awful think-tank people," said Richard N. Haass, a Forum member who was the Bush Administration's Middle East specialist at the National Security Council. Now he spends most of his time as a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment."
     *) September 24, 1999, EIR, 'Condoleezza Rice and the team behind George W. Bush's campaign': "Rice has been on the board of the Forum for International Policy since it was formed, shortly after Sir George Bush failed to win re-election in 1992, and the Forum has become a safe-haven for major and minor players in the Bush league. Here are some of the other board members: ... Deutch ... Powell." Only source on membership of Rice's and Powell's pre-2000 trusteeship.
     *) Forum for International Policy website (www.ffip.com) (accessed: August 18, 2000): "BOARD OF TRUSTEES CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD Lawrence S. Eagleburger BOARD OF TRUSTEES Dwayne O. Andreas Howard H. Baker David L. Boren John M. Deutch Robert M. Gates Rita E. Hauser John M. Hennessy Carla A. Hills Kenneth L. Lay Michel Oksenberg Harold A. Poling Colin L. Powell Condoleezza Rice Brent Scowcroft Robert S. Strauss Steven Wallace."
     *) Forum for International Policy website (www.ffip.com) (accessed: March 3, 2001): "BOARD OF TRUSTEES CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD Lawrence S. Eagleburger BOARD OF TRUSTEES Dwayne O. Andreas Howard H. Baker David L. Boren John M. Deutch Robert M. Gates Rita E. Hauser John M. Hennessy Carla A. Hills Kenneth L. Lay Michel Oksenberg Harold A. Poling Colin L. Powell Condoleezza Rice Brent Scowcroft Robert S. Strauss Steven Wallace." Later this month Rice and Powell disappeared from the board of trustees.
     *) September 20, 2002, New York Times, 'Threats and Responses: The Adviser; Still Very Much a Player, Scowcroft Straddles the Worlds of Business and Government': "From 1994 to 1997, Mr. Scowcroft served on the board of Enron Group Power and Pipelines, an Enron affiliate that invested in power plants abroad. In addition, Enron's foundation was an early donor to the Forum for International Policy, a research group set up by Mr. Scowcroft. Mr. Lay is one of the forum's trustees. ''He's a friend,'' Mr. Scowcroft said of Mr. Lay."
     *) Forum for International Policy website (www.ffip.com) (accessed: April 5, 2007): "BOARD OF TRUSTEES Chairman of the Board Lawrence S. Eagleburger Board of Trustees Dwayne O. Andreas David L. Boren John M. Deutch Robert M. Gates Rita E. Hauser John M. Hennessy Carla A. Hills Kenneth L. Lay Harold A. Poling Brent Scowcroft Robert S. Strauss." Last back-up that Gates appeared.
     *) Forum for International Policy website (www.ffip.com) (accessed: April 14, 2009): "BOARD OF TRUSTEES Chairman of the Board Lawrence S. Eagleburger Board of Trustees Dwayne O. Andreas David L. Boren John M. Deutch Rita E. Hauser John M. Hennessy Carla A. Hills Harold A. Poling Brent Scowcroft Robert S. Strauss."
158. See ISGP's American Security Council article for more details.
159. Bush School of Government and Public Service, Spring 2009 news letter, 'Bush School Advisor on Obama's National Security Team', (accessed October 27, 2012): "Two members of President Barack Obama’s national security team have close associations with the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. In addition to the Secretary of Defense, Dr. Robert Gates, who was interim dean of the Bush School prior to becoming president of the University, Obama’s new National Security Advisor, General James Logan Jones, Jr., is a member of the Scowcroft Institute for International Affairs’ Advisory Board. ... Other distinguished members of the SIIA Advisory Board include former Senator Howard Baker, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Professor John Deutch, Hon. Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Admiral Bobby Inman, Dr. Henry Kissinger, Hon. Virginia A. Mulberger, Ambassador Roman Popadiuk, Lt. Gen. Bernard L. Trainor, and Dr. Cindy Williams."
160. 1998, Ashton B. Carter, John M. Deutch and Philip D. Zelikow, 'Catastrophic Terrorism: Elements of a National Policy', A Project of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University: "The authors would like to thank the members of the Catastrophic Terrorism Study Group: ... Vic DeMarines [MITRE], Robert Gates, Jamie Gorelick [9/11 Commission], ... Fred Ikle, ... Joseph S. Nye, Jr., William J. Perry, ... [Gen.] Jack Sheehan, ...Robert Zoellick."
161. *) April 2003, American International Group (AIG), Definitive Proxy Statement, (sec.gov): "Frank G. Wisner. Director since 1997. Vice Chairman - External Affairs, AIG. Age 64."
     *) February 17, 2009 (file date), Frank G. Wisner, American International Group, for 12/31/08, form 4: transactions reported, annual statement of changes in beneficial ownership: "Name and Address of Reporting Person: Wisner, Frank G. Issuer Name and Ticker or Trading Symbol: American International Group [AIG]. ... Relationship of Reporting Person(s) to Issuer (Check all applicable): vice chairman."
162. *) April 2010, Partnership for a Secure America, 'At the Water's Edge: Measuring Bipartisan Cooperation on National Security and Foreign Policy in Congress, 1945-2009': "The Partnership for a Secure America Advisory Board: Lee Hamilton [911 Commission], ... Samuel Berger, ... Zbigniew Brzezinski, ... Warren Christopher, ... Slade Gorton [911 Commission], ... Gary Hart, ... Carla Hills, ... Thomas Kean [911 Commission], ... John Lehman [911 Commission], ... Robert McFarlane, ... Sam Nunn, ... William Perry, ... Thomas Pickering, ... John C. Whitehead, ... Frank Wisner."
     *) Extra names: www.psaonline.org (accessed: December 30, 2012): "PSA Advisory Board: Madeleine Albright ... William Cohen ... Paula Dobriansky ... George Shultz [joined in 2011]."
163. psaonline.org/ (accessed: December 30, 2012): "PSA Advisory Board: Lee Hamilton (co-chair) ... Richard Holbrooke..."
     *) March 3, 2001, American International Group Inc., 10-K, (secinfo.com): "Richard C. Holbrooke, Director [since] 2001."
164. American Council on Germany website (www.acgusa.org) (accessed: February 3, 2001): "Officers: ... Honorary Vice Chairman: Paul A. Volcker. ... Board of directors: ... Henry A. Kissinger ... John J. McCloy II ... Marie M. Warburg ... Robert Zoellick ... Diplomatic Advisory Committee: ... Richard C. Holbrooke ... George C. McGhee ... Vernon A. Walters. Congressional Advisory Committee: ...Sen. Chuck Hagel..."
165. atlantik-bruecke.org, 'History of Atlantik-Brucke' (accessed: December 30, 2012): "Atlantik-Brücke was founded as a non-partisan association in 1952 by Eric M. Warburg ... . The goal of the association's founders was to regain Americans' trust in the Germans after the Second World War, and, in doing so, to lay a new foundation for a strong transatlantic relationship. At the same time, the American Council on Germany was founded in the US as Atlantik-Brücke's sister organization. [pictures visible of Henry Kissinger, John McCloy and Nelson Rockefeller]"
166. *) cdsintl.org/about.html (accessed: April 13, 1997): "CDS International was founded in the United States in 1968. We started out small - arranging internships in U.S. companies for young German professionals and exchanging farmers between Germany and the United States. Today, we typically serve over 1,000 individuals each year from the United States, Germany, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the People's Republich of China, India, and many other nations around the globe in a wide variety of internship, research, fact-finding, and work-study programs. ... One of our most important partnerships is with the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft (CDG). The CDG was established in 1949 and is financed chiefly by the German government to foster international exchange and personnel development. We also have long-standing partnerships with the Robert Bosch Foundation, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the German Ministry of Labor (BMA), and the Atlantik Brücke, to name a few. Our partner organizations help expand the scope of our programs and provide effective local contacts within each country to better serve the program participants and objectives." Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowships could be found on the website at the time.
167. *) Bio 1001 Club member Hans L. Merkle: "German. Born in 1913. CDU member until 1979. He was Chairman of the Board of Management of Robert Bosch GmbH (produces automobile supplies) from 1963 to 1984 and chairman of the Supervisory Council from 1984 to 1988. Remained active after his retirement and became honorary chairman. Also a member of the Advisory Board of Volkswagen AG from 1974 to 1987. Together with Henry Kissinger and others, Merkle was the founder of Carnegie Bosch Institute for Applied Studies in International Management in 1990. The Institute was funded by a generous endowment gift from the Robert Bosch Corporation and is today part of the Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. Governor Atlantic Institute. Merkle died in 2000. "
     *) 2009, Nikolaus Turner, 'Gemeinsam Gutes anstiften', p. 85: "In November 1999 Nicholas Turner wrote to Hans L. Merkle, the Eminence also at the Robert Bosch Foundation..." January 31, 1983, Der Spiegel, 'Manager - F1': "Company founder Robert Bosch, who died in 1942 at age 80, had ordered that his assets be placed in a charitable trust. The Foundation had "to work primarily on the elevation of the moral, health and spiritual development of the people." The Robert Bosch Foundation, which is dedicated to this humanitarian task, has nearly 90 percent of the shares and is financed from the company's profits. ... The seven partners of the company ... are the true masters of the Bosch Group. Merkle is one of them, and thanks to his dual function as Bosch CEO and capital representative by far the most influential" www.bosch-stiftung.de: "The Foundation still holds 92 percent of Robert Bosch GmbH's capital stock of €1.2 billion."
     *) Carnegie Bosch Institute website, 'About' (accessed: December 31, 2012): "In the summer of 1990 ... the Carnegie Bosch Institute for Applied Studies in International Management was formed after long discussion and planning between longtime CEO and Bosch Group Chairman Hans L. Merkle; former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ... [and two others]. The Institute was funded by a generous endowment gift from the Robert Bosch Corporation."
     *) In 2007 Kissinger paid a visit to the Robert Bosch Foundation to give a speech to students. (2007 annual report, Robert Bosch Foundation, p. 66 (German))
     *) May. 22, 1987, Associated Press, 'Kissinger: America Must Maintain Role In Persian Gulf: "Kissinger was in Charleston for a meeting of the International Advisory Committee of the Bosch Group Worldwide, the parent company of the Robert Bosch Corp., which operates a plant in Charleston."
     www.sec.gov: "April 12, 1994, CBS INC. directors... [Kissinger] is a ... member of the advisory boards of Robert Bosch GmbH..."
     October 4, 2001, Kissinger's eulogy of Hans Merkle (Robert Bosch chairman): "It is a great honor to be asked to deliver a speech in memory of one of the most remarkable men I have known. ... I met Hans Merkle 24 years ago at a dinner of Chase Manhattan Bank's International Advisory Board, which took place in a New York museum. Sigmund Warburg had urged Merkle to introduce himself to me."
     Apparently rejoined Robert Bosch's international advisory committee (as soon as the committee appeared in a 2004 annual report, Kissinger was listed as the only U.S. member - still on the committee anno 2010).
168. 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Welcome to Terror Land: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida' (digital): "The news that Mohamed Atta had been on the payroll of the elite international program only surfaced in a whisper, just as quietly as news that Venice flight schools had trained a third terrorist pilot. It was in a brief seven-line report by German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Oct. 18, 2001, under the headline "ATTA WAS TUTOR FOR SCHOLARSHIP HOLDERS." The story quoted spokesmen for "Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft," described as a "German international further education organization," as having admitted paying Hamburg cadre principal Atta as a "scholarship holder" and "tutor," between 1995 and 1997. When we found it, what seemed to make this story especially curious is that the German paper concealed the truly shocking implication of their story: that Mohamed Atta had been on the payroll of a joint U.S.-German government program. They did this through the simple expedient of neglecting to mention in the article that the "Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft" was a private entity administering the 'exchange' initiative of the two governments. Maybe they forgot. The U.S. end of the program, we discovered, is run out of an address at United Nations Plaza in New York, by the U.S. arm, called CDS International. The letters stand for Carl Duisberg Society, also the name of its German counterpart in Cologne, the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft. They are named for the German chemist and industrialist who headed the Bayer Corporation during the 1920's. The list of elite power brokers backing CDS International ranges from the aforementioned Kissinger and Rockefeller to former President Bill Clinton, and other Democratic heavyweights like former First Lady Hillary Clinton, and Clinton adviser Ira Magaziner. Kissinger showed his support by addressing over 100 international business leaders at an anniversary dinner organized and celebrating CDS International held at the River Club of New York, June 2, 1987, where he congratulated CDS International on its 20 years of service in keeping close business ties, not only between Germany and the United States, but more recently through career development programs for participants from "other countries" as well. Five years later, Mohamed Atta became a participant from one of these "other" countries. Then-President Bill Clinton also found a lot to like about CDS International."
169. *) April 2003, American International Group (AIG), Definitive Proxy Statement, (sec.gov): "Carla A. Hills. Director since 1993."
     *) See note 156 for Partner for a Secure Online trustees (in which Carla Hills appears)
170. See note 54.
171. See note 63.
172. 2009, Ronald Shelp (worked for AIG for 12 years, eventually as worldwide head of government relations), 'Fallen Giant: The Amazing Story of Hank Greenberg and the History of AIG'.
173. May 27, 1983, Washington Post, 'Presents and Formers For Kissinger's Birthday': "Henry Kissinger, former You Know What, brought out an international pack of political swells this evening, gathered together at a private dinner-dance at the Pierre Hotel to celebrate his day of birth. David Rockefeller was there. A host of other Formers, including Helmut Schmidt, Peter G. Peterson, Lady Bird Johnson, Happy Rockefeller, Jihan Sadat and Richard Helms were there. ... The highest ranking Present present, from the political point of view, was probably George Shultz."
174. October 2001, OSS Society, p. 1: "It was just like old times. There were a few more canes, friendly faces that were unfamiliarly familiar, and wrinkles that hid features you began to remember as you started to talk with colleagues of more than half a century ago. There were 90 of us at CIA Headquarters on August 27, 2001, to hear the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet, introduce Ambassador Richard M. Helms and present him with the OSS Society Distinguished Service Award. Mr. Tenet spoke warmly of the OSS heritage handed down to CIA. "Today we depend upon the values that OSS established during the war and those standards set by another man of clear thought and bold action, Major General William Donovan." The director gave a glowing report of the last living OSS director of CIA. Dick Helms was a correspondent for the United Press in Germany before we entered the war, one of the few reporters to interview Hitler. He joined the Navy and was assigned to OSS where he learned hand-to-hand combat, clandestine operations, and served in London with OSS. "He applied his training to CIA when he joined us and became director from 1966- 1973. He later was named Ambassador to Iran. The Helms Center for Training has recently been dedicated to train personnel in intelligence techniques." Ambassador Helms acknowledged the applause as he received the OSS Society award. In his brief speech he ominously echoed a warning 15 days before the tragedy of September 11: "In World War II, the OSS had a recognizable enemy. In the Cold War, CIA had a recognizable enemy. Today, however, the enemy is all haze. The economy has the day, not the enemy. But terrorism and other over-arching issues will be with us for a long time. Stick with us, keep your heads up, and God bless you all." After the ceremony, a portrait of Sheffield Edwards, Helms’ Director of Security, was presented to the CIA." Picture of Helms' visit in ISGP's OSS Society/AFIO article.
175. 1985, Eustace Mullins, 'The World Order', based on S&P 1982 report on AIG; MacArthur's name appears also in mainstream publications on AIG from 1985 and on) and was a director until his death in 1997 (December 24, 1996, SEC filing, AIG).
176. See ISGP's articles on the American Security Council and Dutroux X-Dossiers.
177. Ibid.
178. September 25, 2003, Damien McCrystal, City Editor for The Sun, 'Spooky tale from Salzburg; City Insider': "Across my desk come details of a hush-hush gathering in Salzburg of a spooky collection calling itself Le Cercle. Members come from around the world and seem to be dominated by Right-wingers with an interest in the security services. Britain is represented by, among others, spy writer and former Tory MP Rupert Allason, Tory Deputy Leader Michael Ancram, Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Alan Duncan, former GEC and Warburg director Sir Ronald Grierson, Lord Lamont, Lt Col Tim Spicer of Aegis Defence Services and Sir Stephen Lander, former head of MI5. Is this a new Bilderberg group in the making?"
179. See note 99.
180. Names can all be found at www.blackstone.com (accessed: December 30, 2012):
     *) www.blackstone.com/the-firm/our-people/jacob-rothschild: "Lord Jacob Rothschild is a Member of the International Advisory Board."
     *) www.blackstone.com/the-firm/our-people/jacob-wallenberg: "Jacob Wallenberg is a Member of the International Advisory Board."
     *) www.blackstone.com/the-firm/our-people/ronald-grierson: "Sir Ronald Grierson is the Co-Chairman of Blackstone’s International Advisory Board."
     *) www.blackstone.com/the-firm/our-people/shaukat-aziz: "Shaukat Aziz is a Member of the International Advisory Board."
181. Jonathan E. Colby biography, Carlyle Group Website, (accessed: July 12, 2001): "Prior to joining Carlyle in 1998, Mr. Colby was a Senior Managing Director and a member of the Board of Directors of Equinox Group Holdings, Ltd., a merchant bank specializing in private equity investments and corporate advisory services in Asia. Prior to that, from 1989 to 1996, Mr. Colby was a General Partner of The Blackstone Group [in the Far East], and, from 1980 to 1989, was head of Asian mergers and acquisitions at The First Boston Corporation. While at Blackstone and First Boston, Mr. Colby worked on acquisitions by Asian companies of U.S. companies as well as Asian market-entry strategies for major U.S. multinationals. Previously, he was Resident Senior Attorney in the Singapore Office of Coudert Brothers, a leading international law firm. Mr. Colby also served in the Nixon Administration as Staff Assistant (Foreign Affairs) on the National Security Council under the direction of Dr. Henry A. Kissinger. Mr. Colby is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a Trustee of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs and a Trustee of the Linguan Foundation.""
182. October 26, 2003, Daily Beast, 'The 'Silver Fox' Unplugged'.
183. Youtube clip, 'Where was Larry Silverstein on 9/11?' (accessed: January 7, 2013) Larry interviewed by a reporter. Also mentions that his children had to be up at Windows of the World at 9:00 AM, but doesn't say they were late.
184. March 16, 2003, New York Observer, 'Mike Sees City Taking Control At Ground Zero': "After a last-minute breakdown in the front-running bid, Mr. Silverstein's team won by a hair. His son, Roger, and his daughter, Lisa, were working for him in temporary offices on the 88th floor of the W.T.C. north tower. Regular meetings with tenants in the weeks immediately following their July 26, 2001, takeover of the building were held each morning at Windows on the World. But on Sept. 11, Roger and Lisa Silverstein were running late. Meanwhile, Mr. Silverstein's wife of 46 years had laid down the law: The developer could not cancel an appointment with his dermatologist, even to meet with tenants at his most important property. If the attack had happened just a little later, Mr. Silverstein's children would likely have been trapped at Windows. As it was, Silverstein Properties lost four employees in the attack, two of whom had just recently been hired."
185. soundportraits.org/on-air/the_last_elevator/transcript.php (accessed: Janaury 7, 2013): "MICHAEL NESTOR: I'm Michael Nestor, I'm the Deputy Inspector General for the Port Authority of New York New Jersey. LIZ THOMPSON: I'm Liz Thompson, Executive Director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. RICHARD TIERNEY: I'm Richard Tierney, I'm with the Office of the Inspector General for the Port Authority, and I worked in Tower 1 on the 77th Floor. HOST: On the morning of September 11, 2001, Nestor, Thompson, and Tierney were eating breakfast at Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Together, they rode in the last elevator down in the moments before American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building at 8:46 that morning. NESTOR: We usually got there around 7:30, because we were there every day -- we had breakfast there everyday. So we got there, pretty much our regular time and saw the same people that we always see: the hostess Doris, Jan, the waiter. NESTOR: We were sitting right almost in the center, when you walked in. ... THOMPSON: Right, they always sat in the center. NESTOR: In the center, at the window. THOMPSON: I just went in and Doris Eng was her usual divine self; she greeted me with a smile. And I was sitting facing the Statue of Liberty. And it was a gorgeous, gorgeous morning. We just commented on what a perfect day it was. NESTOR: We said goodbye -- TIERNEY: We said goodbye to Doris, to Jan. NESTOR: Yup, Dick and I got the elevator first. And then we heard Miss Liz screaming down the hall. And we held for her. We rode down, and I guess we were joking around or talking. TIERNEY: We said something to each other, you know, light conversation, whatever. NESTOR: And it didn't take long. Those elevators were fast. It didn't take long. And then we got off. And the plane hit. NESTOR: I guess when we figured out who didn't get out, and we were the only ones up there that did get out, you know. It kind of sunk in as time went on that, my God, we were the last people to leave that place alive. THOMPSON: I mean I often thought that if I had had another cup of coffee and gone to the ladies room, then that would have been that."
     *) 911Blogger article, 'The WTC Leaseholder and His Associates That Cheated Death on 9/11: Was it Coincidence or Foreknowledge?': "An executive with Silverstein Properties who was even more fortunate was Larry Silverstein's top aide, Geoffrey Wharton, who was actually at the 8:30 a.m. meeting at Windows on the World that Silverstein missed. [12] Wharton was meeting with Liz Thompson, the executive director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, to discuss the council's relationship with Silverstein Properties, and its studio and performance programs. Fortunately, as Thompson has recalled, Wharton "had to cut the meeting a little short." [13] And, according to the Engineering News-Record, he then "decided to escort his guest down to the lobby." [14]" Original source not available anymore.
186. Fall 2004, Lifestyles magazine, 'Howard Rubenstein Best face forward': "Though Rubenstein has much to smile about, he will never forget that shattering morning almost three years ago when he had every reason to cry. The morning of September 11, 2001, he had been invited to a breakfast meeting at the World Trade Center to discuss how building management was protecting the Twin Towers against terrorism. John O'Neil, former FBI head of counterterrorism who had recently been hired to run the security division for the Trade Center and a close friend of Rubenstein's, led the meeting. At the last minute, Rubenstein decided to attend a regular 8 a.m. staff meeting and asked O'Neil if one of his colleagues could attend in his place. O'Neil suggested the colleague come for a later session, around 10 a.m. As Rubenstein's staff meeting was winding up, a secretary ran into the conference room to tell them the first tower had been hit. Rubenstein and his staff members were safe. John O'Neil died that day. Rubenstein left his office, went home, closed the phone lines, got into bed and cried."
187. September 12, 2001, Omaha World-Herald, 'Warren Buffet, Others Speak about Terrorism at Omaha, Neb., Event': "Jan Roos, who helped organize the Omaha [Golf] Classic, said Tuesday's breakfast scheduled for Offutt Air Force Base was canceled, and participants were asked to evacuate the base. Roos said one New York executive in Omaha for the Classic was feeling the effects of the tragedy personally. Anne Tatlock is the chairman and CEO of Fiduciary Trust Co. International, which was based at the World Trade Center. She spent Tuesday in her hotel room making phone calls. Karin Veiner came to the Classic with her husband, John, a senior partner of Christy & Veiner in New York. She said their friend, Tatlock, is having to come to terms with the fact that "her entire office is gone, and she's here.""
188. December 1, 2004, Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, 'WTC Memorial Foundation Members Selected': "Honorary Trustees: Governor George E. Pataki Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Honorary Members: President Gerald Ford President Jimmy Carter President George H.W. Bush President William J. Clinton. Board Members: ... Sir John Bond Chief Executive Officer HSBC Holdings plc. [Multinational Chairman's Group] ... Mr. Michael D. Eisner ... Mr. Maurice R. Greenberg ... Henry R. Kravis ... The Right Hon. Martin Brian Mulroney [Blackstone] ... Mr. Richard D. Parsons ... Mr. Peter G. Peterson ... Mr. David Rockefeller ... Mr. Jerry I. Speyer ... Ms. Anne M. Tatlock ... Mr. John C. Whitehead."
189. *) See Beyond Dutroux and American Security Council articles.
     *) April 15, 1990, Milwaukee Journal, 'A firestorm of suspicion: allegations of financial, child-sex scandals consume Omaha': "Lawrence E. King Jr., everyone now agrees, had a remarkable knack for stretching a dollar. On a salary of $16,000 a year, the credit union manager drove a $70,000 white Mercedes – and still could afford to spend $10,000 a month on limousines. His credit card charges topped $1 million… A former McGovern Democrat who converted to the GOP, King threw a $100,000 party for 1,000 close friends at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans two years ago, leasing a warehouse used to store Mardi Gras floats. … King, 45, was guilty as charged of looting $38 million from the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union in a predominantly black neighborhood of north Omaha. … Two weeks ago, a county grand jury, under the direction of a special prosecutor, began sifting through allegations tying King to a child prostitution and exploitation ring that reputedly catered to some of Omaha’s most respected burghers. Those implicated – in this city’s venomous rumor mill if nowhere else – include businessmen, media personalities, lawmen and educators. … The sexual allegations, which he has denounced as "garbage," are based on murky and still unverified reports from half a dozen young people who reportedly have described being auctioned as love slaves, flown to the coasts for wild parties, or plied with drugs and alcohol as part of a bisexual bacchanal. … "I don’t know if the witnesses are telling the whole truth or part of the truth, but they appear credible to me," said state Sen. Loran Schmit, chairman of the legislative committee appointed to investigate the scandal. … "The whole damned shebang of investigative agencies were lax in pursuing this," Schmit charged. That "shebang," including the Omaha police, FBI and state attorney general, contends that investigations were thorough and failed to turn up sufficient corroboration of sex crimes. … King took charge of Franklin Community in 1970, two years after the credit union was founded to provide consumer loans and other financial services in Omaha’s minority neighborhoods. For 20 years, Franklin remained, as King later put it, "my baby". … One of his biggest supporters was Harold Anderson, publisher of the Omaha World-Herald, who helped underwrite the remodeling of Franklin’s main office on North 33rd St. and even plugged the credit union in a television commercial [also advisory board chairman of the Franklin Credit Union]. King also had friends in Washington. … "
     *) February 15, 1991, Executive Intelligence Review, 'Nebraska civil rights suit charges pedophile conspiracy': "The Omaha World Herald, in spite of its repeated slan­ derous coverage of Bonacci,the Franklin Committee,and many of the leaders of the anti-child abuse meeting, has up to the time this article goes to press failed even to mention the DeCamp suit against itself and the other 15 defendants. World Herald publisher Harold Anderson, described by Bonacci as "one of the sickest men whom I have been abused by," is charged in the suit for sexual assaults against Bonacci. The World Herald company is charged with negligence for failing to investigate complaints against Anderson,of sexual­ ly abusing young boys."
     *) Sen. John DeCamp, 'The Franklin Cover-Up,' second edition, pp. 328-330: "Paul Bonacci and other child victims have given evidence in great depth on the central role of Lt. Col. Michael Aquino in this depravity. Aquino, alleged to have recently retired from an active military role, was long the leader of an Army psychological warfare section which drew on his "expertise" and personal practices in brainwashing, Satanism, Nazism, homosexual pedophilia and murder. ... Paul Bonacci reports the following "Monarch"-related activities, often involving his "Commander" at Offutt AFB, Bill Plemmons, and Lt. Col. Michael Aquino: • Picking up cash in exchange for drugs at various Tennessee locations. Bonacci identifies several country music personalities as contacts. • Trips on behalf of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), the pedophile group now given semiofficial status by the United Nations. Paul cites travel to the Netherlands and Germany carrying child pornography for subsequent "import" to the U.S.A. to avoid prosecution. In Amsterdam, he names "Charles Hester," and the British "Tommie Carter," who had on computer a global list of child pornography users. NAMBLA is also cited for organizing auctions of children. • Travel to Hawaii, New York, Washington (in connection with Craig Spence) to compromise public figures by performing homosexual pedophile sex with them. • The trip to California where the boy was ritually murdered, accompanied by "Monarch" contact, Mark Johnson of Denver, Colorado, • Travel to Mexico for the transportation of drugs, guns, and children. Paul was accompanied by the gangster-figure "Emilio," who otherwise directed the kidnapping of Johnny Gosch of Des Moines, Iowa. Johnny Gosch's parents commend Paul Bonacci as an accurate witness relative to that crime. • Training under "Captain Foster" (survival skills) at Fort Riley, Kansas, under "Lt. Dave Bannister" (intelligence) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, under "Col. Harris Livik" at Fort Defiance, Virginia, who is said to run a military school and to have housed "Monarch" boys. "Col. Bill Risher" of Bamberg, South Carolina, is said to have supplied children for Michael Aquino. • Travel to Dresden in communist East Germany, where weapons were inspected. There and in the Federal Republic of Germany, the "Monarch" personnel were frequently neo-Nazis. This milieu is a special project of Lt. Col. Aquino, who was a West European adviser to the U.S. Chiefs of Staff. Paul Bonacci has extensive experience in the Aryan Nation and other White Supremacist cults. An account of the origin of the "Monarch" project has been compiled by those who have been debriefing MPD child-vic"
     *) November 6, 2012, email reply from Nick Bryant if he was aware of any other witnesses besides Bonacci who put Aquino at Offutt Air Force Base (besides Rusty Nelson, a former accomplice of King who said the same thing): "A source who claimed to be a drug courier for the "Franklin" machine alleges he saw Aquino in Nebraska [details unknown]. Regarding your second question: I found Rusty Nelson to have a very inconsistent relationship to the truth, but there's a lot of documentation that links him to King, so I have no doubts about their prior interactions. I know of his allegations about Anderson and Buffet, but I was unable to corroborate them. However, I believe that he gave Caradori pictures in Chicago. The latter account is corroborated by four sources other than Nelson."
190. haroldandersen.com/about.php (accessed: January 4, 2013): "Chairman, Nebraska Committee for Selection for the Rhodes Scholarships."
191. Members Augusta Golf Club (August 4, 2004, USA Today, 'Augusta National Golf Club members list'): Riley P. Bechtel, Stephen D. Bechtel Jr., Peter Peterson, George Shultz, Donald R. Beall (Rockwell International), Ruben F. Mettler (TRW), Peter H. Coors, Lawrence A. Bossidy (Honeywell), John F. Welch (General Electric), Ogden M. Phipps, Nicholas F. Brady, William C. Ford (Ford Motors), Warren Buffett, Harold W. Andersen, Bill Gates, T. Boone Pickens, Louis V. Gerstner Jr. (Carlyle; IBM). Many other oil companies and such represented. Eisenhower used to be a member.
192. *) August 29, 1995, Omaha World Herald (Nebraska), 'Buffett Golf Tournament to Aid Girls Inc.': "More than $ 500,000 was expected to be raised for Girls Inc. in today's fourth annual golf and tennis outing arranged by Omaha investor Warren Buffett. The event brings to Omaha some of the nation's top business executives and sports figures. More than 130 people were to participate in the outing, which includes a dinner, said Buffett's daughter, Susan Buffett. Whatever amount is raised for "the Omaha Classic" will again be matched by Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Each golf foursome was to contribute at least $ 10,000 and each tennis team at least $ 5,000. ... [participants:] Dan Chao, managing director of Bechtel Enterprises; Adm. Hank Chiles, commander of Stratcom... Col. Bob Smith, general manager of the Officers Club at Offutt Air Force Base (Linda Smith)..."
     *) September 10, 1996, Omaha World Herald (Nebraska), 'Former StratCom Chief Supports Strike on Iraq': "The U.S. military has probably not lobbed a missile for the last time against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, a former chief of the nation's nuclear weapons command said in Omaha Tuesday. "I am not sure we are through there at all," said Henry G. Chiles Jr., a retired four-star admiral who stepped down earlier this year as commander in chief of the U.S. Strategic Command. "I think we will continue to face problems in that country and in that region." The United States must remain active in the Persian Gulf region, Chiles said. "There is too much oil there," he said in an interview. "It is a part of the world where they have the potential to interrupt our commerce. The United States needs to stay engaged." Chiles oversaw the nation's long-range nuclear arsenal for two years while serving in StratCom's headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base. He was in Omaha to participate in Warren Buffett's golf and tennis charity tournament. StratCom is responsible for planning, targeting and, during a war, command of the nation's long-range nuclear weapons arsenal."
     *) September 12, 2001, Omaha World-Herald, 'Warren Buffet, Others Speak about Terrorism at Omaha, Neb., Event': "Jan Roos, who helped organize the Omaha [Golf] Classic, said Tuesday's breakfast scheduled for Offutt Air Force Base was canceled..."
193. Ibid.
194. Ibid.
195. February 27, 2002, Omaha World-Herald, 'Inside StratCom on Sept. 11 Offutt exercise took real-life twist': "The visitors were in town for the ninth annual Buffett Classic golf tournament, scheduled to get under way that day. The event raises money for children's charities and attracts high-powered business and news media people from around the country. Some of the visitors already were at StratCom, having breakfast with then-commander in chief Adm. Richard Mies. The group was scheduled to tour the center and receive an unclassified mission briefing. When the plane hit the second World Trade Center tower, Mies had to excuse himself from the group. Staff members had left the command center in anticipation of the tour group's visit. When the tour was canceled, the battle staff reconvened in the center. "
196. February 27, 2002, Omaha World-Herald, 'Inside StratCom on Sept. 11 Offutt exercise took real-life twist': "When terrorists struck America on Sept. 11, U.S. bombers were sitting gassed up on the ground, armed with nuclear weapons, as part of an annual war exercise. The goal of the exercise: test the U.S. Strategic Command's ability to fight a nuclear war. One aspect of the exercise, called Global Guardian, involved loading nuclear weapons onto airplanes. The airplanes did not, however, take off with the weapons onboard, according to briefers at the Strategic Command's headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base near Bellevue. Global Guardian is one of many "practice Armageddons," as they sometimes are called, that the U.S. military stages to test its readiness. That the exercise was, according to briefers, "in full swing" at the time the United States came under attack is at least an odd coincidence. After keeping details of the day quiet for months, StratCom briefers last week provided members of the news media with information about the goings-on in the command headquarters that day. Another part of the Global Guardian exercise put three military command aircraft packed with sophisticated communications equipment in the air. The three E-4B National Airborne Operations Center planes, nicknamed "Doomsday" planes during the Cold War, are based at Offutt. The airplanes give top government officials alternative command posts from which to direct U.S. forces, execute war orders and coordinate actions by civil authorities in times of national emergency. Aboard one of the three planes was the Federal Advisory Committee, whose chairman is retired Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft. The plane had been dispatched to bring committee members to Offutt to observe Global Guardian. Military authorities canceled the exercise after the attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, but all three of the E-4Bs remained in the air. The attacks on that Tuesday morning occurred as a tour group was preparing to visit StratCom's underground command center, Offutt briefers said."
197. February 27, 2002, Omaha World-Herald, 'Inside StratCom on Sept. 11 Offutt exercise took real-life twist': "Although StratCom staff received word earlier in the day that President Bush might come to Offutt during the crisis, actual confirmation came only 20 minutes before his arrival, briefers said. The president first spent about 20 minutes in the command center, where StratCom staff used the video screens to bring him up to date on the attacks and their aftermath. StratCom briefers described Bush as "very collected" and concerned during the briefing. Then Bush went to another room in the headquarters, the Joint Intelligence Center, where he conducted a multichannel video conference with members of the National Security Council. StratCom briefers declined to comment further on the president's visit. The Washington Post produced the following account of Bush's time at Offutt based on interviews with the president, his top aides and other government officials: Shortly after arriving at Offutt at 1:50 p.m., Bush told his highest-ranking Secret Service agent that he wanted to return to Washington as soon as possible. As Bush arrived in the command center, staff there were tracking a commercial airliner on its way from Spain to the United States. It was giving out an emergency signal, indicating that it might have been hijacked. Bush remembered a voice booming out from a loudspeaker. "Do we have permission to shoot down this aircraft?" "Make sure you've got the ID," the president responded. "You follow this guy closely to make sure." It was a false alarm. "
198. *) September 11, 2001, 3:32 PM, user name: Jeannenjim, draheid.com/archives/war-1/messages/24675/20538.html (accessed: January 5, 2013): "I heard earlier today they knew this was coming ... I have a brother who lives and works close to the Wright/Patterson Air Force base in Dayton...The company he works for said the officials at W/P advised them to send home all employees... stating W/P was to be target number 6 and they have known this since last night."
     *) 4:00 PM reaction of Jeannenjim, draheid.com/archives/war-1/messages/24675/20546.html (accessed: January 5, 2013): "Well my brother isnt one to spread rumors so maybe what he was told wasnt true.. but they shut down a national company with 10,000 Dayton employess for it.. I lived in Dayton for 10 years and I know they had night flights and missions but it was a rep from W/P asking to shut down the company and giving them the information not just someone off the streets.... No offense to anyone here but I do know Reynolds and Reynolds pretty well I worked there for 10 years and I know they wouldnt close the doors on hearsay... I havent brought it up until now when just because I knew the reaction would be just exactly what it is... that is why I waited until it was already brought up here ... [4:09 PM] emt I dont really know.. that was the information passed to them from W/P... I dont know how they decided they were 6th or if there was a list or where they got that information. ... [4:15 PM:] Reynolds is an Automotive software company... not sure why they would be a threat and I have never known them to makeup something... I think that would lead media problem....since they told the same thing to 10,000 people and didnt tell them it was topsecret and not to mention it to someone."
     *) Philip A. Odeen appears as a director of Reynolds and Reynolds in SEC files since at least the late 1990s. Odeen used to be chairman of the World Affairs Council of Washington, D.C., serving with Patrick W. Gross (close to WTC South Tower collapse floor tenant Joseph Kasputys) and James Roche.
     *) Donald K. Peterson is another director in this period. He served on the board of the Committee for Economic Development (CED) with Frank Carlucci, Peter Peterson, George Shultz, John Diebold, Patrick Gross, Joseph Kasputys, John Brademas, etc., so the company had some connections but nothing extremely serious.
     *) On 9/11 David R. Holmes was chairman of the company, a position he held from 1990 to 2002. Odeen was chairman in the 2005-2006 period.
199. 1977, Urban Institute publication, 'Monitoring the Outcomes of Social Services: Preliminary suggestions': "Urban Institute. Board of trustees: William D. Ruc\kelshaus [acting director FBI in 1970; worked under Elliot Richardson at the Justice Department; director American Water Development with Maurice Strong; big in the sustainable development movement], chairman. Warren E. Buffett, Katharine Graham, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. [visitor Bilderberg 1969 and 1970 and annual visitor since 1980; trustee Rockefeller Foundation 1971-1984; managing director Lazard Freres; director DaimlerChrysler; Fuji Bank [2000, Upscale: the successful black magazine], Union Carbide, Sara Lee, and Barrick Gold; Bilderberg; Trilateral Commission; trustee Ford Foundation; in the late 1990s initial board of FirstMark Communications, together with Lynn Forester de Rothschild (founder), Evelyn de Rothschild, Henry Kissinger, Michael J. Price (former managing director Lazard), and Nathan Myhrvold (former CEO Microsoft); close to Clinton; Clinton present in 2004 when Vernon Jordan and Sir Evelyn de Rothschild celebrated their birthdays; visitor Sun Valley meetings] ... Robert S. McNamara ... Henry B. Schacht [Trustee Yale; trustee Rockefeller Foundation 1977-1982; trustee Ford Foundation 1986-2000, chairman 1993-2000; Chase Manhattan Bank, CBS, AT&T, New York Times, Warburg Pincus] Irving S. Shapiro [chairman and CEO DuPont 1973-1981; founding trustee Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1984 and trustee chairman 1990-1997] ... Institute officers: William Gorham [founding president; Great Society economist of LBJ]"
200. Suzanne H. Woolsey: 'Pied Piper Politics and the Child-Care Debate'. Author, Suzanne H. Woolsey. Contributor, Urban Institute. Publisher, Urban Institute, 1977. Research program director at the Urban Institute 1975-1977.
201. S. Hrg. 103-296. Hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence of the United States, nomination of R. James Woolsey to be director of Central Intelligence, Tuesday, February 2, and Wednesday, February 3, 1993, p. 32: "Clients Billed More than $500 Worth of My Services Durina Past 5 Years: - Aerospace Corporation - Bell Communications Research, - Bolt, Baranek & Newman - The Carlyle Group - Center for Strategic & International Studies - Center for Naval Analysis - Clean Sites - Cornell University - DynCorp.- - Fairchild Industries. - . General Dynamics - Insilco - Litton Industries - Martin Marietta Corporation - McDonnell Douglas Corporation - M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory - NationalAcademy of Sciences - National Security-Council - Newmont - Penn -Central Corporation - Plessey, - Rockwell -International Corporation - SAIC - Shack & Kimball - Southern Steamship Ltd. - Thiokol - Thomson, CSF - The Titan Corporation - United Technologies Corporation - Young & Rubicam." Also lists directorships in some of these corporations. Includes also: "Joint Strategic Targetting and Planning Staff, Scientific Advisory Group, Offutt AFB, Nebraska, 68113, advisor, 1987-1988."
202. 1981, Urban Institute, 'Housing for the Elderly in 2010: Projections and Policy Options': "William D. Ruckelshaus, Chairman. Katharine Graham, Vice Chairman. ... Warren E. Buffett. ... Joseph E. Califano, Jr. ... John M. Deutch ... Carla A. Hills ... Robert S. McNamara ... Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. ... Cyrus R. Vance."
203. Annual Report 2003, Urban Institute: "Trustees: ... John M. Deutch, ... Robert S. McNamara, ... Life trustees: ... Warren E. Buffett, ... Joseph A. Califano, Jr., ... Carla A. Hills, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. ... William D. Ruckelshaus, ..."
204. *) 1989, Urban Institute, 'Housing for the Elderly in 2010: Projections and Policy Options': "Board of trustees: David O. Maxwell, chairman; Katherine Graham [Her family was publisher of the Washington Post 1946-2000; trustee Rockefeller University; close to CIA; close friend of Warren Buffett], vice chairman; ... Albert V. Casey [LA Times publisher; Bohemian Grove], John M. Deutch, Richard B. Fisher [chairman Morgan Stanley], George J. W. Goodman [special forces "PsyWar" unit in the 1950s; editorial board NY Times, NY Magazine and Esquire]... Philip M. Hawley [chair and CEO Carter Hawley Hale Stores 1983-1992; director AT&T, Atlantic Richfield Co. 1976-1997; trustee Caltech; member Trilateral Commission and Bohemian Grove], Irvine O. Hockaday, Jr. [director Ford Motors since 1987], ... Elliot L. Richardson [Pilgrims], David A. Stockman [White House budget director 1981-1985; managing director Salomon Brothers 1985-1988; managing partner Blackstone Group 1988-1999], ... Mortimer B. Zuckerman [Boston Properties; publusher and owner Atlantic Monthly since 1980; publisher and owner of the New York Daily News since 1993; editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report]. Life trustees: Warren E. Buffett, Joseph A. Califano, Jr., ... Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. ... William W. Scranton [former John Foster Dulles assistant], Cyrus R. Vance [Pilgrims]."
     *) Annual Report 1998, Urban Institute: "Board of trustees: Richard B. Fisher, chairman [chairman Morgan Stanley] Katherine Graham, vice chairman ... Jack Kemp, Robert S. McNamara ... Life trustees: Warren E. Buffett, ... John M. Deutch, ... Carla A. Hills, ... Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. ... Elliot L. Richardson, ... William D. Ruckelshaus, ... Cyrus R. Vance."
205. *) Senator Wilfred Krichefski, who died in 1974 and was among the most powerful men on Jersey Island (and the leading Jewish fundraiser), was named as a child abuser at the children's home. He's the only name mentioned, because the others were still alive. March 2, 2008, The Times, 'Picture: the Jersey 'child abuse cellar' uncovered by police': "A leading member of Jersey's post-war political establishment was confirmed by police today as having been named as an abuser. Living members of the island's establishment have also been identified as suspects but cannot be named for legal reasons. Wilfred Krichefski, a senator in Jersey's government and chair of several committees, allegedly regularly visited Haut de La Garenne to abuse boys until his death in 1974. One ex-resident has claimed he was repeatedly raped at the children's home aged 12 by Mr Krichefski between 1962 and 1963. The man, now aged in his late 50s and living in the West Midlands, said that every month he and another boy would be taken into a back room at the home and abused by two men. ... The former resident said he would be woken by a care worker with the words "There is someone here to see you". He was presented to his abuser with the words "Here's a boy for you, sir." The alleged victim man said: "That man raped me and did despicable acts. I know he is dead but people need to know what he was really like." "He said: "I'm going to teach you to be a good boy. You've been wicked and no one wants you. Your parents don't want you - that's why you're here." The only person he told about the abuse was a psychiatrist on the island who warned that if he repeated the allegation he would be placed in a mental hospital."
     *) His close friend and business partner, Reg Jeune, worked at the children's home at some point. March 1, 2008, Daily Mail, 'Ex-Jersey children's home worker 'tried to intimidate victim into keeping quiet'': "Names of those running the home include: John le Marquand, education president in 1960 (right); Reg Jeune, education president from 1971-1984; John Rodhouse, director of education in 1974 (left) ... Reg Jeune was an education president from 1971 to 1984. He now lives in a £4million mansion near St Xavier. He refused to discuss the issue yesterday, but his wife confirmed he did work at the home." Jeune was director of S.G. Warburg & Co. in Jersey anno 1972. Lord Roll was chair of Warburg at the time. Director of Warburg Investment Management Jersey. Jeune also represented the Rothschilds, Warburg Bank and Barings as a founding partner in Mourant du Feu & Jeune, which became one of the world's largest offshore law firms with offices in Cayman, Guernsey, Jersey, and London.
     *) September 10, 1962, The Times, 'New Investment Trust for Jersey': "The International Investment Trust Company of Jersey was registered in the island on Saturday ... to carry on business in Jersey as an investment trust. Its chairman is Major Sir Henry J. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, M.P., who is chairman of the Anglo Israel Bank Ltd. [Bank Leumi; also chairman of Robert Maxwell's Pergamon Press], Barro Equities Ltd., and other companies. On its board are the Hon. N. C. Jacob Rothschild, of N. M. Rothschild and Sons, G. C. Karlweiss, a director of La Compagnie Financiere [de Edmond de Rothschild], Paris [and later chair of Banque Privee Edmond de Rothschild], ... and two Jersey company directors, Senator W. H. Krichefski, a member of the States' Assembly, and Mr. R. R. Jeune, a sollicitator of the Royal Court."
     *) January 15, 1970, The Times, 'JIB': "Following the acquisition by Star Investments Finance (Jersey) and Drayton Securities (Jersey) of a one-third interest each in Jersey International Bank of Commerce the board will comprise of: Senator W. H. Krichefski, Mr. C. H. Barclay (alternate Mr. S. I. Barclay), ... Mr. R. R. Jeune, Mr. D. A. Llewellyn (alternate Mr. P. R. Kirwan-Taylor), Mr. Philip Shelbourne [partner N. M. Rothschild & Sons] (alternate Mr. A. S. Rosen)..."
     *) Philip Shelbourne, Clifford Barclay (Sr. and Jr.) and P. R. Kirwan-Taylor have been members of the elite Pilgrims Society. Shelbourne was a partner of N. M. Rothschild and Sons from 1962 to 1970. At the moment of this press report he was CEO and chairman of Drayton, a very elite financial holding group that reportedly managed some of the queen's investments.
     *) In late July 2008, just before his retirement, deputy police chief officer Lenny Harper (an outsider to the island) announced that his team was investigating "97 allegations of abuse" since the late 1950s and had a list of "more than 100 suspects", with "18 priority suspects." He had indicated more than once that among the suspects were person who "could be described as members of the island's political and social elite."
     *) Having worked at Jersey's "house of horror" at the very least is indicative that Jeune allowed the abuse to happen. A large amount of testimony is available that describes continuous abuse by the staff. Torture was commonplace, but details are generally limited to terms as "horrifying", "cruel", "sadistic" and "evil". As expected, all former staff and board members of the home either refused to comment or denied knowing anything about the abuse. There was one major exception, however. Christine Bowker was a volunteer staffer at the Haut de la Garenne home in 1972. Not noticing any kind of management, she remembered the staff being "ice cold ... [looking] like sick people - staring eyes and very tense." She noticed that a mere glance of a staffer could make a child withdraw into his or her shell who would be "frozen with fear". Within two months Bowker had enough of the home and left. Even though she claimed not to have witnessed any sexual abuse at Haut de la Garenne, she referred to it as an "evil" place and voiced her concerns to the authorities. As one would expect, no action was taken, whatsoever.
206. 1978, John Marks, 'The Search for the Manchurian Candidate': " Apart from the bragging, the stage hypnotist did give Morse Allen a short education in how to capture a subject's attention and induce a trance. Allen returned to Washington more convinced than ever of the benefits of working hypnosis into the ARTICHOKE repertory and of the need to build a defense against it. With permission from above, he decided to take his hypnosis studies further, right in his own office. He asked young CIA secretaries to stay after work and ran them through the hypnotic paces—proving to his own satisfaction that he could make them do whatever he wanted. He had secretaries steal SECRET files and pass them on to total strangers, thus violating the most basic CIA security rules. He got them to steal from each other and to start fires. He made one of them report to the bedroom of a strange man and then go into a deep sleep. "This activity clearly indicates that individuals under hypnosis might be compromised and blackmailed," Allen wrote. On February 19, 1954, Morse Allen simulated the ultimate experiment in hypnosis: the creation of a "Manchurian Candidate," or programmed assassin. Allen's "victim" was a secretary whom he put into a deep trance and told to keep sleeping until he ordered otherwise. He then hypnotized a second secretary and told her that if she could not wake up her friend, "her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to 'kill.' " Allen left a pistol nearby, which the secretary had no way of knowing was unloaded. Even though she had earlier expressed a fear of firearms of any kind, she picked up the gun and "shot" her sleeping friend. After Allen brought the "killer" out of her trance, she had apparent amnesia for the event, denying she would ever shoot anyone. With this experiment, Morse Allen took the testing as far as he could on a make-believe basis, but he was neither satisfied nor convinced that hypnosis would produce such spectacular results in an operational setting. All he felt he had proved was that an impressionable young volunteer would accept a command from a legitimate authority figure to take an action she may have sensed would not end in tragedy. She presumably trusted the CIA enough as an institution and Morse Allen as an individual to believe he would not let her do anything wrong. The experimental setting, in effect, legitimated her behavior and prevented it from being truly antisocial. ... In this way, they could answer many of their questions about hypnosis on a live guinea pig who believed his life was in danger. Specifically, the men from ARTICHOKE wanted to know how well hypnotic amnesia held up against torture. Could the amnesia be broken with drugs? One document noted that the Agency could even send in a new hypnotist to try his hand at cracking through the commands of the first one."
207. 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Welcome to Terror Land: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida' (digital): "In an apartment directly across the street from the Venice Airport, an American girl who had spurned Mohamed Atta was stepping around kitten parts. She moved out that same day and never returned. Numerous descriptions of Atta have painted him as menacing, dark, glaring, sometimes just wooden. We heard speculation, from people who had been in his presence in Venice, that he looked as if he might have been brainwashed, not that anyone in town had ever seen anyone who had been brainwashed, but he looked the way they thought somebody in that condition might look. But after listening to Amanda Keller's story, corroborated by eminently-credible witnesses in coming pages, we're confident we got the answer to one of our big questions about the 9/11 attack: why Mohamed Atta had been the one chosen to commit one of history's most unspeakable crimes. "
208. All detailed in: 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Welcome to Terror Land: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida'.
209. *) October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire marshall Steve Mosiello (best friend and aide to chief of department Pete Ganci): "I heard Chief Ganci, whose offices are three offices down the hall, call out to Dan Nigro that a plane just hit the World Trade Center. ... It was myself, Chief Ganci and Chief Nigro in the car, and we responded over to the World Trade Center. ... We parked on the corner of West and Vesey on the sidewalk. I gave Chief Ganci his gear. I took my gear. And we were setting up a command post. I believe it was in the street at that point, and somebody said -- I don't know who it was -- go over here by those two garages, where we eventually wound up setting a command post in front of Two World Financial. Somebody mentioned -- I don't recall who -- that this is our area of refuge should something happen, meaning the two garages, which during the course of the day did wind up being our first area of refuge when tower number two collapsed. ... Looking at the buildings, both garage doors were up. ... At this point there was only one plane."
     *) October 24, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with deputy chief of department Daniel Nigro (who became chief on 9/11): "I was in my office at somewhere between 8:45 and 8:50 on Tuesday. I heard Pete Ganci yell from his office, which we are sitting in right now, look out your window, a plane just hit the World Trade Center, because the north tower is clearly visible from the Chief of Operations office. That's how it began for me. his executive officer Steve Mosiello, took the elevator down to the C-1 level. My aide for the day, Adam Vilagos, took my car with two officers from Engine 91 to assist at the command post. ... Our car was right behind a car in which Donald Burns was traveling. He was the off going city wide tour commander, and the Trade Center was clearly visible for the whole ride, especially from the Brooklyn Bridge. ... We [Ganci, Mosiello and I] continued west and we parked our car somewhere on approximately West and Vesey. I believe field com was in the process of setting up a command post in the middle of West Street, where there was an island that runs up the street, which we felt to be too close to the building because of debris that was already falling and had fallen in the street and we moved the exterior command post across West Street to the garage entrance in front of, I believe the address would be 2 World Financial Center."
     *) October 4, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire chief Salvatore Cassano: "We were in the command center. I was in the [citywide tour] command center at the time the first plane hit. We were sitting around the table and at the table was Chief of the Department Pete Ganci, Citywide Tour Commander Donald Burns, Citywide Tour Commander Jerry Barbara and Citywide Tour Commander Joe Callan. There may have been some other people there. ... I came out of the office, came down to look for Chief Ganci. Pete was already on the road. ... [Upon arrival] I started to walk down West Street and I got in front of tower two and saw where the command post was set up. It was set up on West Street. I looked up and I knew this was not the right place for the command post, so I told the field communications unit, I said this is too close to the building. We have to move this out of here and get it back. So they took the command post and moved it further across the street, further west. ... [The garages near the new command post were] probably in front of the Two World Financial Center and Winter Garden. There is a garage down there where we set up."
     *) November 2, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire chief Albert Turi, chief of safety: "At approximately maybe about twenty of 9:00, quarter to 9:00, we're sitting in the Command Center, Chiefs Barbara, Callan and Cassano, and heard a large thud [first plane impact]... Chief Callan immediately got up. He was the citywide on duty and he left the office immediately. I continued listening to the radio for a few more seconds and it was pretty obvious that something catastrophic had happened. So I left the Command Center with the intent of responding and I saw Donald Burns coming down the hallway and he stated that a plane had just hit the Trade Center. My aide was on vacation, so I grabbed Lieutenant Chiafari, who was assigned to Safety Command, and we went down to the garage and we were responding. ... When I got there [at the external command center after leaving the North Tower lobby around 9:20 a.m.], the people that I remember being there were Chief Ganci and Chief Cassano, and there were other personnel who I just don't remember who they were. And I said to them that even this place was not a safe position for it. So I looked about 20 feet to my north and there was a ramp going to an underground garage and I told them to move it to that ramp for fear that flying glass would scale hundreds of feet and we would at least have a place to duck in and get away from it if it should happen, and that was done immediately. We did that immediately. And then I had a brief discussion with Chief Ganci and I told him that, Pete, we're going to lose some people here. It's inevitable. It's too tremendous. We're probably going to lose some people. ... The ramp was still on the exterior. We were not in the garage. Maybe 20 feet from the opening of the garage. The next thing I heard was Pete say what the fuck is this? And as my eyes traveled up the building, and I was looking at the south tower, somewhere about halfway up, my initial reaction was there was a secondary explosion, and the entire floor area, a ring right around the building blew out. I later realized that the building had started to collapse already and this was the air being compressed and that is the floor that let go. And as my eyes traveled further up the building, I realized that this building was collapsing and I turned around and most everybody was ahead of me running for the garage, and I remember thinking I looked at this thing a little bit too long and I might not make this garage. But I did."
     *) October 24, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Ray Goldbach, executive assistant to the Fire Commissioner: "We crossed all the way across West Street. We are now where Ganci and Nigro had set up the command post on West Street in front of the Winter Garden."
     *) December 3, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Lieutenant Joseph Chiafari, Safety Command and Chief Turi assistant on 9/11: "So we went across West Street across the roadway [to the command center]. Directly across from tower number one, which was a parking garage ramp. I believe it was part of the Winter Garden parking area."
     *) October 24, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Tom McDonald, assistant commissioner of fleet and tech services: "Most people [at the FDNY command center] were running into the garage area of the Merrill Lynch building [when the collapse began]. Standing next to me was a Fire Department mechanic, Pat Murphy. I pushed Pat forwards and we ran towards, I believe the Winter Garden or it may have been the Merrill Lynch building, but we wound up in the Winter Garden. There was a canopy overhead."
     *) November 2, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview assistant chief Joseph Callan, citywide tour commander: "On the radio I heard a report of a plane crash into the World Trade Center. I immediately proceeded to leave the office and respond, and responding at the same time with me was Chief of the Department Ganci, Chief Nigro, which was the Chief of Operations at the time. Chief Cassano, Chief Burns and a few other Chiefs. Shortly thereafter, we arrived at the World Trade Center. Chief Ganci assigned me to take command of the north tower and he assigned Chief Donald Burns to take command of the south tower."
     *) October 25, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, interview with EMS division chief John Peruggia: " At approximately 8:50 in the morning I was on my way in to work in my assigned Department vehicle. At that point in time I was on the Staten Island Expressway, just before the Verrazano Bridge. I received a telephone call from one of my staff people, EMT Richard Zarrillo, on the Department cell phone. He indicated to me that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. The Chief was leaving the building. Chief Nigro, my immediate boss, was leaving the building, along with Chief Ganci."
210. *) October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Battalion 1 chief Joseph Pfeifer: "Correct [that I initially was the highest ranking officer present]. Shortly after I was there, the division came in. They started out the same time we were rolling. So they were there very quickly, and I briefed Chief Hayden on what I knew at the time... Also, I saw my brother, who was a Lieutenant in 33, and we spoke a little bit and then he went up also. By this time all the Chiefs in the world and the Commissioner and everybody else was there and I was just in a support role of the operation of the lobby command post in the first tower."
     *) October 24, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Ray Goldbach, executive assistant to the Fire Commissioner: "[Roughly 5 to 10 minutes after the second plane impact we] worked our way down around to the front of 1 World Trade Center and went into the lobby, where at that point the command post was established. ... I saw Chief Joe Pfeifer, who was the first of the Chiefs to arrive at the lobby because I remember looking at him and he looked terrible already. He lost his brother."
     *) November 2, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview assistant chief Joseph Callan, citywide tour commander: "Shortly thereafter, we arrived at the World Trade Center. Chief Ganci assigned me to take command of the north tower and he assigned Chief Donald Burns to take command of the south tower. ... As I was going around the far side of the north tower, I then saw the second plane hit the south tower. I immediately went into the lobby of the north tower to take command of operations. In the lobby of the north tower, in command was Chief Peter Hayden, and Chief Joe Pfeifer. ... When I got there it was the two Chiefs there."
211. *) Youtube, 'Interview with Richard J. Sheirer, executive vice president at Giuliani Partners': "When that plane hit the building, we felt it at city hall... And I got a call immediately that a plane has struck the building. ... When I walked out on the veranda of City Hall, we could see the fire and the gaping hole and you knew immediately that wasn't a small two-engine plane. ... Immediately went to the Trade Center within the fire command center in the lobby of 1 World Trade Center when the second plane hit. ... I lost between 75 and 100 friends, the sons of friends, and fathers of friends. It was a day that you had to bury your emotions..."
     *) Sheirer can regularly be seen in the lobby in the 2002 documentary of the Naudet brothers 9/11: The Filmmakers.
     *) April 7, 2004, OEM director Richard Sheirer, 9/11 Commission testimony summary: "I began in public safety as fire dispatcher in 1967. I worked my way to being assistant commissioner hi FDNY in 1992 and later became a deputy commissioner. I left the FDNY in joined the NYPD as Deputy Commissioner for Administration and Chief of Staff to Police Commissioner. Then I became OEM Director on Februayl? 2000, replacing Jerry Hauer. I left OEM in March of 2002. ... 2B. EOC [which stands for emergency operations center] - probably the most technologically advanced facility I have seen in the business. During a major incident which would require multiple agencies to work together, each relevant agency would send a representative to our EOC in our office at 7 WTC. You had areas for infrastructure; health and human services; utilities; first responders; state emergency management; federal emergency management; private sector. We had different levels of activation, depending on nature of incident. Because its capabilities so robust, we also used it to do complete analysis and meetings. 3. ... I was at City Hall, and we heard the "pop". I thought it was a Con-Edison corresponder explosion. My office immediately called me and said a twin engine plane had gone into north tower. I walked outside and saw immediately and knew it was not a twin engine [knew it was something larger]. I proceeded to WTC. I came in on corner of Church and Vesey, walked into 5 WTC, down into concourse. In the concourse I tell a guy to evacuate, who is resisting. I tell a PA cop to make sure that he gets out. What struck me immediately was how calm and professional evacuation was - strong contrast to the screaming and panic of 1993. do what OEM does. I knew from car ride communication that EOC already activated. EMS was going to set up triage in lobby. I told EMS to use atrium of 7 as triage center, because it's a great space, away from the scene, and very good access there for ambulances, and they won't be getting in way of fire and police. I told this to an EMS commander who did it. I spoke to Morone and Infante, senior Port Authority police brass. I spoke with Chief Callen, who was in charge of lobby command post for FDNY; I spoke with John O'Neil, who was Larry Silverstein's director of security [previously NYC FBI SAC]. I had radio communications with EOC; including a confirmation that hospital association was organizing for what was likely to be mass casualties. ... We all knew we were going to lose a lot of people at and above impact zone. But we didn't think we would lose the entire buildings. ... Then there was the second explosion, which we originally thought was a jet fuel explosion in 1 WTC, but we learned very quickly that second tower hit. Now there was no question this is terrorism, I called Richie Rotanz at the EOC and told him to get on phone with SEMO [New York State Emergency Management Organization] to get air national guard."
     *) December 3, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Lieutenant Joseph Chiafari, Safety Command and Chief Turi assistant on 9/11: "Richie Sheirer, the Commissioner for OEM, he was there [in the lobby of the North Tower]. He was making recommendations that maybe they move the command post into where his building was operating out of. I think it's number 7. He was telling us his place is up and running and he says move it over there because there was a discussion taking place that we have two buildings on our hands. We have to put ourselves in a place where we could monitor this whole thing, for what was going on. The decision had been made to move the command post to the west side of West Street, which we later took up space over there..."
212. *) October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Battalion 1 chief Joseph Pfeifer (first to arrive at WTC 1): "[After the first collapse:] And that was just in the blackness where at that point we didn't even know our way out [of the lobby/ground floor of the North Tower]. Then Father Judge was there and he was lying on the ground and I went over to him, took off his collar, I opened up his shirt, checked for a pulse, and I knew at that point that he didnít have any. ... He was with us in the lobby all the time. ... Right. He was saying some prayers and he was very anxious in the lobby. I could watch him. He was very concerned, very different, Father Judge, as I know him. Apparently, what it was, it was a heart attack. We didn't know at the time it was a heart attack. We thought he was hit with debris. ... He [deputy commissioner Feehan] was there in the lobby earlier along with Commissioner Von Essen and OEM. I didn't see Chief Ganci myself [note: Ganci was never in the lobby, like Nigro and Mosiello]."
     *) November 2, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire chief Albert Turi, chief of safety: "At approximately maybe about twenty of 9:00, quarter to 9:00, we're sitting in the Command Center, Chiefs Barbara, Callan and Cassano, and heard a large thud [first plane impact]... Chief Callan immediately got up. He was the citywide on duty and he left the office immediately. I continued listening to the radio for a few more seconds and it was pretty obvious that something catastrophic had happened. So I left the Command Center with the intent of responding and I saw Donald Burns coming down the hallway and he stated that a plane had just hit the Trade Center. My aide was on vacation, so I grabbed Lieutenant Chiafari, who was assigned to Safety Command, and we went down to the garage and we were responding. ... We entered the lobby and I saw Commissioner Von Essen, Commissioner Fitzpatrick was in there, Bill Feehan, Joe Callan and Pete Hayden. Those are the people I immediately recognized. I went over to the Commissioner and informed him that the second plane had hit the south tower. He already knew that."
     *) December 3, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Lieutenant Joseph Chiafari, Safety Command and Chief Turi assistant on 9/11: "I heard Chief of Department Ganci from his office yell out oh, shit, a plane just hit the Trade Center. From there a group of us left headquarters in passenger cars. I was driving Chief Turi that day when we left the building and we headed over the Brooklyn Bridge. ... We waited maybe about a minute or two [after the second impact] and then we headed back toward Church Street, again toward the building. ... There in the lobby command post there was Chief Hayden, who was in the Division that day and later we had Chief Cruthers there, along with the Fire Commissioner Von Essen, Tom Fitzpatrick, Donald Burns was there. ... Commissioner Feehan, I saw him in the lobby of tower one when we first had gotten there."
     *) October 24, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Tom McDonald, assistant commissioner of fleet and tech services: "I responded with Pete Guidetti, who was the driver. Commissioner Feehan, Commissioner Fitzpatrick, Captain Ray Goldbach and myself, all in Commissioner Feehan's car. We crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge, came off the bridge, went our way on to Broadway, pulled over on Broadway, approximately between Liberty and I believe Cortlandt Street. As we were getting out of the car, the second plane hit. ... We made it into the lobby of 1 World Trade Center. ... I remember seeing Chief Hayden there trying to get a handle and set up a command post. We met Commissioner Von Essen there. He spoke to Commissioner Von Essen. He informed Commissioner Von Essen that his first priority was to evacuate the building, that he was not going to attempt to extinguish the fire at this point."
     *) October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire chief Peter Hayden: "It was Chief Pfeifer and his aide [in the North Tower lobby], a number of -- Chief McGovern coming in. He was in the 2nd battalion. I can't necessarily recall the order of these arrivals and response. Chief Ryan also came in. Chief Palmer came in from 7th battalion. And Chief Ryan was in the 4th battalion. ... Shortly thereafter a number of the uniformed and civilian staff of the department arrived in the lobby, Commissioner Von Essen, Commissioner Fitzpatrick, Commissioner Feehan. The tour commander, who was Joseph Callan arrived on the scene. I spoke with him very briefly. ... When the civilian staff arrived, then Commissioners Feehan, Fitzpatrick and Commissioner Von Essen, we discussed strategy and tactics. ... I discussed a number of the issues that were going on at the time with Chief Feehan, Commissioner Von Essen and Commissioner Fitzpatrick. Commissioner Feehan, Fitzpatrick, Deputy Commissioner Tierney were there. Ray Goldbach, their exec, he was in the lobby. OEM representatives Kevin Cully was there. He was alive. Richie Scheirer was in the lobby. Who else? There were a lot of people. ... Yes, Chief Downey was there, sure. In fact he was there relatively late into the operation in the lobby. I don't know where -- he was there earlier on and then left and came back. So he was in the lobby there. I assume at one point from conversation that he was going to the command post. Once we talked about establishing the command post on West and Vesey with Commissioner Von Essen, Commissioner Fitzpatrick, Commissioner Feehan and Chief Downey. I was under the impression they all left and went over there."
213. April 7, 2004, OEM director Richard Sheirer, 9/11 Commission testimony summary: "[In the North Tower lobby] I spoke with John O'Neil, who was Larry Silverstein's director of security [previously NYC FBI SAC]."
     *) January 14, 2002, The New Yorker, 'The Counter-Terrorist': "Wesley Wong, an FBI agent who had known O'Neill for more than twenty years, raced over to the north tower to help set up a command center [with fire chiefs Joe Pfeifer, Joe Callan, Peter Hayden, etc.]. "John arrived on the scene," Wong recalled. "He asked me if there was any information I could divulge. I knew he was now basically an outsider. One of the questions he asked was 'Is it true the Pentagon has been hit?' I said, 'Gee, John, I don't know. Let me try to find out.' At one point, he was on his cell phone and he was having trouble with the reception and started walking away. I said, 'I'll catch up with you later.'" Wong last saw O'Neill walking toward the tunnel leading to the second tower."
214. *) October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Battalion 1 chief Joseph Pfeifer (first to arrive at WTC 1): "Then the plane hit the second tower, the south tower. At that point Chief Donald Burns and Battalion Chief Orio Palmer went into the second tower..."
     *) November 2, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview assistant chief Joseph Callan, citywide tour commander: "Shortly thereafter, we arrived at the World Trade Center. Chief Ganci assigned me to take command of the north tower and he assigned Chief Donald Burns to take command of the south tower."
     *) October 24, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with deputy chief of department Daniel Nigro (who became chief on 9/11): "I believe the address would be 2 World Financial Center [where we arrived]. At that point, also, on the scene, to my knowledge, were Assistant Chief Burns, Assistant Chief Barbara, Assistant Chief Cassano and Assistant Chief Callan. ... Chief Ganci and myself directed Chief Burns and Chief Barbara to the south tower, along with Chief Ray Downey. Ray took, I think all of the companies that were assembled behind us at the command post to the south tower to assist in the evacuation of that building."
215. *) November 2, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire chief Albert Turi, chief of safety: "We entered the lobby and I saw Commissioner Von Essen, Commissioner Fitzpatrick was in there, Bill Feehan, Joe Callan and Pete Hayden. Those are the people I immediately recognized. I went over to the Commissioner and informed him that the second plane had hit the south tower. He already knew that. ... Then there was a brief discussion about, since we had two towers going, that the lobby of Tower 1 would not be a good place for a main incident command post . I didn't know at that time that Chief Ganci and Cassano were already setting up something on the median of West Street . So I told them that I would go across on West Street and find a suitable place. As I left the building , I heard a body hit about 15 feet from me, but I never turned around and looked. ... They had just set it up on I believe the building is 2 World Financial Center. ... When I got there, the people that I remember being there were Chief Ganci and Chief Cassano, and there were other personnel who I just don't remember who they were. And I said to them that even this place was not a safe position for it. So I looked about 20 feet to my north and there was a ramp going to an underground garage and I told them to move it to that ramp for fear that flying glass would scale hundreds of feet and we would at least have a place to duck in and get away from it if it should happen, and that was done immediately. We did that immediately. And then I had a brief discussion with Chief Ganci and I told him that, Pete, we're going to lose some people here. It's inevitable. It's too tremendous. We're probably going to lose some people. ..."
     *) December 3, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Lieutenant Joseph Chiafari, Safety Command and Chief Turi assistant on 9/11: "The decision had been made to move the command post to the west side of West Street, which we later took up space over there... While we were in [the North Tower lobby], a pretty big concern was the condition of the elevator cars, whether they were operating or not and that the the cables would fail, if they come crashing down into the lobby area and then blow out into the lobby where most people were congregating. They wanted to get everybody out of the lobby areas themselves. ... We were most likely in the lobby no more than ten minutes. At most. No more than ten minutes. I should really state my arrival times. From the time we left the building here, we left shortly after the plane hit, which was just about a little after quarter of 9. ... We left the [North Tower] lobby, must have been around 20 after nine, so couple of minutes to get across the roadway, so I would say definitely by 9:30 we are up and running. ... So we went across West Street across the roadway. Directly across from tower number one, which was a parking garage ramp. I believe it was part of the Winter Garden parking area. On the ramp where the command post was set up, field comm. had their van there. The board was already set up with the field comm. officer. Chief Ganci was there, along with Chief Downey."
216. *) October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire marshall Steve Mosiello (best friend and aide to chief of department Pete Ganci): "Yes, yes. I recall seeing Chief Downey before the second plane hit. He was talking to Chief Ganci."
     *) October 24, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with deputy chief of department Daniel Nigro (who became chief on 9/11): "Chief Ganci and myself directed Chief Burns and Chief Barbara to the south tower [right after the second impact at 9:03 a.m.], along with Chief Ray Downey. Ray took, I think all of the companies that were assembled behind us at the command post to the south tower to assist in the evacuation of that building. ... After the second plane hit, [Ray Downey] told me I want to take all these units and start evacuating the stairwells in the south tower. I said okay, good. Take them. And Ray gathered all those units up, however many there were, and marched them across the street. I don't know exactly how he got there, because we were concerned with the jumpers that were coming down out of the north tower at the time. My assumption was he was going to take them south and go across through to the hotel to get into the tower."
     *) October 24, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Tom McDonald, assistant commissioner of fleet and tech services: "As we were getting out of the car, the second plane hit. ... At some [later] point Commissioner Feehan, Commissioner Fitzpatrick and myself crossed over West Street, went over to, I guess in front of the Merrill Lynch building where the ramp was, where the two garages were, to a staging area. I remember seeing Bill Feehan, who was with us, Commissioner Fitzpatrick, Commissioner Von Essen, Peter Ganci, Chief of the Department, Chief Nigro, Al Fuentes, Ray Downey. ... I remember seeing a good friend, Timmy Stackpole. He was with Dennis Cross and Bob Ingram, Chief Ingram."
     *) December 3, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Lieutenant Joseph Chiafari, Safety Command and Chief Turi assistant on 9/11: "We left the [North Tower] lobby, must have been around 20 after nine, so couple of minutes to get across the roadway, so I would say definitely by 9:30 we are up and running. ... So we went across West Street across the roadway. Directly across from tower number one, which was a parking garage ramp. I believe it was part of the Winter Garden parking area. On the ramp where the command post was set up, field comm. had their van there. The board was already set up with the field comm. officer. Chief Ganci was there, along with Chief Downey. ... Again, it was a lot of fielding there of Chiefs at the command post. Again, it was -- at the command post was Chief Ganci, Chief Turi. It was Ray Downey, Chief Pauls, he was acting Deputy that day from the 11th Division... Stackpole, yes. Stackpole was in that day. He was at the command post as well. "
     *) December 6, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Father John Delendick: "We heard a rumbling noise, and it appeared that that first tower, the South Tower, had exploded, the top of it. That's what I saw, what a lot of us saw. ... I remember asking Ray Downey was it the jet fuel that blew up. He said at that point he thought there were bombs up there because it was too even. As we've since learned, it was the jet fuel that was dropping down that caused all this. But he said it was too even. So his original thought was that he thought it was a bomb up there as well. ... I'm not sure where Ray Downey went. I understand Pete Ganci found a stairwell [and went] back to the command post. ... Nigro came a little while later [after running in a different direction]."
     *) October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire chief Peter Hayden: "We discussed with Chief Downey the operations, and that continued for a while. ... Yes, Chief Downey was there, sure. In fact he was there relatively late into the operation in the lobby. I don't know where -- he was there earlier on and then left and came back. So he was in the lobby there. I assume at one point from conversation that he was going to the command post. Once we talked about establishing the command post on West and Vesey with Commissioner Von Essen, Commissioner Fitzpatrick, Commissioner Feehan and Chief Downey. I was under the impression they all left and went over there. Obviously Commissioner Von Essen did go there when he was with Chief Feehan. I was told that on the way over there Commissioner Von Essen was there and was interrupted by the Mayor. They went off in another direction, very fortuitously getting out of harm's way there."
217. *) October 25, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, file no. 9110161, interview with EMT Richard Zarrillo: "I'm an EMT working in fire operations as the special event coordinator. ... While sitting at my desk, probably just after the first plane had hit the tower, Chief Ganci had come running across the hall yelling something about a plane hitting the twin towers. Most of us thought he was joking until we looked out the window... I placed a call to Chief Peruggia to ask him his location. ... He thought I was joking. He cursed at me and hung up. Captain Nahmod was sitting next to me and he said we need to get some equipment... I spoke with Chief Peruggia. He called me back and said maybe you and Abdo, Captain Nahmod, need to head into the city to be part of command, runners or administratively, whatever we can do to help out. ... Captain Nahmod and I started heading down Vesey Street towards where we thought the command post would be. At that time we had received a page per Chief Peruggia to go into OEM [Office of Emergency Management] at No. 7 World Trade and activate our post in OEM. ... Abdo and I went into No. 7, activated OEM, placed calls to EMS Citywide, RCC, to tell them we were there and we were activated. Maybe five, ten minutes, not even ten minutes later, a rep from OEM came into the main room and said we need to evacuate the building; there's a third plane inbound. That was the only thing I really heard because I said, Abdo, we've got to go, and we made it down to the lobby of the building, street level, met up with Chief Peruggia in the lobby of the building. He said that there was no third plane but we needed to re-establish OEM right there so we can coordinate what was going on."
     *) October 11, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, file no. 9110061, interview with NYFD captain Abdo Nahmod: "We went to the window. We looked and sure enough we saw visible flames coming from the top of the World Trade Center. Many people began to respond in different vehicles, and at one point, I responded with EMT Richard Zarillo, the special events coordinator, with Mr. Drury from BITS in his vehicle to get down to the World Trade Center. At this point, I communicated with Chief Peruggia via the land line, and we were directed to report to 7 World Trade to set up OEM [Office of Emergency Management]. Both myself and EMT Zarrillo went to the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade and began to log onto the terminals, as well as inform the citywide dispatch supervisor that we were activating OEM at this time, and operations were to begin. Moments thereafter, we were advised by the staff at OEM that we were to vacate the building, that they believed there was another possible plane on its way, and proceeded down the stairwell of 7 World Trade all the way down to the ground floor. Upon getting outside to 7 World Trade, I saw Chief Peruggia and Captain Stone..."
     *) October 25, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, interview with EMS division chief John Peruggia: " At approximately 8:50 in the morning I was on my way in to work in my assigned Department vehicle. At that point in time I was on the Staten Island Expressway, just before the Verrazano Bridge. I received a telephone call from one of my staff people, EMT Richard Zarrillo, on the Department cell phone. He indicated to me that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. The Chief was leaving the building. Chief Nigro, my immediate boss, was leaving the building, along with Chief Ganci... As I was passing through the Battery Tunnel, probably around midway through the Battery Tunnel, I heard the report come over the radio that a second plane had struck the second tower. .... I came out of the Battery Tunnel and as soon as I came out, I parked my car immediately on the western side of northbound West Street between Rector and West. I'm going to mark that on the map with a number one. I put my boots on. I put my EMS safety coat on, my helmet, grabbed the radio and a pad and began to walk my way up West Street. ... I was being passed by police and firefighters heading in both directions, some towards the site and some away from the site. I passed over some pieces of what appeared to be aircraft wreckage, fuselage, whatever, some body parts and bodies in various states, either people from the building or the airplanes. ... As I made it to in front of what would be 1 World Trade Center, I'm going to mark that number 2 on the map, maybe just south of the north bridge, there was the inter-agency command post or at least the Fire Department command post. ... I saw Chief Ganci, I saw Chief Nigro. There were a number of other people. ... [Around 9:37 a.m.] I reached 7 World Trade Center. We walked into the lobby and we were going up the escalators to the main level. I checked in at the security desk. As we reached the top of the escalators, there were lots of people running down the escalator on the promenade. I spoke to one of the Deputy Directors and as I was speaking with him, I believe it was Deputy Director [Richard] Rotanz, who is a Fire Department Captain on detail over there, Captain Nahmod and EMT Zarrillo approached as well. They had indicated that the building was being evacuated. ... There were reports of a third plane that had been hijacked. It was unidentified, the location, and they thought it may be coming in for an additional strike. Therefore, they were evacuating the building. We proceeded down to the lobby where the various agency representatives were present. We collectively started to set up in the lobby and try to think of strategies to where we could move the inter-agency cooperation effort."
218. *) *) History Commons, '(9:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Emergency Responders Receive False Report of a Third Plane Approaching New York': "Emergency responders in the lobby of the north WTC tower hear an unconfirmed report of a third plane heading toward New York. Consequently, Assistant Fire Chief Joseph Callan orders all firefighters to evacuate the tower. The third plane report is soon found to be incorrect. One firefighter tells a colleague over radio, "That plane is ours, I repeat, it is ours." Rescue operations therefore continue. [New York Times, 7/7/2002; New York City Fire Department, 8/19/2002, pp. 32; Fire Engineering, 9/2002; Associated Press, 11/16/2002] The source of the incorrect report is apparently Richard Rotanz, the deputy director of the New York Office of Emergency Management (OEM), who is reportedly in the OEM command center on the 23rd floor of WTC Building 7. A Secret Service agent in WTC 7 reportedly told him there were unconfirmed reports of other planes in the air. When OEM Director Richard Sheirer called Rotanz some time after the second WTC tower was hit, Rotanz relayed this information, telling him there were "still planes unaccounted for that may [be] heading for New York." Sheirer then told people in the North Tower lobby "that another plane was on the way." Journalists Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, in their book Grand Illusion, blame Sheirer for "instantly converting unspecific information into a very specific false alarm." This false alarm quickly ends up on fire and police department dispatches. ... Emergency medical technician Richard Zarrillo is currently in WTC 7, and is informed by an OEM rep there of the alleged third plane inbound for New York. ... Soon after hearing this false report of a third inbound plane, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and OEM Director Richard Sheirer will all leave the North Tower lobby [note: it appears Giuliani was only at the command post across the street from the North Tower] and relocate to a temporary command post on Barclay Street (see (9:50 a.m.-10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Kerik, 2001, pp. 334; 9/11 Commission, 5/18/2004 pdf file; Barrett and Collins, 2006, pp. 342]..."
     *) April 7, 2004, OEM director Richard Sheirer, 9/11 Commission testimony summary: "Richie Rotanz told me there were other planes unaccounted for. I said in lobby that another plane was on the way. As an example of how we were grasping for straws, I instructed the Police Department aviation to not let another plane hit. But looking back, how could a helicopter stop a commercial jet going over 400 miles per hour. ... Riche ordered OEM to evacuate 7 WTC right after he told me of report of additional planes. This turned out to be a great call. OEM bus at West Broadway and Barclay became our command post."
219. *) Determining the exact time when OEM deputy director Richard Rotanz gave the order to evacuate the building is hard to nail down, but happened around the time of the Pentagon impact at 9:37 a.m.
     *) April 7, 2004, OEM director Richard Sheirer, 9/11 Commission testimony summary: "Riche ordered OEM to evacuate 7 WTC right after he told me of report of additional planes. This turned out to be a great call. OEM bus at West Broadway and Barclay became our command post."
     *) 2008, Richard Rotanz in the BBC's The Third Tower documentary, 8:45: "[Narrator talks about the OEM evacuation order.] Police department, and intel and FBI, they were telling us, "Yeah, we had a plane hit us in the Pentagon." And we now realized, it had taken too long to realize we were now under attack. It could have been a target [Building 7]. I felt at the time because of where we were, it could have been a serious target. And plus the other federal agencies in that building."
     *) December 26, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with firefighter Peter Fallucca: "There were guys in suits up there on the 23rd Floor. Guys were telling me there were -- the CIA's got offices on the 23rd Floor. ... They had a lot of information, these guys were giving us. They had told us that the Pentagon was hit. This was while we were sitting on the 23rd Floor. The Pentagon is hit. They hit another place in Washington. They shot a plane down, and as we were on the 23rd Floor taking a break, they telling us, fellows, we just got a report of a third plane headed this way, so when the building shook, like that, I figured we got hit with another plane, but we found out later that was the first building, Tower 2."
     *) January 9, 2002, World Trade Center Task Force interview with firefighter Joseph Casaliggi: "There were police officers talking about a third plane coming into the area. Then a few minutes passed. I was standing under the bridge. We had heard a loud rumble, and people just started running in our direction from the Trade Center toward us."
     *) October 24, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with deputy chief of department Daniel Nigro (who became chief on 9/11): "The only thing I do remember and I didn't hear it over the radio, I don't think, was that a third plane was heading in the direction, I assumed was heading in the direction of the Trade Center, that there was a third plane, then a little later on somebody told me about the plane that hit the Pentagon. I don't know who told me that. The third plane was -- I don't think it came over the handy talky. I think somebody walked up to me and told me, somebody of some credibility, that it wasn't just a person on the sidewalk, but someone either with us or the police or EMS that I knew, because I recall taking it as a serious issue."
220. April 7, 2004, OEM director Richard Sheirer, 9/11 Commission testimony summary: "I was trying to get the mayor, but cell phone communications were very, very difficult, Then a police Lt. Don Henry, who on Mayor's detail, said City Hall was evacuated, and I used him to try to get in touch with mayor. Riche ordered OEM to evacuate 7 WTC right after he told me of report of additional planes. This turned out to be a great call. OEM bus at West Broadway and Barclay became our command post. I heard that mayor is at 75 Barclay, and he wants me there. So I go there and brief the Mayor. While we're 75 Barclay, 2 WTC comes down, though we didn't know at that time what had happened -just that something significant had occurred, and we needed to evacuate, because with the debris ball it was pitch black and we couldn't operate. We eventually get out on Church street, and discussed were to go. We decided that City Hall was too much of a target. We thought about 1 Police Plaza, but concern was that if we went there we would get in way of police's operations in rest of city in trying to cover all sensitive areas. Then 1 WTC came down as we were walking north."
221. *) October 25, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, interview with EMS division chief John Peruggia: "There were reports of a third plane that had been hijacked. It was unidentified, the location, and they thought it may be coming in for an additional strike. Therefore, they were evacuating the building. We proceeded down to the lobby where the various agency representatives were present. We collectively started to set up in the lobby and try to think of strategies to where we could move the inter-agency cooperation effort. ... As we were having discussions in the lobby as to what to do with OEM, a number of people came in the lobby as patients. Captain Nahmod and EMT Zarrillo started to look at them, put them off to the side and talk to them. At that point I stepped outside. I was going to request some EMS resources... There is also an overhead pedestrian walkway that connects the World Trade Center plaza to the lobby of number 7. There was people coming down both exits. So it was a good position for us to find people who may require medical attention and get them into a secured area of the lobby. ... Again, the lobby of number 7 is all glass facade. I was concerned that if something should come off the building, go through the glass or hit the glass, we would have an extraordinary amount of patients in addition to what was already being seen. Further we took everyone from OEM and moved them to what would be the most southeasterly corner inside that first floor entrance of the 7 World Trade. There is a big granite or marble security desk and we started to establish around that as we were trying to figure out what we were going to do. ..."
     *) October 11, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, file no. 9110061, interview with NYFD captain Abdo Nahmod: "We were advised by the staff at OEM that we were to vacate the building, that they believed there was another possible plane on its way, and proceeded down the stairwell of 7 World Trade all the way down to the ground floor. Upon getting outside to 7 World Trade, I saw Chief Peruggia and Captain Stone... At this point, we were trying to establish a command center, as well as treatment and transport sector. I believe Chief Peruggia was trying to establish communication, and I was directed to move down to the garage area of the 7 World Trade where there were four bays, one having a truck in it and three that were open... I'd say within 20 minutes to a half an hour of being down there or trying to set everything up, all of a sudden a loud noise, rubble, and sand, and dust -- everything just started toppling down."
     *) October 25, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, file no. 9110161, interview with EMT Richard Zarrillo: "I'm an EMT working in fire operations as the special event coordinator. ... Captain Nahmod and I started heading down Vesey Street towards where we thought the command post would be. At that time we had received a page per Chief Peruggia to go into OEM [Office of Emergency Management] at No. 7 World Trade and activate our post in OEM. ... Abdo and I went into No. 7, activated OEM, placed calls to EMS Citywide, RCC, to tell them we were there and we were activated. Maybe five, ten minutes, not even ten minutes later, a rep from OEM came into the main room and said we need to evacuate the building; there's a third plane inbound. That was the only thing I really heard because I said, Abdo, we've got to go, and we made it down to the lobby of the building, street level, met up with Chief Peruggia in the lobby of the building. He said that there was no third plane but we needed to re-establish OEM right there so we can coordinate what was going on. ... We were really trying to establish OEM and a treatment sector in the lobby of the [WTC 7] building because there were people coming around us. Again, times are a little fuzzy initially for me."
222. April 7, 2004, OEM director Richard Sheirer, 9/11 Commission testimony summary: "Riche ordered OEM to evacuate 7 WTC right after he told me of report of additional planes. This turned out to be a great call. OEM bus at West Broadway and Barclay became our command post."
223. Ibid.: "The decision was made to go to Pier 92, which we had been preparing for a 9/12/01 terrorism drill. This was after Henry Jackson checked it out on evening of 9/11 for power capabilities. Wednesday they begin building this HOC, and we moved in on Friday afternoon."
224. *) October 25, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, interview with EMS division chief John Peruggia: "At that point [roughly 10 minutes before the first collapse] I went back into the building [WTC 7]. I was in a discussion with Mr. Rotanz and I believe it was a representative from the Department of Buildings, but I'm not sure. Some engineer type person, and several of us were huddled talking in the lobby and it was brought to my attention, it was believed that the structural damage that was suffered to the towers was quite significant and they were very confident that the building's stability was compromised and they felt that the north tower was in danger of a near imminent collapse. I grabbed EMT Zarrillo. I advised him of that information. I told him he was to proceed immediately to the command post where Chief Ganci was located. Told him where it was across the street from number I World Trade Center. I told him, "You see Chief Ganci and Chief Ganci only. Provide him with the information that the building integrity is severely compromised and they believe the building is in danger of imminent collapse." So, he left off in that direction. They felt both buildings were significantly damaged, but they felt that the north tower, which was the first one to be struck, was going to be in imminent danger of collapse. Looking up at it, you could see that, you could see through the smoke or whatever, that there was significant structural damage to the exterior of the building. Very noticeable. Now you know, again, this is not a scene where the thought of both buildings collapsing ever entered into my mind."
     *) On another occasion Peruggia specially fingers the engineer as the person from which the warning came from.
225. *) Ibid.
     *) October 25, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, file no. 9110161, interview with EMT Richard Zarrillo: "A few minutes later, John came to me and said you need to go find Chief Ganci and relay the following message: that the buildings have been compromised, we need to evacuate, they're going to collapse. I said okay. I went down Vesey Street towards West. ... I found some EMS vehicles. I think I saw Chief Gombo there. I'm not really sure. I mentioned to the EMS people there, again, not knowing who they were, I said you need to get away from here, the building might collapse, we need to leave this spot. As I was walking towards the Fire command post, I found Steve Mosiello. I said, Steve, where's the boss? I have to give him a message. He said, well, what's the message? I said the buildings are going to collapse; we need to evac everybody out. With a very confused look he said who told you that? I said I was just with John [Peruggia] at OEM. OEM says the buildings are going to collapse; we need to get out. He escorted me over to Chief Ganci. He said, hey, Pete, we got a message that the buildings are going to collapse. His reply was who the fuck told you that? Then Steve brought me in and with Chief Ganci, Comissioner Feehan, Steve, I believe Chief Turi was initially there, I said, listen, I was just at OEM. The message I was given was that the buildings are going to collapse; we need to get out people out. At that moment, this thunderous, rolling roar came down and that's when the building came down, the first tower came down."
226. *) Ibid.
     *) October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire marshall Steve Mosiello (best friend and aide to chief of department Pete Ganci): "Richie Zarillo, who works with EMS -- I believe he's an OEM liaison -- came running up to me. I was not on the ramp at this time. I was like almost at the sidewalk location. He said Steve, where's the Chief? I have to tell him, you know -- I said tell him what, Richie? These buildings are in imminent danger of collapse. I said how do you know that, you know? So he ran with me. I ran over and grabbed Chief Ganci and said Chief, these buildings are in imminent danger of collapse. He looked up at me -- ... He said that these buildings are in imminent danger of collapse. I went right up to the Chief because I was a few steps away. I said Chief, these buildings are in imminent danger of collapse. And he said to me who would would tell you something like that? And he looked at me and he had that determined -- I have to say probably scared look on his face, who would tell you something like that. I said Richie, come over here and tell the Chief what you just told me. He got the words out of his mouth. I think it was maybe 25, 30 seconds later, maybe, the building came down. I believe the Chief said where did he get that from? He said from OEM. We were trying to determine exactly how he got it. In retrospect , how did he get it ? He was walking towards us. Was he coming towards us anyway and he got it over his radio? I think he told me he got it from Peruggia."
     *) November 2, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire chief Albert Turi, chief of safety: "Then Steve Mosiello, Chief Ganci's executive assistant, came over to the command post and he said we're getting reports from OEM that the buildings are not structurally sound, and of course that got our attention really quick, and Pete said, well, who are we getting these reports from? And then Steve brought an EMT person over to the command post who was I think sent as a runner to tell us this and Chief Ganci questioned him, where are we getting these reports? And his answer was something, you know, we're not sure, OEM is just reporting this. And within ten seconds of that conversation, I was writing on my clipboard -- can I use foul language on this? That is correct; right at the ramp. The ramp was still on the exterior. We were not in the garage. Maybe 20 feet from the opening of the garage. The next thing I heard was Pete say what the fuck is this? And as my eyes traveled up the building, and I was looking at the south tower, somewhere about halfway up, my initial reaction was there was a secondary explosion, and the entire floor area, a ring right around the building blew out."
227. December 3, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Lieutenant Joseph Chiafari, Safety Command and Chief Turi assistant on 9/11: "[After the first collapse] you could start to see behind you an envelope of dust start to come down the ramp itself [at the command post]. Not having with us any SCDA. We just had our bunker gear on and running down the ramp, I'm thinking, okay, here we are, we are going to a lower area and we are going to suffocate in here. ... I happened to go down to the lower area, down to the lower part of the ramp and it was very clear and visible there. I mean it started to get dusty. I wound up going into an office area, which was right at the bottom of the ramp. Must have been the office for the garage. I don't know. At the moment I happened to see a telephone there. I picked up the telephone and I felt the need to make contact with my wife and just happened to call up and let her know my whereabouts. I think I was on the phone not even 30 seconds and just said hello and kind of like sent a little love and hang up the phone and get back to to what we were doing. We were lucky that the whole area where we were, it was pretty visible."
228. *) November 19, 2001, The New Yorker, 'Why did the World Trade Center buildings fall down when they did?': "Among the dozens of people I have spoken to recently who are experts in the construction of tall buildings (and many of whom witnessed the events of September 11th as they unfolded), only one said that he knew immediately, upon learning, from TV, of the planes' hitting the buildings, that the towers were going to fall. This was Mark Loizeaux, the president of Controlled Demolition Incorporated, a Maryland-based family business that specializes in reducing tall buildings to manageable pieces of rubble. "Within a nanosecond," he told me. "I said, 'It's coming down. And the second tower will fall first, because it was hit lower down.' "... "I thought, Somebody's got to tell the Fire Department to get out of there," Loizeaux told me. "I picked up the phone, dialled 411, got the number, and tried it--busy. So I called the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management"--which was in 7 World Trade. "All circuits were busy. I couldn't get through. Loizeaux said he had an enhanced video of the collapses, and he talked about them in a way that indicated he had watched the video more than once. "First of all, you've got the obvious damage to the exterior frame from the airplane—if you count the number of external columns missing from the sides the planes hit, there are about two-thirds of the total. And the buildings are still standing, which is amazing—even with all those columns missing, the gravity loads have found alternate pathways. O.K., but you've got fires—jet-fuel fires, which the building is not designed for, and you've also got lots of paper in there. Now, paper cooks. A paper fire is like a coal-mine fire: it keeps burning as long as oxygen gets to it. And you're high in the building, up in the wind, plenty of oxygen. So you've got a hot fire. And you've got these floor trusses, made of fairly thin metal, and fire protection has been knocked off most of them by the impact. And you have all this open space—clear span from perimeter to core—with no columns or partition walls, so the airplane is going to skid right through that space to the core, which doesn't have any reinforced concrete in it, just sheetrock covering steel, and the fire is going to spread everywhere immediately, and no fire-protection systems are working—the sprinkler heads shorn off by the airplanes, the water pipes in the core are likely cut. So what's going to happen? Floor A is going to fall onto floor B, which falls onto floor C; the unsupported columns will buckle; and the weight of everything above the crash site falls onto what remains below—bringing loads of two thousand pounds per square foot, plus the force of the impact, onto floors designed to bear one hundred pounds per square foot. It has to fall.""
     *) Initially claimed he had no idea how the North Tower could have fallen the way it did: September 12, 2001, Engineering News-Record, 'Massive Assault Doomed Towers': "A big question for implosion expert Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition Inc., the Phoenix, Md., is why the twin towers appeared to have collapsed in such different ways. Observing the collapses on television news, Loizeaux says the 1,362-ft-tall south tower, which was hit at about the 60th floor, failed much as one wouldlike fell a tree. That is what was expected, says Loizeaux. But the 1,368-ft-tall north tower, similarly hit but at about the 90th floor, "telescoped," says Loizeaux. It failed vertically, he adds, rather than falling over. "I don't have a clue," says Loizeaux, regarding the cause of the telescoping."
229. November 30, 2000, Baltimore Sun, 'John D. 'Jack' Loizeaux, 85, expert in use of explosives in demolition': "John D. "Jack" Loizeaux, a demolition expert who pioneered use of the strategic and precise placement of explosives to cause buildings to fall where they stood, died of a stroke Tuesday at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 85 and a longtime resident of Burnbrae Road in Towson. Mr. Loizeaux owned Burnbrae Tree Service in Towson, where, after World War II, he began using explosives to remove tree stumps and rocks. In 1947, he demolished his first structure, a chimney at Aberdeen Proving Ground. It had frustrated the Army's explosives experts "He said felling a chimney was like taking down a tree. You need a tiny bit of explosives, lots of prayer and God's gravity," said a son, J. Mark Loizeaux, president of the family-owned Controlled Demolition Inc. in Phoenix. His father said that gravity and knowing where to place explosives were the principles that guided his work. "Gravity is everywhere. It's free to everyone. It's an awesome power that's available out there if you know how to control it," he told The Sun in a 1995 interview. Mr. Loizeaux sold Burnbrae Drilling and Blasting Co. in 1959, and he and his wife of 52 years, the former Freddie Hill, established Controlled Demolition the next year. Mrs. Loizeaux, who died in 1992, handled public relations. In those early years, Mr. Loizeaux and a handful of employees roamed the nation demolishing buildings, bridges, chimneys, steel mills, coal tipples and former railroad-coaling towers that had served steam locomotives. His use of as little explosives as possible and knowing how to blow out key points of a structure earned him recognition from Engineering News-Record, a trade publication. The magazine noted that he had "pioneered the use of explosives to demolish just about everything built by man" - including structures built by his family. When clearing the site for Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Mr. Loizeaux had to demolish the Southern Seafood Co. building. He learned that it had been a Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. facility, whose design was approved by his father, A. S. Loizeaux, who had been the utility's chief engineer. In 1972, his company came to worldwide attention when he reduced to rubble the 600-room Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City, N.J., which is believed to be the largest building ever demolished with explosives. The company has brought down public-housing complexes, including the notorious Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, and in Baltimore, Murphy Homes, Lafayette Courts, Lexington Terrace and most recently, Broadway Towers. He also leveled such landmark structures as the King Cotton Hotel in Memphis, the Hudson department store in Detroit, the 32-story Mendez Caldera building in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. From the countdown of 10-9-8-7 ... to the pushing of the plunger, which sets off the explosion, it takes an average of nine seconds for a building to be brought down. The explosions are filmed by CDI for study. "He was a magician when it came to demolition and he put on the greatest free show on Earth," said Herbert T. Duane Jr., a demolition consultant and owner of Duane Corp in Boston. "Jack is the founder of implosion and blasting techniques and spawned an entire industry. He was a talent and a self-made man, who was known all over the world," Mr. Duane said. Mr. Loizeaux retired in 1980 but still enjoyed going on jobs with his sons. "He was an amiable man, who was only out last week giving a talk before the Rotary Club," said another son, Douglas K. Loizeaux of Phoenix, vice president of CDI, which has 15 employees. Born and raised in Towson, Mr. Loizeaux was a 1935 graduate of Boys' Latin School and earned a bachelor's degree in forestry from the University of Georgia in 1940. He worked for the Baltimore City Forestry Department and, during World War II, was chief inspector for wood products used in the production of bombers at Glenn L. Martin Co. in Middle River. A deeply religious man, he was a member of Young Life, Central and Mount Washington Presbyterian churches. A memorial service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Towson Presbyterian Church, 400 W. Chesapeake Ave. In addition to his two sons, he is survived by his wife of four years, the former Betty Burman; two daughters, Merry Loizeaux of St. Petersburg, Fla., and Darby Bryant of Parkton; a brother, Milton Loizeaux of Towson; a sister, Eleanor Johnson of Burundi; 13 grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren."
230. *) May 13, 2006, The Daily News (Longview, Washington), 'Meet Trojan's demolition crew': "But it wasn't until a farmer asked if he could apply his stump removal technique to an old chimney that Jack Loizeaux turned his eyes toward demolition. Figuring a chimney was just a large brick tree, he decided all he had to do was take a notch out of it and then blow the legs on the side he wanted it to fall, Stacey Loizeaux said. Soon, others were calling for his explosive expertise, "And bing, bang, boom, word travels fast and he got a call from Washington, D.C., asking if he could take down a building," Stacey Loizeaux said. The year was 1947 and the CDI company was born. Today it employs 15 people in its Phoenix, Md., headquarters (international agents also help coordinate jobs) and workers travel the globe taking down buildings. ... CDI acts as special consultants to the Army Corps of Engineers, the FBI, Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. State Department, among others. They have aided in the removal of Soviet radar facilities in Latvia and, as part of the nonproliferation and disarmament fund formed under the START treaty, they help remove Soviet-installed nuclear weaponry from former Soviet states. In the wake of last year's U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania,U.S. government officials tracked down Mark on his cellular phone in Puerto Rico, telling him CDI was on standby. Two days later they called back, saying there was nothing even the Loizeauxs could do. "I'm not going to lie to you and say that when I hear an earthquake or a bomb has hit that it doesn't immediately cross my mind that we may be going there," says Stacey."
     *) March 22, 1997, Washington Times, 'The Test': "The ruins of the Murrah building, imploded and hauled away a little more than a month after the explosion that killed 168 persons, was one of the few high-profile jobs for which Miss Loizeaux [Stacey] has not been on site during the critical moment. She helped remove FBI files and to close on the $215,250 contract to demolish the building, but then she began having nightmares. She pictured herself walking through the shell, seeing body parts, baby toys and other personal effects. Two years later, her eyes still get glassy and her shoulders shake almost imperceptibly when she speaks about it. "My dad and uncle came back from Oklahoma very affected," Miss Loizeaux says. Because of CDI's reputation, Mark Loizeaux got the call from officials in Oklahoma within a day of the blast. They wanted his help. He flew to Oklahoma two days later, inspected the broken structure and decided quick removal with explosives was the best course of action from a "structural, social and psychological point of view," he says."
     *) November 30, 2000, Baltimore Sun, 'John D. 'Jack' Loizeaux, 85, expert in use of explosives in demolition': "John D. "Jack" Loizeaux, a demolition expert who pioneered use of the strategic and precise placement of explosives to cause buildings to fall where they stood, died of a stroke Tuesday at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center. ... Mr. Loizeaux owned Burnbrae Tree Service in Towson, where, after World War II, he began using explosives to remove tree stumps and rocks. In 1947, he demolished his first structure, a chimney at Aberdeen Proving Ground. It had frustrated the Army's explosives experts..."
     *) uga.edu/gm/399/FeatImp.html: "In 1957, the Washington, D.C. city planner asked Jack to blast an eight-story apartment building on the plot of land where the U.S. State Department stands today. In 1963, the U.S. Navy asked Jack to blast its Texas Tower radar platform, a three-story behemoth standing on three 180-foot tall concrete legs in the ocean 140 miles off the coast of Massachusetts. ... Just 10 years after Jack imploded his first building, the Loizeauxs were getting big jobs all over the country. They blasted three buildings in Dallas in 1969; a housing project in St. Louis in 1972; a 32-story apartment building in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1972; the massive Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City in 1972; the Biltmore Hotel in Oklahoma City in 1977; and a high-rise apartment building in Saudi Arabia in 1981."
231. July 2008, Mark Loizeaux, BBC, 'The Third Tower', 35:30: "I saw thermite once, in high school. It was very impressive. But I've never seen anyone use the material, which melts steel, for demolition purposes. I don't see how you could possibly get all of the columns to melt through at the same time. ... [On the (experimental) existence of nanothermate) I suppose you could keep saying, what if, what if, and you could go to fantasy land and make up whatever you wanted. It's just not real. It's not real. The materials and the technologies just aren't there. If they were, I'd know. ... [BBC narrator:] Since 9/11 Mark Loizeaux and his company have been the subject of a hate campaign and even accused of mass murder. ... [Loizeaux:] You certainly don't terrorize, terrorize, people like the good folks at work here and family members. ... In a screen play. In a movie [it would have been possible to rig the buildings unseen.] Something with Bruce Willis in it maybe. In reality? No."
232. Loizeaux simply keeps thinking in terms of traditional controlled demolition involving miles of detonating cord. He should have done the same thing as Danny Jowenko: take a look at the blueprints of the building(s) and describe how he would take it down. Then Loizeaux should explain to what extent he could make a controlled demolition look like a natural collapse progression, especially considering a huge boom was heard initiating the collapse of WTC 7 (ignored by the BBC) and the collapse of the WTC towers also began with a huge amount of noise, including a boom. He should also try to figure out how he could implement thermate to weaken the building. Finally he should be considering how to hide the explosives inside the towers for a few weeks and basically explain how remote detonation works. Wireless detonation is pretty easy. Any terrorist can fabricate it. The only thing one needs is a transmitter, a receiver, a battery and a wire that glows (from light bulb, for example) which is attached to a detonator. Obviously, there are very high tech solutions to this.
233. *) July 2008, Mark Loizeaux, BBC, 'The Third Tower', 27:45: "The largest steel structure we have taken down, which I think is still a Guinness record, is the J.L. Hudson building in Detroit. ... It took months to prepare the structure for the placement of the explosive charges. Months. It's noisy. There's just no way to get around it." Note: Loizeaux is taking into account the removal of all potentially hazardous material, such as asbestos, which wasn't relevant for Building 7. The J.L. Hudson building was also a very complex structure with all kinds of differently built segments.
     *) Sunday, September 10, 2006, Zembla (VARA, Dutch television), Danny Jowenko interview about 9/11 (Youtube) (died in a car crash in 2011): "[Looks at the WTC 7 blueprints:] Oh, those aren't even that many columns. That explains a lot. You can demolish this quickly. You could even do this with blowtorches and cutter charges. ... A cutter charge against it with a piece of duct tape is no-time, a minute per charge, not even - half a minute. ... That's not much work [connecting everything]. Everybody knows his job. ... You must have experienced men, but if you would have maybe 30 or 40 persons [it's possible within 7 hours]. ... Several with a blowtorch, the rest attaches [the explosives], other people attach the det cords with the boosters. ... and another persons puts on the electrical systems. ... They didn't put out the fire [before putting in the explosives]? Yeah, that's weird, I agree, I have no explanation for that."
     *) July 9, 2008, 911Blogger: "At 27:23 into the BBC piece they introduce Loizeaux, correctly, as one of the foremost experts on demolition. He not only shows the J.L. Hudson building demolition, but mentions it by name as holding several world records for demolition. He probably shouldn't have mentioned that one, for several reasons. He says it took months to prepare the structure and took months to set the charges. Months. But thats just not true, according to his website:
     " CDI's 12 person loading crew took twenty four days to place 4,118 separate charges in 1,100 locations on columns on nine levels of the complex. Over 36,000 ft of detonating cord and 4,512 non-electric delay elements were installed in CDI's implosion initiation system, some to create the 36 primary implosion sequence and another 216 micro-delays to keep down the detonation overpressure from the 2,728 lb of explosives which would be detonated during the demolition."
     What took so long, according to the website, was the design of the implosion because there were 12 separate sections to the 2.2 million sq. ft. building. All built at different times, with different construction techniques. And no drawings of the building. Now compare that to Building Seven. 47 floors, as opposed to the Hudson buildings's 30 levels; the Hudson building had 2.2 million sq ft of floor space, where Building Seven had roughly 45,000 sq ft per floor totaling 2.2 million sq ft. So, theoretically, the demolition requirements would be similar and the design part would certainly be easier. Now, that would mean, that the actual charges if they used a 12 person team could be set in 24 days. Or, if they used 20 people you do the math. But this is all factually based on real world experience provided by CDI's own site. So it didn't take months and months to set those charges and by extraction, it wouldnt take that time to have prepped Building 7. But that wasn't the misstatement that I was referring to. I just threw that one in for the fun of it.
     At 31:10 into the piece, Mark Loizeaux commits what I know to be a misrepresentation of fact. He claims that yes, some of the windows facing the building were blown out, but, he says if explosives of the type that would be needed to cut the columns were used, then, he says, all of the windows on the surrounding buildings would be blown out all the way around. No way around it. Yet, on Mark's own website, the same exact page that we talked about the other misinformation from Mark, he clearly boasts about how that job posed a significant problem with the surrounding historic structures and their old glass, and they were able to demo the Hudson building, another steel framed structure, without causing hardly any window breakage. On the sides facing the buildings! Even with all the precautions to control overpressure, the age, existing cracks, and poor condition of glazing windows in vacant structures on the north, east and west sides of the J.L. Hudson complex, window breakage was a concern. There was far less window breakage in adjacent buildings than glass company crews were prepared to handle. Many of the broken windows appeared to have been those which were cracked before the implosion, Unbelievable. The arrogance of these people. He mentions the one job that he has detailed on his site as being very successful in keeping from breaking vintage windows facing the building that was demod. Not to mention the fact that they didnt break the windows all the way around the buildings. No way around it? Apparently there was on the Hudson building. Which was, by the way, dropped in 1998. Three years before 9/11."
234. November 30, 2000, Baltimore Sun, 'John D. 'Jack' Loizeaux, 85, expert in use of explosives in demolition': "Mr. Loizeaux retired in 1980 but still enjoyed going on jobs with his sons. "He was an amiable man, who was only out last week giving a talk before the Rotary Club," said another son, Douglas K. Loizeaux of Phoenix, vice president of CDI, which has 15 employees."
235. Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Tom Sullivan, explosives loader for Controlled Demolition, Inc. in the years surrounding 9/11 (an interesting coincidence, considering all the possibilities out there: CDI was contracted to clean up the WTC rubble), video interview (Youtube): "My name is Tom Sullivan. I worked for Controlled Demolition Incorporated, CDI, the top-rated explosives demolition firm in the world, owned by the Loizeaux family, during the years surrounding 911. And I worked for them as an explosives loader for two and a half years. As an explosives loader, my job was to place explosives in the buildings to prepare them for demolition. I was licensed while in New York by the New York Fire Department to handle explosives. And I worked on major projects, such as Seattle Kingdome, the Three Rivers Stadium, Philadelphia Naval Hospital, and Keyspan Gasholders in New York, among others. ... . The story that just a few columns, can cause a synchronized global collapse, an implosion, is just nonsense. ... We were told by the NIST report that fire, caused one column [in WTC7] to fail, and from that point, we had a global collapse of the building in a classic implosion. I don't see how this could actually happen in real life. When we load a building, we have to have all of the support columns on a given load floor, fail at the same time. Within milliseconds of one another. And therefore, the entire building comes down in a synchronized implosion. So I think this notion of a one-column failure causing an entire building to implode in a synchronized fashion is just nonsense. Looking at the building, it wouldn't be a problem, once you gained access to the elevator shafts. Then a team of loading experts would have access to all the core columns and beams. The rest could be accomplished at that point by just the right kind of explosives for the job at hand. The choices are many out there. I've worked on buildings, steel frame buildings, where essentially you load only the bottom third of the building and that causes the building to implode. ... You wouldn't need miles and miles of det cord. You could have used wireless remote detonators."
236. November 2, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, interview with assistant fire chief Joseph Callan.
237. *) October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Battalion 1 chief Joseph Pfeifer: "Communications from the onset was difficult and both Orio [Palmer] and myself tried to get that to work. We tried it numerous times and we couldn't get the repeaters to operate properly, so we had to rely just on handie-talkie communication, which is at best hit or miss in any high- rise."
     *) September 11, 2002, CNN, 'Better Communications Might Have Helped FDNY': "DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: When firefighters arrived at the north tower, commanders knew right away the fire was too big to fight. The plane had wiped out the tower's water pipes and sprinklers, also destroying loudspeakers and radio repeaters which amplify and rebroadcast messages. CHIEF JOSEPH CALLAN, FDNY: Without the repeater system and without the hard wire system, we were going to rely completely on our handy-talky capability, and we knew that that was going to be a severe problem. ... FEYERICK: Yet, even with the evacuation order, almost a full hour before tower one fell, more than 100 firefighters didn't make it out. Callan blames it on hand-held radios not strong enough to reliably penetrate concrete and steel. CALLAN; The reason they didn't come down is because they didn't get the message. The only other acceptable reason why they didn't come down immediately is because, in my mind, they were helping civilians get to the stairway and down the stairway. Other than that, I am very sure, that if they heard the command to evacuate, they would have evacuated. FEYERICK: New York city's former fire commissioner, Tom Von Essen, says it's wrong to blame the radios. THOMAS VON ESSEN, FORMER FDNY COMMISSIONER: It's so unfair to imply that it was the equipment. It was more the terrorism and the act of war and the confusion and the magnitude of the tragedy. FEYERICK: Even so, Von Essen acknowledges there were problems."
238. September 11, 2001, NBC News Transcripts, 'Attack on America, 11:00 AM': "Chief Albert Turi told me that he was here just literally 10 or 15 minutes after the events that took place this morning. That is, the first crash. ... The chief of safe--the Chief of Safety of the Fire Department of New York City told me that at--shortly after 9:00 he had roughly 10 alarms, roughly 200 men, in the building trying to effect rescues of some of those civilians who were in there. And that, basically, he received word of a possibility of a secondary device--that is another bomb going off. He tried to get his men out as quickly as he could, but he said that there was another explosion which took place. And then, an hour after the first hit here, the first crash that took place, he said there was another explosion that took place in one of the towers here. So, obviously he--according to his theory, he thinks that there were actually devices that were planted in the building. One of the secondary devices, he thinks, that took place after the initial impact, was, he thinks, may have been on the plane that crashed into one of the towers. The second device, he thinks, he speculates, was probably planted in the building. So, that's what we have been told by Albert Turi who is the chief of safety for the New York City Fire Department. He told me that just moments ago. Now we are continuing to hear explosions. We are continuing to hear explosions here downtown. And what we've been told by some of the fire officials is that there are some gas lines that occasionally are exploding down there..."
239. December 6, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Father John Delendick.
240. *) November 2, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire chief Albert Turi, chief of safety: "And as my eyes traveled further up the building, I realized that this building was collapsing and I turned around and most everybody was ahead of me running for the garage, and I remember thinking I looked at this thing a little bit too long and I might not make this garage. But I did. ... I kept screaming over the bullhorn. I believe it was somewhat effective. There were people now listening to it and starting to move, and I saw a battalion chief coming up who was evacuating the area that I just was trying to get evacuated. I gave him the bullhorn and said continue this. Get everybody out of here. They've got to get three blocks north. And I started walking south on West Street to find out where Chief Ganci went when I heard this enormous roar."
     *) December 3, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Lieutenant Joseph Chiafari, Safety Command and Chief Turi assistant on 9/11: "[After the first collapse] initially I was met by Chief Bob Ingram, and Steve Mosiello, those being two people that were at the command post when we first started this whole thing. ... A decision had been made at that point to evacuate anybody out of West Street, head them north. I had met up with Chief Turi and he said this is what we are going to do. ... Chief Turi having to commandeer a bull horn. I don't know if he had gotten it from one of the cops or who he had gotten it from, but he was making a very large announcement over the bull horn in the street, you know, having all people in the street head north of Murray, I think we were trying to get, because that was a couple of blocks north of where we were. We were trying to set up another command post now at Murray and West. He wanted everybody north of Murray Street. ... . I want to say we got to West and Murray. We parked ourselves right by a police car. I think this was where we were going to set up this command post. I felt comfortable at that location, so what I did was I took the mask off my back. It was -- I said let me take this thing off. I'm not going to need this right now. I don't think I put the mask down for all of 30 seconds when you start to see the tower two peeling away just like -- tower one peeling away, just like tower two did. ... A bunch of us, not all together, of course, started running north and you ran until the visibility started to reduce itself. ... We were all huddled and hugged together underneath -- behind this parked car. We were as low as we could be. Here comes the dust cloud. And, you know, it was almost like being in like a dust chamber. Your visibility was down to nothing. You are sucking this stuff in. You are choking..."
241. See ISGP's WTC collapse article.
242. CampaignMoney.com, 'Ronald Baamonde Political Campaign Contributions 2000 Election Cycle': "BAAMONDE, RONALD ... Contributed to: ... ACE ELEVATOR, $1,000, 10/23/2000, DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE ... $1,000, 10/19/2000, COMMITTEE TO RE-ELECT VITO FOSSELLA - Republican. ... $1,000, 09/18/2000, LAZIO 2000 INC - Republican. ... $-1,000, 09/18/2000, LAZIO 2000 INC - Republican. ... $1,000, 08/09/2000, LAZIO 2000 INC - Republican. ... $1,000, 08/07/2000, WALTER JONES COMMITTEE 2000 - Republican. ... $1,000, 06/23/2000. COMMITTEE TO RE ELECT ED TOWNS - Democrat. ... $1,000, 04/11/2000, FRIENDS OF GEORGE ALLEN - Republican. ... $1,000, 09/27/1999, BUSH FOR PRESIDENT INC - Republican. ... $1,000, 04/23/1999, NADLER FOR CONGRESS INC - Democrat. ... $1,000, 03/31/1999, QUAYLE 2000 INC - Republican. ... $1,000, 02/10/1999, LAZIO 2000 INC - Republican."
243. *) September 8, 2002, Times Herald-Record, 'The Elevator Man's Tale', Robert Jones, ACE Elevator engineer at the WTC: "I work for Ace Elevator. I originally started down at the trade center in 1973 with Otis Elevator when the towers were just about completed, and I was transferred out of the trade center in '75. After that I worked for Otis Elevator. I came back to the trade center in '98, and up 'til September 11 was working as a mechanic on the elevators. .... "On the morning of September 11 at about a quarter to nine, a partner and I came out of a motor room and walked over to the windows overlooking the Hudson River. That was on the 43rd floor [of the South Tower]. And as we turned to walk away, that’s when the first plane hit [the North Tower] and we heard the explosion. ... A lot of people were coming down out of those local cars, some of them were trying to get into the shuttle cars. I shut them down. ... I started to tell people to evacuate, to get down out of the building. ... What we heard was 6 and 7 car free-falling from the 107th floor and they impacted the basement at B-2 Level. And that’s the explosion that filled the lobby within a matter of two or three seconds, engulfed the lobby in dust, smoke. And apparently from what I talked to with other mechanics, they saw the doors, the hatch doors blow off in the lobby level of 6 and 7 car. So right after that explosion, we were ordered to leave the building. There was a story that came out in USA Today that said we all ran out like cowards. The reporter, Dennis Couchin, has been advised as to what had happened and he’s going to rewrite his story. I’m just putting this in right now because I feel it’s necessary, because the men that were there in ’93, most of them, a lot of them were still there. I regret that we had to leave the building. This is something I still feel a lot of heartache over. And there’s not much we could’ve done. And there is nothing you could do. I know a lot of the other trades had contingency plans as well, and they were trying to get their personnel together. And there was mass chaos, mass confusion all around. I exited with one of my bosses, with another mechanic, on Church Street. We went underneath on the concourse level where all the shops were. And we came up on Church Street which was on the east side of the complex. That was, Church Street was the avenue that runs north and south, parallels Broadway. And we came up outside, and both A Tower and B Tower are on fire. You could see A Tower, the outside, the columns were glowing red by that time, because that had been on fire for at least a good 25 minutes by that time. B Tower, I could see tremendous structural damage to the outside of the building. We stood on the corner across the street from the towers. There were about two or three bosses, I believe, trying to count heads again, trying to get as many people together, calling on the radio, trying to consolidate all the manpower as much as they could, which was really almost an impossible job because of the thousands of people that were coming out of the trade center on the street. There was mass confusion. And we were right on the perimeter of St. Paul’s Church, and we started up not Cortlandt Street, Fulton Street. We were ordered to go from Church Street up to Broadway. We stood there for about 20 minutes or so, and as we started to go up another block, we were about a block and a half away when B Tower finally came down. By the time we got that block and a half up, thousands of people started running toward us. I saw a little bit of B Tower coming down. We started to go with the flow, go with the crowd, because it was overwhelming, the number of people running back toward you. We ended up down on the South Street Seaport Museum. As much as we tried, there were quite a few people, must’ve been about 20 or 30 people from our group, Ace Elevator, in the museum area. There wasn’t much we could do at that moment other than watch the crowds and people covered with dust and whatever, so we ended up going into PS 17 and sitting down. Everybody had soda and some drinks, and a lot of the men decided to leave, try to get out. The interesting thing was we were on the end of Pier 17 overlooking the East River. There was at least maybe 20, 30 tugboats sitting near Pier 17, and it was incredible because it was almost like Dunkirk when they came in and tried to get all the British soldiers off France, the continent. This is what the tugboats were coming in, because people were trying to get off Manhattan Island, and you could see thousands of people crossing the bridges, the Brooklyn Bridge. People literally, quite literally, jumping over to get on to these tugboats to get off Manhattan Island. Some of the other workers that I had worked with, the mechanic that was up on the 43rd floor, ended up going to Staten Island. He lives in Jersey. He was telling me horror stories, people leaping off the ferry. The end of the dock where the ferry boat was pulling out, they would just run off trying to grab the ferry boat, it was unbelievable. They actually stopped a few times in the bay to pick people up in the bay, throw life preservers. People were serious about getting off Manhattan. So it ended up, the one boss, my boss, and another mechanic and I stayed. We were the last of the group. My boss decided he was going to go back to find the head of the elevator division for the Port Authority, Joe Amatucio. This was at maybe 11, 11:30, maybe 12, we decided to go back toward the trade center. From what my boss was telling me, he remembers Joe Amatucio coming out of the building, but I’m not sure if he had talked to them or overheard them on the radio, but he was going back into the complex to try to find some of his own people, but he never made it out. He was one of the few that I know of."
     *) December 19, 2001, USA Today, 'Mechanics left towers before buildings collapsed': "When the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, Otis Elevator's mechanics led the rescue of 500 people trapped in elevators. Some mechanics were dropped onto the roofs of the twin towers by helicopter. Others, carrying 50-pound oxygen tanks on their backs, climbed through smoke to machine rooms high in the towers. On Sept. 11, the elevator mechanics — many of the same men involved in the rescues in 1993 — left the buildings after the second jet struck, nearly an hour before the first building collapsed. The 83-person elevator crew worked for ACE Elevator, a small Palisades Park, N.J., company that won the maintenance contract from Otis in 1994. At the time the elevator mechanics left, dozens of people were trapped in stuck elevators. Other people lost their lives trying to rescue those trapped in elevators, including a mechanic from another company who rushed to the Trade Center from down the street. The departure of elevator mechanics from a disaster site is unusual. The industry takes pride in rescues. In the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, elevator mechanics worked closely with the firefighters making rescues. "Nobody knows the insides of a high-rise like an elevator mechanic. They act as guides for firefighters, in addition to working on elevators," says Robert Caporale, editor of Elevator World, a trade magazine. In an interview, ACE Elevator President Ron Baamonde says the crewmembers left on their own because they were in danger. He says ACE followed the Trade Center's emergency plan. After a jet hit the north tower, 81 crewmembers reported to the fire command station in the south tower lobby. Two reported by radio. "We did a head count and were ready to deploy for rescue. The second plane hit. It was chaotic, people screaming and yelling," Baamonde says. "You couldn't get out the front door because debris was falling. There was a mass exodus through the underground of the complex." The elevator crew joined the underground exodus. The south tower fell about 56 minutes later. During that time, firefighters and Port Authority workers struggled to free the trapped passengers. The World Trade Center had 99 elevators in each tower. David Bobbitt, a Port Authority maintenance supervisor, made contact by intercom with about 75 elevators in the north tower. He says 10 elevators were stuck. "Some elevators had one or two people. Others had four of five," Bobbitt says. "Some were very emotional, as you can imagine. I heard crying and screaming. Others were calm," Bobbitt says. Elevators in the south tower were more crowded. People were using them to evacuate, not knowing the second hijacked jet was on the way. Bobbitt spoke to his counterpart in the south tower, Jim Barbella, five minutes before the building collapsed. Barbella, who died, reported that the stuck elevators included an express car with 19 people. Baamonde says two ACE managers were trying to return to the building when it collapsed. "Our people miraculously left when the second plane hit, and it saved our lives," Baamonde says."
     *) November 4, 2002, USA Today, 'Elevators were disaster within disaster': "The World Trade Center had one of the world's great elevator systems — 198 of the biggest, fastest elevators ever built. On the morning of Sept. 11, this technological marvel turned against the people who worked there. USA TODAY estimates that at least 200 people died inside World Trade Center elevators, the biggest elevator catastrophe in history. Some people plunged to their deaths after elevator cables were destroyed by the hijacked jets that crashed into the buildings. Others burned to death as flames shot down shafts. And some who were trapped inside stalled elevators died when the buildings collapsed. The elevators were a tragic exception to an otherwise successful evacuation that resulted in the survival of 99% of the people who worked below the floors where the jets crashed. USA TODAY has identified 21 people who were trapped behind locked elevator doors and fought their way out. About 80 other people in elevators survived because the doors happened to be open just as the jets hit or opened automatically without the assistance of passengers. USA TODAY could not find an instance in which emergency workers successfully rescued people from elevators, although some firefighters died trying. Poor communications among rescue workers meant elevators were ignored even after trapped passengers used intercoms to report their locations, sometimes only a few feet from firefighters. Most passengers could not save themselves: Safety devices designed to prevent people from falling down shafts locked people inside elevators the moment the elevators malfunctioned. And when the second jet hit the south tower at 9:03 a.m., 16½ minutes after the attack on the north tower, the World Trade Center's elevator mechanics decided to leave the buildings. They expected to return later to help firefighters but never did. In one way, the elevators played a heroic role that morning. They helped thousands evacuate the south tower before the second jet hit. But the elevator shafts also became the circulation system of the disaster, carrying death and destruction throughout the towers. Elevator shafts worked like chimneys, funneling unbearable smoke to floors above the crashes. The shafts also channeled burning jet fuel throughout both towers. Fire moved not only up and down but also side to side, from shaft to shaft, unleashing explosions in elevator lobbies and in restrooms next to the shafts. USA TODAY made an intensive effort over the past six months to determine what happened to the World Trade Center elevators. Reporters interviewed more than 50 people who were in elevators at the time the jets hit or moments before. The newspaper also reviewed 2,500 pages of accounts written by survivors and reports in other media outlets, examined architectural plans and spoke to elevator experts and mechanics who worked at the Trade Center. The result is the first in-depth look at an important but neglected part of the World Trade Center disaster. USA TODAY found: - Newly installed safety devices condemned many people to death. ... - Few elevators performed properly. Most elevators, even those on low floors, stopped functioning the moment the jets hit. ... - Elevators were not systematically checked for trapped passengers. ... - Safety locks trapped passengers. ... - Elevators plunged... - Elevator mechanics left the buildings. ... On Sept. 11, ACE Elevator of Palisades Park, N.J., had 80 elevator mechanics inside the World Trade Center. Following the Port Authority's emergency plan, after the first jet hit the north tower, elevator mechanics from both towers reported to the fire safety desk in the south tower lobby for instructions from police or firefighters. About 60 mechanics had arrived in the south tower lobby and others were in radio contact when the second jet struck that building. "We were standing there trying to count heads when the second plane hit (the south tower)," said Peter Niederau, ACE Elevator's supervisor of the modernization project. "Parts of the lobby and glass were coming down around us, so we all got out of the lobby as fast as we could." They left in different directions. Some went through the underground shopping mall. Others went out onto Liberty Street. Had they stayed, they would have been about 30 yards from the two express elevators where firefighters tried unsuccessfully to save people. Another mechanic was in the north tower's 78th floor elevator lobby — where Savas and other people were trapped — when the first jet hit. The mechanic was knocked across the lobby, then evacuated safely, the ACE Elevator supervisors say. "(We) went out to the street to assess the damage and come back in as needed," says James O'Neill, ACE Elevator's supervisor of maintenance. The plan was to return to the building later in the day to help with rescues. The strategy had worked after the 1993 terrorist bombing, when many of the same mechanics — working for Otis Elevator, which had the contract then — were hailed as heroes. On Sept. 11, the mechanics left on their own, without instructions from police or fire officials. ACE Elevator supervisors say this was consistent with the emergency plan. All the mechanics survived. "We had a procedure. We had a procedure to follow, and they (the mechanics) followed it," Niederau says. But the Port Authority says the emergency plan called for mechanics to stay and help with rescues. "The manuals consider many emergency scenarios and describe the role of the mechanics in detail in responding to them," Port Authority spokesman Allen Morrison says. "There was no situation in which the mechanics were advised or instructed to leave on their own. They were, depending on the situation, to be dispatched to various emergency posts or to respond to various passenger entrapments and to assist police, fire and other rescue personnel." About 9:45 a.m., from the south tower lobby, Port Authority elevator manager Joseph Amatuccio radioed the ACE Elevator supervisors on their private radio channel. O'Neill recalls him asking: "Can you mobilize to come inside and see what's going on? Because I'm here with the fire department, and they're asking me questions I don't know." O'Neill radioed John Menville, an ACE Elevator supervisor trained in rescues, and both tried to get back in the building. The supervisors had special ID badges with red stripes that allowed them behind police lines. The badges had been issued after the 1993 bombing. As Menville approached, the south tower collapsed. Amatuccio and his colleagues were killed. Bobbitt and other firefighters began evacuating the soon-to-collapse north tower. The elevator rescue effort was over."
244. September 12, 2001, Washington Post, 'Text: Giuliani on Rescue Efforts': "QUESTION: Mr. Mayor, just to clarify something that [police commissioner] Mr. [Bernard] Kerik said you were about 10 minutes past when you were standing with several of the high ranking officers who you lost and then you went to Barkley Street, have you thought about that 10 minute gap, how you were 10 minutes from being in a horrible situation? GIULIANI: I haven't had a chance to think about it. QUESTION: Then that could of evacuate the 10--you would have been with them 10 minutes earlier before the building collapsed? GIULIANI: The--some of the people that we lost we saw like Father Judge (ph) and Chief Gansy (ph), Bill Fehan (ph), we saw them about 10 minutes before--before we went over to 75 Barkley street. And I talked to their families and I explained to them that they were working very hard and they were working at what they loved to do. And I'm sure their efforts will end up having saved other lives and their families can be very proud of them. We have, without any doubt, the best Police Department, the best Fire Department, the best police officers, the best fire officers, the best emergency workers of any place in the whole world."
245. *) October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire marshall Steve Mosiello (best friend and aide to chief of department Pete Ganci): "At this point there was only one plane. ... At that point the Mayor shows up. I was standing away from the command post, and the Mayor showed up. And one of his aides asked where the Fire Commissioner was. I remember the Mayor being with Commissioner Kerik and himself and a lot of his aides and escorts or whatever. Somebody said the Commissioner was in One World Trade Center, north tower, that was hit already. I said [I will] go up and get him. What was I thinking with all the jumpers and everything else. I believe at that point when I went over to get the Commissioner, that's when the firemen of 216 was killed by a jumper when a jumper landed on him. I went to the building, looked for the Commissioner, and they said he had just left. So now we've crossed each other's paths. I came back to the command post across the street at Two World Financial, and the Commissioner was there talking to the Mayor. ... At that point I don't know exactly when the Commissioner and the Mayor had left." It appears the mayor and Kerik only arrived at the West Street command center just after the second WTC impact.
     *) October 24, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with deputy chief of department Daniel Nigro (who became chief on 9/11): "At some point after our arrival and after we had moved to the west side of West Street, I heard a loud roar of a jet, looked up and saw the second plane impact the south tower. At that point it was clear to me it was a terrorist attack. Earlier I didn't know what it was. I assumed it was an accident. I turned around and saw the Mayor, with his large group, including the Commissioner and I went back to speak with him for a moment, regarding the fact that I believe this to be a terrorist attack. When I got back to business at the command post, I noticed the Mayor had left that area and that was the last I saw of him until that night I suppose. Chief Ganci and myself directed Chief Burns and Chief Barbara to the south tower, along with Chief Ray Downey."
246. October 25, 2001, New York Times 9/11 interviews archive, interview with EMS division chief John Peruggia: "[Fire commissioner Thomas van Essen] questioned me as to -- I told him I was there for OEM, operating in the lobby [of Building 7], that the building was being evacuated and the nature of that. He indicated if I knew the whereabouts of the Mayor. I told him that as I was approaching OEM and coming up Vesey Street, I saw a large contingency of gentlemen in suits exiting down Vesey Street proceeding north on West towards Barclay. I recognized some of the people in that group as staff and TAs for the Mayor. I told him more than likely that was probably the direction the Mayor went."
247. October 24, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Ray Goldbach, executive assistant to the fire commissioner: "Manny Pepea from the Mayor's office came over to us again and told us that the Mayor was looking for the Commissioner and they were on Barclay Street. I walked with him and I believe it was a fire marshall, I think it was Mike O'Neill. We walked over towards Barclay Street. I didn't even know where Barclay Street was. We were walking towards that direction. We went over there, we couldn't find the Mayor or his group. I said to the Commissioner let's go back to the command post on West Street, I will find out exactly where we have to go, then we will make our way there. Before we got back to the command post, somebody told us that the Mayor's group had now gone to 7 World Trade Center to the OEM command post. We went from where we were at that point, it was somewhere around Vesey or Vesey or something. Like that. We got into 7 World Trade Center, we took the escalator up to the second floor, then we were going to take the elevator. I think it was John Peruggia from operations, but I'm not sure, at that point told us we had to get out of that building. Everybody was evacuated in that building. I remember saying to myself, this is ridiculous, at some point are we going to stop to try to get control of this or are we going to keep running away. We walked out of 7 World Trade Center, now following the whole group of people from City Hall who were somewhere ahead of us. I think we were on Washington Street near Greenwich Street, when the [south] tower started to collapse. I remember running and I think it was down Greenwich Street with John McLaughlin. We lost the Commissioner and the guy that he was with, the marshall."
248. September 27, 2001, New York Daily News, 'Giuliani & Group of Top Cops Barely Dodged Death as Towers Fell': "When American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the south tower at 8:48 a.m., Kerik was taking ashower in his private bathroom on the 14th floor of Police Headquarters. Moments later, Chief of Staff John Picciano was banging on the door... Kerik ... called Giuliani, who was already heading downtown. The top cop was out of the building and in his sleek black Chrysler Concorde within five minutes. ... They decamped at West Broadway between Liberty and Barclay Sts. [note: probably Barclay and Vesey where WTC 7 is located, as Liberty is on the south side of the WTC complex.] ... Then unimaginable happened before their eyes [second impact]. ... Two minutes later, the mayor's vehicle pulled up. Kerik told Giuliani the city was under attack. ... They decided it was too dangerous to move to the city's command center at 7 World Trade Center. The group walked to the south side of West St. in front of the American Express building [World Financial/Winter Garden], where they saw Fire Department brass, including Bill Feehan, the first deputy commissioner; Chief of Department Pete Ganci; Deputy Chief Ray Downey, and a chaplain, Rev. Mychal Judge. ... The mayor and the police group decided to find another command center north of Trade Center. A retired NYPD lieutenant came by and advised them to use a Merrill Lynch office at 75 Barclay. ... Setting up shop in a first-floor office at Merrill, Giuliani was on the phone with the White House when a rumble was heard and the building began to shake. ... Kerik said the windows of the Merrill Lynch building started popping. "Then all of a sudden this gush of smoke and dust burst through the door," he said. "I can remember thinking: 'If the building doesn't fall on us, we're going to suffocate.'" ... Finally, they made it out to Church St., where, miraculously, their city cars were waiting for them. "My driver and the mayor's driver were side by side on West Broadway when the tower fell," Kerik marveled. "They backed up 80 miles per hour up on West Broadway and never hit a thing. Every car around 75 Barclay St. was demolished, but they beat us out of there."
249. October 17, 2008, BBC Conspiracy Files, 'Timeline: WTC 7': "1210 to 1215 Nist says that: "Fire fighters found individuals on floors 7 and 8 and lead them out of the building. No fires, heavy dust or smoke were reported as they left floor 8". Although fire is seen "along west wall on floor 7...no heavy debris was observed in the lobby area as the building was exited, primarily white dust coating and black wires hanging from ceiling areas was observed." (NIST interim report on WTC 7. Appendix L.1.8) Emergency responder, Barry Jennings escapes the building around this time."
250. October 17, 2008, BBC Conspiracy Files, 'Timeline: WTC 7': "Around 1230 Deputy Director of the OEM, Richard Rotanz has to make an assessment on the damage to WTC 7. On the exterior he sees the upper 10-15 floors of Tower 7 on fire. "The skin of the building or the outside skirt of the building was taken out,¿ he says. "You see columns gone. You see floors damaged and you see heavy black smoke and fire." He then enters the WTC 7. "At the time the building wasn't safe but we had to make an assessment, just the same, and we didn't spend that long. You could hear the building creak above us, you could hear things fall, you could hear the fire burning. You could see columns just hanging from the upper floors, gaping holes in the floors up above us. "There was an elevator car that was blown out of the shaft and it was down the hall. This is the massive impact of Tower 1 onto Tower 7." "
251. 2008, BBC, 'The Third Tower', 19:30.
252. October 17, 2008, BBC Conspiracy Files, 'Timeline: WTC 7': "Around 1500 Chief Daniel Nigro of FDNY takes the decision to make an evacuation zone around Tower 7 in case of collapse. Everybody is pulled away and rescue efforts in this zone are stopped, Nigro later says: "The biggest decision was to make an evacuation zone around building seven, to pull everyone away to stop the rescue efforts that were going on which was very difficult to do because there were people trapped still and to step back, to step back and wait.""
253. October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with Battalion 1 chief Joseph Pfeifer.
254. January 30, 2015, Undicisettembre, 'World Trade Center: an interview with firefighter Frank Papalia' (as shared on the International Skeptics Forum, which is hugely involved in the 9/11 debate): "I was standing in the building [5] next to 7 and the whole bottom was gouged out from being hit by the other building [WTC 1]. The whole building was on fire, the windows were popping out. Buildings aren't made to be on fire like that, because if there's a fire they are designed to have sprinkler systems that is supposed to put it out, so they are not meant to burn indefinitely. If they do, steel softens. Steel softens at about 950 F. That's what happened... Oh, absolutely! There was an incredible amount of fire, and plus the whole bottom was ripped out. That building was severely damaged on the bottom. If you destroy some of the columns in a building you put more stress on the ones that are still there... There're no way that building would have stood up." Brings up people believing that no planes hit the WTC and the theory that explosives were already placed in the buildings during the design phase, both of which obviously are utterly ridiculous. Papalia actually talks like a person with very low intelligence, like he's a little retarded and highly suggestive.
     *) NIST explained that the collapse of WTC 7 was due to relatively low temperature thermal expansion of long-span beams in the north-east corner of the building at the 13th floor. The expansion caused a girder to walk off its seat, with the whole building collapsing as a result. None of the columns were heated to the point that steel loses strength (certainly no more than 5%) and neither fire nor damage in any other part of the building played any role in the collapse of the building. In other words, despite having been there on 9/11, Papalia is completely talking out of his ass.
255. *) Frank Papalia's LinkedIn biography: "Partner, Vice President of Fire and Life Services at Global Security Group Inc."
     *) Firesafetydirectors.com, 'Fire Safety Director Bios: Frank Papalia': "Frank Papalia is the Director of Fire and Life Safety Services for Global Security Group. A retired New York City Fire Department (FDNY) Lieutenant..."
     *) Global Security Group website (accessed: June 3, 2015), 'People': "David S. Katz -- CEO... Mark Novak -- President... Frank Papalia -- Vice President and Life Safety... Kevin Schamberger -- Vice President Fire and Life Safety Operations..."
     *) Global Security Group website (accessed: June 3, 2015), 'About Us': "Global Security Group, Inc. (GSG) was founded in 2001 shortly after [sic] attacks of 9/11..."
     *) From David S. Katz's biography at his Global Security Group website: "David S. Katz is the founder and CEO of Global Security Group, Inc. A former senior Special Agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)... He is a federally certified firearms and tactical instructor who spent four years as a Primary Firearms Instructor at the FBI/DEA Academy in Quantico, Virginia. During that posting, he taught firearms and tactics to several thousand federal agents, state and local law enforcement officers, SWAT team members, military personnel and foreign military and law enforcement counterparts. A recognized authority in law enforcement arrest tactics, he has provided training to police units and tactical teams around the world including, among many, the Israeli General Security Service, the New York City Police Department Emergency Services Unit and the Marine detail assigned to HMX-1, the President’s official helicopter. Former Special Agent Katz was also the DEA liaison to the Israeli Secret Service, developing a cooperative relationship with their field agents and training staff. In August of 2000, he provided advanced tactical firearms training to Israeli General Security Agency (Shin Bet) instructors in Israel and provided firearms and tactical training to the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) Agents and U.S. Marines guarding the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. Mr. Katz was also invited to observe and participate in training given to Shin Bet security officers, El Al Airline security agents, and operators from elite Israeli counter-terror units. ... Katz is a frequent guest on nationally broadcast television and radio programs including Fox News, CNN, CNBC and others."
256. October 19, 2009, The Narco News / The Narcosphere, 'DEA Agents Accused in Court Pleadings of Dealing Heroin As Part of 1990s Pakistan Connection': "A top gun with the DEA’s Special Operations Division, along with two fellow law enforcers, are not what they seem, if Gaetano (Guy) DiGirolamo Sr., a convicted heroin dealer, is to be believed. The trio are, in fact, drug dealers themselves, argues Yale law professor Steven B. Duke in court pleadings filed on behalf of his client, DiGirolamo. ... One of those agents, Derek Maltz, now serves as the special agent in charge of the high-powered and secretive Special Operations Division, a multi-agency task force under DEA’s umbrella that targets transnational criminal organizations. The other two agents who helped send DiGirolamo up the river, David Katz and Michael Yanniello, have both since retired from DEA. Yanniello now serves as chief of university police for SUNY College at Old Westbury in New York. Katz is the CEO and founder of a security consulting firm called Global Security Group, based in New York City. ... Katz, in a telephone interview with Narco News, says DiGirolamo’s claims are "beyond absurd," describing them as "despicable." DiGirolamo tried to "solicit" a contract "to have me murdered," Katz alleged during a phone interview with Narco News, adding that there is a transcript of the surveillance tape on which that threat is made. Well, that is where the facts in the DiGirolamo case begin to get a bit slippery, if the court pleadings filed by Duke are put in the picture. The alleged murder plot surfaced on the word of a jailhouse informant sicced on DiGirolamo while he was in prison, according to court pleadings. In a 1998 letter written to the judge in the case, attorney Duke points out that the U.S. prosecutor claimed to have the "murder plot on tape," adding that the allegation "was either a lie or a recklessly irresponsible misrepresentation." "We have the tape (obtained under FOIA)," Duke wrote "There is nothing remotely related to violence or retribution on it." [so Katz is lying] DiGirolamo’s run-in with the system — the DEA specifically — led to his indictment in 1991 and conviction in 1994 on heroin-related conspiracy charges in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. DiGirolamo appealed his conviction, only to lose again in 1995. At that point, Duke, a professor of law at Yale Law School in New Haven, Conn., stepped in, and took on DiGirolamo’s case pro bono. In 1997, Duke filed a post-conviction petition [a habeas corpus appeal] with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York seeking to vacate DiGirolamo’s conviction. "In December 1999, (the federal judge) dismissed the entire case in one of the most bizarre opinions I have ever seen," Duke says. "... Essentially, (the judge) said it didn’t matter if the DEA agents were corrupt smugglers." DiGirolamo appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Last year, the appeals court ruled against DiGirolamo, not on the merits, but because he "did not file a timely notice of appeal." As a result, the appeals court concluded, "we lack jurisdiction to consider the denial of his habeas petition." But it is the merits of DiGirolamo’s case that continue to keep bubbling to the surface, even after all these years. In particular, new documents provided to Narco News by DiGirolamo seem to raise some puzzling questions with respect to the nature of the sting used by the three DEA agents (Maltz, Katz and Yanniello) to snare their targets. One of those documents is a DEA Telex communication that details a proposed itinerary for DEA agent Maltz to travel from New York to Pakistan to take delivery of 20 kilos (some 44 pounds) of heroin from DEA’s office in Karachi. ... The heroin run was allegedly part of a controlled delivery, which is a standard law enforcement procedure that involves allowing a load of drugs, under close supervision, to be delivered to suspects in order to set them up for arrest. ... In the case of Maltz’ heroin run to Pakistan, he was not acting in an undercover capacity, according to Duke’s court pleadings, but rather as a courier seemingly absent close surveillance of his activities. In addition, Duke alleges in the court filings that Maltz never produced proof that his heroin "controlled delivery" mission involving Pakistan had the proper approvals, including the required country approvals. ... DiGirolamo was accused of acting in conspiracy with Salerno to take possession of the heroin, all based on the word of an informant, court records show. And the one undercover tape-recording in which DiGirolamo is supposedly caught discussing the conspiracy is mysteriously inaudible, Duke claims in court pleadings. ... However, yet another set of documents provided to Narco News by DiGirolamo appears to raise a whole new series of questions with respect to the veracity of the case that the DEA agents brought against him. ... DiGirolamo, now 77, concedes he has done wrong in the past and has paid the price. He spent much of the 1980s (1984-1990) in federal prison after being convicted of distributing some 164 grams of cocaine over a two-year period. He was out of prison about a year when he was indicted on the heroin-related charges. DiGirolamo says he "deserved to go away" on the cocaine charges, but insists he is innocent of the heroin-related charges and is now sitting in prison "for the crimes of others." ... Former DEA agent Katz also has an interesting resume, serving prior to his retirement from the agency as its liaison to the Israeli Secret Service. Katz even provided training in 2000 to instructors with the Israeli General Security Agency (Shin Bet, now called the Israel Security Agency) — considered to be part of the Israeli intelligence apparatus. According to information on his company’s Web site, Global Security Group currently employs former "U.S. and Israeli agents" and has "trained the EXP staffs of some of the world's most high-profile executives and high-net worth individuals." Katz even wrote a book with a former Israeli secret service officer, called the "Executive's Guide to Personal Security," and has made appearances on numerous TV news shows, including Fox, CNN and CNBC. Katz' Global Security Group also recently opened an office in Thailand that is headed by a "former senior supervisory special agent" with DEA "who spend 20 years working in Thailand with senior officials within the Thai law enforcement community," according to the company’s Web site. However, Katz dismisses any implication that his work on DiGirolamo’s case in the early 1990s had anything to do with the intelligence world."
257. July 5, 2012, Dawn.com (Pakistan), ''Over 200 tonnes of heroin is smuggled via Pakistan a year'': "Anti-drug smuggling agencies here seize only a small fraction of the heroin smuggled from Afghanistan through Pakistan and trafficked in the global market, it emerged on Thursday. Between 210 and 240 tonnes of heroin was smuggled from Afghanistan and reached the global market after passing through Pakistan last year, said a customs official, Habib Ahmed, while speaking to Dawn on the sidelines of an international conference, titled "Control drugs — control crimes", organised by Pakistan Customs. Even the global figures of heroin seizures were not very encouraging, he said, adding that out of every 500 tonnes produced, 58 tonnes (11 per cent) were seized in 2009. He said that while consolidated figures for seizures of heroin in Pakistan were not readily available with him, the total figure was well below one tonne. Regarding heroin production, he said that 6,000 tonnes of opium, which was over 90 per cent of the global produce last year, was grown in Afghanistan, while 610 tonnes of opium was produced in Myanmar, 25 tonnes in Laos, 10 tonnes in Mexico and nine tonnes in Colombia. Since conversion ratio of opium to heroin was around 10 to 1, it was roughly estimated that Afghanistan produced 600 tonnes of heroin last year, he added. He said that over 85 per cent of the heroin produced in Afghanistan was grown in the provinces — Hilmand (66 per cent), Kandahar (nine per cent), Farah (10 per cent) — neighbouring Pakistan. He said that heroin produced in Afghanistan took four routes to reach global markets — some 25 per cent of the product (nearly 150 tonnes) was smuggled through a northern route to reach Russia after passing through Central Asian republics to cater to 1.8 million addicts. Between 35 and 40 per cent of the heroin (between 210 and 240 tonnes) was smuggled through Pakistan to reach the global markets, ranging from the Americas to Australia, Africa to Europe and China. While two other routes used by the smugglers passed through the Balkans and the Caucasus. He said the heroin was mostly seized from passengers usually at airports or occasionally at the sea port from the cargo, which usually was in kilograms, showing that the bulk of the heroin — over 200 tonnes that is estimated to be worth between $25 and $30 billion — annually passed through Pakistan "safely". He said that Pakistan was primarily a transit country for opiates / heroin produced in Afghanistan while it also had an estimated 500,000 heroin addicts out of whom around 60,000 injected drugs. There are, according to WHO estimates, between 46,000 and 210,000 adult HIV positive cases and 689 out of 2,903 reported HIV positive cases are Injecting Drug Users (IDUs). Giving a comparison of heroin prices, the customs official said that a kilo of heroin cost $2,000 in Afghanistan, $4,000 in Pakistan, $376,000 in Australia, $325,000 in Canada, $255,000 in Japan; $131,000 in the US, $100,000 in Europe, $96,000 in Russia and $52,000 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He said that if an Afghan farmer produced opium he would earn roughly six times more than what he would earn if he had sown a wheat crop. The ratio changed every year, he said, adding that in 2004 it was 12 times while in 2008 and 2009 it dropped to just three times. He said that out of a total of $80 billion heroin trade, the farmers got only $1 billion while the rest went to different pockets in the contraband supply chain. He said that over $80 billion was spent on the treatment of around 21 million addicts across the world."
258. September 23, 2007, Chief of Department NYFD Daniel Nigro: "Regarding WTC 7: The long-awaited US Government NIST ... report on the collapse of WTC 7 is due to be published at the end of this year (although it has been delayed already a few times [adding fuel to the conspiracy theorists fires!]). That report should explain the cause and mechanics of the collapse in great detail. ... I feared a collapse of Building 7 (as did many on my staff). The collapse of WTC 1 damaged portions of the lower floors of 7. Building 7 was built on a small number of large columns providing an open Atrium on the lower levels. Fires on many floors of WTC 7 burned without sufficient water supply to attack them. For these reasons I made the decision (without consulting the owner, the mayor or anyone else—as ranking fire officer, that decision was my responsibility) to clear a collapse zone surrounding the building and to stop all activity within that zone. Approximately three hours after … WTC 7 collapsed. Conspiracy theories abound and I believe firmly that all of them are without merit."
259. April 22, 2010, Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, FoxNews.com, 'Shame On Jesse Ventura!': "Although I arrived at Ground Zero shortly after the Twin Towers fell, I was in the danger zone created by Building 7 from the moment it collapsed in the afternoon, an event that is one of the key cornerstones of the 9/11 conspiracy theory. Governor Ventura and many 9/11 "Truthers" allege that government explosives caused the afternoon collapse of Building 7. This is false. I know this because I remember watching all 47 stories of Building 7 suddenly and silently crumble before my eyes. [This is false, as at least one loud pre-collapse explosion was heard, with seemingly more "booms" while the tower goes down.] Shortly before the building collapsed, several NYPD officers and Con-Edison workers told me that Larry Silverstein, the property developer of One World Financial Center was on the phone with his insurance carrier to see if they would authorize the controlled demolition of the building – since its foundation was already unstable and expected to fall. A controlled demolition would have minimized the damage caused by the building's imminent collapse and potentially save lives. Many law enforcement personnel, firefighters and other journalists were aware of this possible option. There was no secret. There was no conspiracy. While I was talking with a fellow reporter and several NYPD officers, Building 7 suddenly collapsed, and before it hit the ground, not a single sound emanated from the tower area. There were no explosives; I would have heard them. In fact, I remember that in those few seconds, as the building sank to the ground that I was stunned by how quiet it was."
260. Larry Silverstein, leaseholder building 7, in the September 2002 PBS documentary America Rebuilds (Youtube): "I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, told me they weren't sure if they were able to contain the fire. I said, "You know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to pull it." And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse." Years later, Silverstein indicated the term meant "pull out" (of firefighters) instead of "pull down" (of the building). It's hard to decide what makes less sense: Silverstein's explanation or him having made the initial comment at all.
261. 2008, BBC, 'The Third Tower', Daniel Nigro interview, 22:50: "The biggest decision was to make an evacuation zone around Building number 7, to pull everyone away, to stop the rescue efforts that were going on, which was very difficult to do because there were still people trapped still and to step back, to step back and wait. [Narrator: But was Larry Silverstein really giving the orders?] We don't need to ask permission from the owner, no. Once we're in charge of the building, we're in charge of the building, and that decision would be the fire chief's and his decision alone. ... That's why I would know there is no conspiracy, because for me to a part of that would be obscene and it disgusts me to even think of it."
262. *) September 4, 2002, New York Times, 'New Task Force Will Evaluate Fire Dept.'s Technical Readiness'.
     *) September 3, 2002, NYC.gov, New York City Fire Department section, 'Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta announce former CIA director R. James Woolsey as chief advisor to FDNY on terrorism preparedness': "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta today announced that former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency R. James Woolsey will serve as Chief Advisor to the newly created FDNY Terrorism Preparedness Taskforce. The Taskforce will examine and evaluate the FDNY's terrorism preparedness capabilities and will comprise a panel of leading nationally and internationally renowned experts on terrorism, including: Gregory H. Canavan, a nuclear physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory; Margaret Hamburg, a former New York City Health Commissioner; Dr. Joshua Lederberg, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology; Daniel Nigro, Chief of Department for the FDNY; and Shabtai Shavit, a former Director of Israel's intelligence agency Mossad. Following the announcement, Mr. Woolsey and Commissioner Scoppetta joined FDNY chief officers and personnel in a visit to the quarters of Hazardous Materials Unit 1 and Squad Company 288 in Queens, for a presentation on the units' responsibilities, capabilities, and needs. ... R. James Woolsey is Vice President at Booz Allen & Hamilton in the Global Strategic Security division of the firm, which is providing his service on a pro bono basis. Mr. Woolsey previously was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Clinton, arms control negotiator under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and Under Secretary of the Navy for President Jimmy Carter. He has also served as General Counsel to the Senate Arms Services Committee, and worked on the National Commission on Terrorism and the National Academies' Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism. Gregory H. Canavan is a nuclear physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Mr. Canavan has participated in the Defense Science Board Study of "Transnational Terrorism" and has served on various committees, including the Army Science Board, the Air Force Space Command Independent Strategic Assessment Group, the NASA Earth Systems Science and Applications Advisory Committee, and the White House Science Council Military Committee. He is also a former Director of the Office of Inertial Fusion at the U.S. Department Of Energy and a former Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. Margaret Hamberg, M.D., is Vice President for Biological Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which works to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction and reduce the risks associated with these weapons. Dr. Hamberg, whose areas of expertise include public health and bio-terrorism, is a former Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a former New York City Health Commissioner, and a former Assistant Director of the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Health Dr. Joshua Lederberg is President-emeritus and Sackler Foundation Scholar at the Rockefeller University in New York. Dr. Ledenberg received the Nobel Prize in Physiology at the age of 33 for his work and research on microbial genetics and evolution. He has also received the National Medal of Science with a special citation for providing scientific insight to public interest, government, and international organizations, and has been actively involved in assessing the threats of biological warfare and the ways to mitigate these threats. Daniel A. Nigro became the FDNY's 29th Chief of Department in September 2001, following the World Trade Center attack that claimed the life of 343 members of the Fire Department and was responsible for leading the 14,500 Fire and EMS personnel in the world's largest Fire Department. During his career, Chief Nigro has earned some of the Department's most prestigious awards, including the Fire Commissioner's Award for Outstanding Service and the Leon Lowenstein Award. He was the first Bureau Chief to oversee the merger of the FDNY with EMS, and has also served as Chief of Personnel, Chief of Health Services, Chief of Operations, and Citywide Tour Commander, overseeing all major emergencies throughout the City. Chief Nigro will retire from the FDNY on September 9th, having served 33 years in the Department. Shabtai Shavit is the Chairman of the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herziya, Israel. From 1989 to 1996, Mr. Shavit served as Director of the Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence Agency responsible for intelligence collection, covert action, and counter-terrorism. He served in a variety of posts within the Mossad for over 30 years and also served in the Israeli Defense Force's elite Sayeret Matkal unit. Mr. Shavit has obtained degrees from the Hebrew University and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University."
263. Youtube, 'Interview with Richard J. Sheirer, executive vice president at Giuliani Partners': "I really thought we would lose the top of the building and it wasn't until much later there was a discussion that the buildings might collapse. And that discussion I wasn't present for, but came from Ray Downey, who lost his life, but was one of the world's preeminent experts on collapse. He'd been sent to Oklahoma City, the Murray Office Building bombing. He'd been to other things. ... Fortunately, this city had leadership that understood to let them know immediately someone was in charge, that this wasn't a free fall. ... The mayor, I have to give him all the credit in the world. Almost immediately we grabbed a reporter and let them know what was going on. And we did that every day with press briefings, keeping everybody informed so rumors wouldn't start and really create a panic. ... I had worked with the mayor since 1994... [He is] a caring thoughtful individual. ... He comforted people, got them what they needed, and is decisive decision maker... He's a terrific person to work for, to work with, and I'm proud to say he is a very good friend. ... He was going through the same thing you were, because many of the people that were lost that day were very good friends of his also. You know, I mentioned Billy Feehan and Pete Ganci and Father Judge. And individual police officers and firefighters. He had thrown a dinner for ... Ray Downey to recognize his service to the city. ... He's always thoughtful of people and he understands that people need support and help and he doesn't abandon them. And he is really a very special individual. ... I'm very worried about complacency... [What would you say to any conspiracy theorists regarding Ground Zero:] Grow up! I can't say it any other way. I've seen them in action. I've seen how they influence people. It's outrageous what they say. They take facts to distort them to mean what they want it to mean. ... The only conspiracy that there is is that there are people out there that would kill these conspiracy theorists given the opportunity. ... [The terrorists] deserve nothing else than retribution. ... In this particular case he's one of the most evil men in the history of the world, bar none, and his death is appropriate. I thought that the president, our president, did a wonderful job. Gutsy move. Could have gone south, like it did many years ago with President Carter. ... Job well done [for everyone involved]. They gave him an Islamic burial. A Muslim burial. They did everything proper. .. He doesn't deserve martyrdom. ... Well, quite frankly, I think the next step is you don't stop. You keep the pedal to the floor and you get as many of these miscreants, the doctor from Egypt, the American in Yemen - you get them, you remove them. If it means killing them, so be it. ... The [9/11] families have responded to this over the years in a number of ways. Some with strength that I can't imagine when they have lost a child or mother or a father. ... They've done some wonderful things out of that - and now they are helping the military. And their attitudes, and their personalities, reflect a strength that is just unbelievable. And then you go to the other end of the spectrum. There are families who have used this to, unfortunately, not to better anybody but to help themselves. Not in a good way, but just to benefit from it. Then there are those families who can't and probably never will get over this and you feel bad for them. You hope that they would get some help, professional help... and reflect on the person they lost in a positive way instead of being so angry and bitter. ... It really doesn't matter what happens. They'll always be the same way [not clear if he's talking about the terrorists or critical 9/11 families]. And that's unfortunate. For them, not for anybody else."
264. Ruppert made the claim in one of his speeches that people said his ideas had a lot of similarities with those of James Woolsey. The introduction of his 2004 book Crossing the Rubicon was written by obscure, disinformative 9/11Truth.org director Catharine Austin Fitts, who first wrote for Ruppert's From the Wilderness in 1999. At this time in 1999 she had just joined the board of the the Arlington Institute, where James Woolsey could also be found. The think tank was set up by Woolsey's close friend John Petersen. It is tightly linked to UFO/MJ-12 conspiracies and Coast to Coast. See ISGP's Cult of National Security Trolls article for details. Fitts has largely invented the theory that trillions of dollars have been siphoned off from the Pentagon budget.
265. 2008, Wondercon, San Diego, Q&A with Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz. Available on Youtube.
266. Ibid.
267. Ibid.
268. May 4, 2007, Bishop-accountability.org, 'Rudy Giuliani's Father Confessor: A Molester? Priest, Long-Time Friend of Rudy, Covered up Dozens of Abuse Cases on Long Island, Accused in Attacks on Students': "By now, many people have heard or read that Giuliani has been married three times and divorced twice, and some of us even know that his first wife was also his second cousin. Rudy's second divorce from his second wife Donna Hanover was more a matter for Barnum and Bailey than for the Family Court. As part of the media circus, which lasted though both of his terms in office, Giuliani announced his intention to end their marriage at a press conference in 2002, before he had even informed Ms. Hanover that they were getting divorced. Toward the end of Rudy's term, when the actual divorce was imminent, Ms. Hanover told TV reporters, with the camera running, that "for several years it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member." In New York, that staff member is usually identified as Giuliani's communications secretary Cristyne Lategano, with whom Giuliani was continually seen in public during the heyday of his administration. Giuliani eventually dumped Lategano, bestowing upon her a $250,000 a year job as head of the NYC Convention and Visitor's Bureau as a consolation prize, and began keeping company with pharmaceutical company executive Judi Nathan, herself a divorcee. Donna Hanover, who was still married to Rudy during this whole period, learned of her estranged hubby's new love upon seeing the two marching side by side down 5th Avenue during the St. Patrick's Day Parade in 2000. Finally, in 2002, just after leaving office, Giuliani was granted a divorce from Donna Hanover on the grounds of "cruelty," which when invoked by the husband usually refers to the withholding of sexual services. Hanover had filed a counterclaim requesting a divorce on a more concrete charge of "serial adultery." Believe it or not, however, the story becomes even more lurid."
269. *) August 10, 2007, CBS News, 'Giuliani Misspoke about Ground Zero': "Republican presidential candidate hopeful Rudy Giuliani said Friday that he misspoke when he said he spent as much time, if not more, at ground zero exposed to the same health risks as workers combing the site after the Sept. 11 attacks. ... "I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them," he told reporters at a Los Angeles Dodgers-Cincinnati Reds baseball game. Fire and police officials responded angrily, saying Giuliani did not do the same work as those involved in the rescue, recovery and cleanup from the 2001 terrorist attacks, which left many workers sick and injured. ... Giuliani's explanation further angered his ground zero critics, prompting several to issue a statement demanding an apology. "He's such a liar, because the only time he was down there was for photo ops with celebrities, with politicians, with diplomats," said deputy fire chief Jimmy Riches, who spent months digging for his firefighter son. "On 9/11 all he did was run. He got that soot on him, and I don't think he's taken a shower since. ... Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, a union that fiercely opposes Giuliani, said he doubted Giuliani misspoke. "I think he was simply showing what his true character is -- a self-absorbed, self-deluded promoter who got caught and is now just simply trying to backtrack," Schaitberger said."
     *) As far as logs revealed, starting 8 days after 9/11, in three months time Giuliani spent roughly 24 hours at Ground zero.
270. May 25, 2011, Huffington Post, 'Giuliani Faces Investigation Of 9/11 Radios': "The investigation, which will examine how the FDNY ended up using faulty equipment during the terrorist attacks and why Giuliani gave a no-bid contract to Motorola for that equipment, has been endorsed by New York City Councilman Eric Gioia, chair of the city's oversight and investigations committee. ... In The Real Rudy: Radios, [Robert] Greenwald documents how radios used by the FDNY of 9/11 were the same ones that malfunctioned during the 1993 attack on the Twin Towers. When - eight years later - Giuliani finally purchased new communications equipment for $14 million from Motorola, it was never field-tested. A week later the equipment was recalled after a firefighter's mayday went un-heard. Giuliani reissued the old batch of radios. And on 9/11 when a police helicopter warned that the North Tower could collapse, more than 120 firefighters remained inside."
     *) Note: The helicopter warning had nothing to do with the deaths of 120 firefighters. They were already evacuating for at least 10 minutes at that point (when the South Tower collapsed). The problem is that warnings to evacuate at the very least the North Tower from about 9:30 a.m. didn't reach from the lobby to the mid and upper parts of the building. Same cause (antiquated radios), but it wasn't the helicopter. The problem there was simply a lack of proper communication, as even ordinary policemen knew about the helicopter warning but no one informed the firefighter chiefs.
     *) October 23, 2001, World Trade Center Task Force interview with fire chief Peter Hayden: "We concentrated on trying to get some type of hand line hardware communications. We attempted the repeater system. The repeater system was not in service. The repeater system wasn't working. So we were at a distinct disadvantage because we had none of the building systems to work with. Throughout, of course, there were communication problems. All we had to rely on was handy talky communications. Once you go up several floors in the towers there, you have poor handy talky communications, and that's all we had. ... We were told another plane hit the south tower. Shortly thereafter we met in a little conference, myself, Chief Callan and Chief Pfeifer. Shortly after that discussion, we started to evacuate the north tower. We started telling everybody come on down. That was repeated a number of times. However, we didn't get a lot of acknowledgment off of the handy talky communications. The latest report -- the last report we had from anybody at all was that there were people that were heading up around the 48th floor. That was several minutes prior to this collapse. So we had people as high as the 50th floor while we had communications. I think that's about as far up as anybody got. We were calling people down on a number of occasions, but we weren't getting -- except for the lower floors, companies coming down, they weren't coming down."
271. *) May 20, 2004, CNN, 'Giuliani describes 9/11 rescue efforts': "Giuliani's testimony was interrupted once or twice and two people were removed from the audience. During the first outburst, a number of audience members who said they were relatives of 9/11 victims urged commissioners to ask Giuliani about radio communication problems within New York City's fire department."
     *) You video title: 'Mayor Giuliani's 9_11 Commission testimony'. The protest is quite intense.
272. May 4, 2007, Bishop-accountability.org, 'Rudy Giuliani's Father Confessor: A Molester? Priest, Long-Time Friend of Rudy, Covered up Dozens of Abuse Cases on Long Island, Accused in Attacks on Students'.
273. *) October 23, 2007, ABC News, 'Giuliani Defends, Employs Priest Accused of Molesting Teens': "Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani hired a Catholic priest to work in his consulting firm months after the priest was accused of sexually molesting two former students and an altar boy and told by the church to stop performing his priestly duties. The priest, Monsignor Alan Placa, a longtime friend of Giuliani and the priest who officiated at his second wedding to Donna Hanover, continues to work at Giuliani Partners in New York, to the outrage of some of his accusers and victims' groups, which have begun to protest at Giuliani campaign events. "This man did unjust things, and he's being protected and employed and taken care of. It's not a good thing," said one of the accusers, Richard Tollner, who says Placa molested him repeatedly when he was a student at a Long Island, N.Y. Catholic boys high school in 1975. At a campaign appearance in Milwaukee last week, Giuliani continued to defend Placa, who he described to reporters as a close friend for 39 years. "I know the man; I know who he is, so I support him," Giuliani said. "We give some of the worst people in our society the presumption of innocence and benefit of the doubt," he said. "And, of course, I'm going to give that to one of my closest friends." The accusations against Placa were made in testimony before a Suffolk County grand jury in 2002. Tollner, now a mortgage broker in Albany, N.Y., says he was one of three people to testify about Placa. "This man harmed children. He still could do it. He deserves to be shown for what he was, or is," says Tollner."
     *) June 22, 2007, Salon.com, 'Giuliani's loyalty to an accused priest': "Placa has worked for Giuliani Partners since 2002. As of June 2007, he remains on the payroll. "He is currently employed here," Giuliani spokeswoman Sunny Mindel confirmed to Salon, adding that Giuliani "believes Alan has been unjustly accused." Mindel declined to discuss what role Placa plays with the consulting firm, or how much he is paid."
274. *) December 5, 2009, New York Daily News, 'Msgr. Alan Placa, longtime friend of Rudy Giuliani, not guilty of molesting teenager in 1975': "Placa was best man at Giuliani's first wedding and the priest at his second, and he officiated at the ex-mayor's mother's funeral."
     *) June 22, 2007, Salon.com, 'Giuliani's loyalty to an accused priest': "Placa himself did not return several calls from Salon. Placa, now 62, has been friends with Giuliani since childhood. ... When Time magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year for 2001, Placa appeared again in that story, saying he had known Giuliani since he was 13 ... The boys attended Bishop Loughlin High School in Brooklyn together, where Giuliani, Placa and Peter Powers, later to become chief aide to Giuliani during his first term as mayor of New York City, were in an opera club together. Placa and Giuliani would sometimes double-date. "After we’d drop off the girls," Placa told the New York Times in 1997, "Rudy and I would spend hours in the car or walking down the sidewalks, debating ideas: religion, the problems of the world, what we wanted to be." Giuliani, Powers and Placa later attended Manhattan College together and were fraternity brothers at Phi Rho Pi. After college, Placa attended seminary and became a Catholic priest. Ordained in May 1970, he was first assigned to St. Patrick’s parish in Glen Cove, N.Y., from 1970 to 1974. He then transferred to St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary high school in Uniondale, N.Y., where he taught till 1978. He served as director of research and development for Catholic Charities from 1978 to 1986. He then went to work for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which covers 134 parishes in the two suburban Long Island counties of Nassau and Suffolk and is the sixth largest diocese in the country. Placa ran healthcare services for the diocese, rising to the position of vice chancellor in 1988. Though their career paths had diverged, Placa remained close to Giuliani, and was actively involved in many of the most important events of his friend's life. He was the best man at Giuliani's first marriage in 1968 to his second cousin, Regina Peruggi, then helped Giuliani get an annulment in 1982 — over Regina's protests — so he could marry his second wife, Donna Hanover. Placa officiated at the wedding of Hanover and Giuliani in 1984. In September 2002, while suspended by the diocese over the sexual abuse allegations and no longer permitted to perform priestly duties, Placa received special permission to officiate at the funeral of the former mayor's mother, Helen. He also officiated at the funeral of Giuliani’s father and baptized both of Giuliani's children. During Giuliani's political rise from U.S. attorney to mayor, when reporters wanted quotes from old friends they would often turn to Placa. A 1985 New York Times story noted that Placa stayed over at Giuliani's apartment as often as once a week, where the two men would "talk poetry, theology and politics deep into the night." The monsignor also knew Giuliani well enough to describe his relationship with his father, telling the Times, "A major theme with [Giuliani's] father was his hatred for organized crime.""
275. December 7, 2009, ABC News, 'Sex Abuse Victims' Groups Outraged By Vatian Decision to Clear Accused Priest' (2156)
276. December 5, 2009, New York Daily News, 'Msgr. Alan Placa, longtime friend of Rudy Giuliani, not guilty of molesting teenager in 1975': "Throughout the probe, Giuliani stood by his life-long friend, even putting him on the payroll of his firm. Placa was best man at Giuliani's first wedding and the priest at his second, and he officiated at the ex-mayor's mother's funeral. A spokeswoman for Giuliani said he had no comment. "He's not going to weigh in," she said. Church officials said they would work to restore the "good name" of Placa, who has retired. Placa's accuser, Ronald Tollner, said he's "standing by all of my testimony. I'm not retracting anything. He molested kids.""
277. October 26, 2007, Washinton Post, 'Giuliani's Policy Professor'.
278. See William Simon's biography in ISGP's Pilgrims Society membership list.
279. See ISGP's American Security Council article for details on AmeriCares and the child abuse scandals it is linked to.
280. October 26, 2007, Washinton Post, 'Giuliani's Policy Professor'.
281. *) April 14, 2016, NBC 4, New York, 'Construction Exec Arrested in NYC Hotel Assault on FBI Informant in Kerik Case': "A construction executive [Frank DiTommaso] with ties to disgraced ex-NYPD commissioner Bernie Kerik was arrested Wednesday, months after he allegedly assaulted an FBI informant [Larry Ray] who exposed corruption involving Kerik inside a midtown hotel. ...
     "I was knocked out [by DiTommaso]. He kept hitting me in the temple area repeatedly," said Ray, who suffered head trauma in the assault.
     Ray believes the attack was premeditated, payback for his providing information to local and federal prosecutors about Keri'’s corruption and his links to DiTommaso."
     *) June 30, 2006, Washington Post, 'Former NYPD Chief Kerik Pleads Guilty': "By late 2004, President Bush wanted [Bernard Kerik] for homeland security chief, but he withdrew after acknowledging he had not paid all taxes for a family nanny-housekeeper and that the woman may have been in the country illegally. ...
     The papers cited testimony by mob turncoats that owners Frank and Peter DiTommaso [friends of Kerik who apparently exacted revenge on an FBI informant for Kerik] were associates of the Gambino organized crime family."
282. The Kerik Group, About Us: "Born in Newark, New Jersey, from unusually humble beginnings, at the age of 3, he was abondoned by his mother, who was found beaten to death when he was 9 years old. ... There [at Fort Bragg] he taught defensive tactics at the John F. Kennedy Unconvential Warfare Center, to U.S. Special Forces and special operations personnel. After his military service, he spent four years in various security assignments in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In 1981, he joined the Passaic County Sheriff's Department in New Jersey, where he served as the Commander of Special Weapons and Operations and as Warden of the Passasic County Jail. ... In 1986, he joined the New York City Police Department where his meteoric rise to the top was historic. ... Following the fall of Saddam Hussein, Mr. Kerik accepted a request by the White House to lead Iraq's provisional government's efforts to reconstitute the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which consisted of its national police service and intelligence, customs and immigration, and border police. He subsequently served as a national security advisor to His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan and President Bharrat Jagdeo of the Republic of Guyana. ... He survived the terror attacks on 9/11, and a bombing plot in Iraq. He has been the target of numerous death threats, seized tons of cocaine and millions in drug proceeds from the Cali Cartel, and brought cop killers, Colombian drug lords and Iraqi terrorists to justice."
     *) Military police 1974-1977. Taught hand to hand combat to special forces at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. Morrison Knudsen Saudi Arabia Consortium (MKSAC) security officer for the King Khalid Military City in Saudi Arabia 1978-1980. Chief of investigations for the security division of the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 1982-1984. East Coast sheriff duties in between. Member of the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force, Group T-43, Justice Department, 1991-1994, Intelligence Division, February-May 1994 (part of the protective detail of mayor Giuliani). Became a protege of Giuliani..
     *) May 18, 2004, Bernard Kerik interview by the 9/11 Commission: "I didn't need anybody to come and tell me al-Qaeda was here. If you look at interviews by bin Laden in '97 or '96, he said he was coming... And, for those of you who don't know, I lived in Saudi Arabia from 1978 to 1980.I lived in Saudi Arabia from 1982 to 1984. I heard a lot of the same rhetoric from bin Laden that I heard and witnessed in Saudi Arabia. ... I also had a very positive relationship, and a good relationship with John O'Nell, who I consider one of the greatest investigators in US history when it comes to al-Qaeda... 'Was there ever a time that John O'Neill said they would come with planes? Did I not hear it? Was there something I missed?' And it just - it was never said [by O'Neill]."
283. The Kerik Group, About Us, Awards & Honers list of Bernard Kerik, 4th from top: "Appointed Knight Commander, Military Constantinian Order of St. George."
284. 2002, Cathy Trost and Alicia C. Shepard, foreword by Tom Brokaw, 'Running Toward Danger - Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11', p. 203.
285. *) December 13, 2002, CNN, 'Kissinger resigns as head of 9/11 commission': "Facing questions about potential conflicts of interest, Henry Kissinger resigned Friday as chairman of the September 11 commission. ... "It has become clear, however, that although specific potential conflicts can be resolved in this manner, the controversy would quickly move to the consulting firm I have built and own," Kissinger's letter said. ... It's the second resignation from the commission in two days. Wednesday, former Sen. George Mitchell announced he was stepping down as vice chairman of the independent board. ... Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, will replace Mitchell."
     *) Youtube, 'Kissinger Vs. the 9/11 Families' (accessed: December 30, 2012, compilation of several media clips): "Several [9/11] family members approached Kissinger and requested a meeting at his office in New York. Prior to the meeting Kristen Breitweiser conducted a thorough investigation of Kissinger's potential conflicts of interest. [Patty Casazza:] Probably much to the chagrin of some of the people in the room, Lory asked some very pointed questions: Would you have any Saudi-American clients that you would like to tell us about? And he was very uncomfortable, kinda twisting and turning on the couch. And then she asked whether he had any clients by the name of bin Laden - and he just about fell off his couch."
286. *) 1995, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 'International Crisis Group, A proposal to strengthen and speed our capacity to respond, A proposal presented to the steering committee,' London, Carnegie Endowment (retranslated from Dutch): "Appendix 3 [steering committee ICG]: Morton Abramowitz ... Prince El-Hassan bin Talal ... Vernon Jordan ... Robert S. McNamara ... Christian Schwarz-Schilling ... George Soros ... Leo Tindemans ... Desmond M. Tutu ... Appendix 4: Members of the ICG board of directors 1995: George J. Mitchell, Chairman. ... Morton I. Abramowitz ... HRH El-Hassan bin Talal ... Michel Rochard ... Christian Schwarz-Schilling ... George Soros ... Leo Tindemans..."
     *) International Crisis Group, annual report 2002 (retranslated from Dutch): "Appendix 6: members of the ICG board of directors 2002: .... Morton Abramowitz ... Saud Nasir Al-Sabah ... Richard Allen ... Zbigniew Brzezinski ... Wesley Clark .... HRH El- Hassan bin Talal ... Carla Hills ... Mikhail Khodorkovsky ... George Soros." Khodorkovsky and Brzezinski joined (virtually) together in mid 2002, looking at various reports of the ICG, which usually lists the trustees.
     *) International Crisis Group website, About, Board (April 29, 2010): "Crisis Group's Board of Trustees Lord (Christopher) Patten [co-chair] ... Thomas R. Pickering [co-chair; Le Cercle] ... Executive Committee Morton Abramowitz ... George Soros ... HRH Turki al-Faisal ... Kofi Annan ... Richard Armitage ... Zbigniew Brzezinski ... Wesley Clark ... Carla Hills ... Wim Kok ... Chairmen Emeritus: Martti Ahtisaari ... George J. Mitchell."
287. September 22, 1991, Washington Post, 'Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups'.
288. Various officers lists of the National Endowment for Democracy:
     *) 1997, Constantine Menges, 'Partnerships for peace, democracy, and prosperity', p. 110: "The National Endowment for Democracy enjoys strong support across both party and ideological lines. ... Brzezinski (a NED board member), Frank C. Carlucci, and Brent Scowcroft have all voiced strong support for the work of the Endowment."
     *) www.ned.org/page_1/gen_info.html (accessed: November 12, 1996; and accessed April 18, 1997 (same names)): "John Brademas, Chairman. Paula Dobriansky, Vice Chairman. Edward Donley, Treasurer. Susan Kaufman Purcell, Secretary. Harry Barnes, Jr. Zbigniew Brzezinski. Lynn Cutler. Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr. Bob Graham. Antonia Hernandez. Fred C. Ikle. John T. Joyce. Emmanuel A. Kmpouris. Thomas H. Kean. Richard Lugar. Leon Lynch. Matthew F. McHugh. David M. McIntosh. Mark Palmer. Donald M. Payne. Stephen J. Solarz. Stephen Solaz. Julia Taft [wife of William Taft IV, who came to head Freedom House]. Paul Wolfowitz. Carl Gershman, President."
     *) February 23, 1998: Brzezinski gone from the NED board, but the rest is still there.
     *) www.ned.org/page_1/gen_info.html (accessed: April 28, 1999): "John Brademas, Chairman. Paula Dobriansky, Vice Chairman. ... Bob Graham ... Fred C. Ikle ... Thomas H. Kean ... Julia Taft [wife of William Taft IV, who came to head Freedom House]. Paul Wolfowitz. Carl Gershman, President."
     *) www.ned.org/about/board.html (accessed: April 15, 2000): "The Honorable John Brademas (Chairman). The Honorable Paula Dobriansky (Vice Chairman). ... The Honorable Bob Graham ... The Honorable Morton Abramowitz ... The Honorable Lee H. Hamilton ... Dr. Fred C. Ikle ... Thomas H. Kean ... Dr. Paul Wolfowitz. Carl Gershman, President."
     *) www.ned.org/about/who.html (accessed: March 6, 2001): "Board of directors: Morton Abramowitz ... John Brademas ... Paula Dobriansky ... [Sen.] Bob Graham ... Lee H. Hamilton ... Fred C. Ikle ... Paul Wolfowitz ... Program Staff: Barbara Haig, Director of Program."
     *) Big chances in the next few months.
     *)www.ned.org/about/who.html (accessed: June 17, 2001): "Board of directors: Morton Abramowitz ... The Honorable Frank Carlucci ... General Wesley K. Clark ... [Sen.] Bob Graham ... Lee H. Hamilton ... Richard C. Holbrooke ... The Honorable Jon Kyl ... Program Staff: Barbara Haig, Director of Program."
     *) Jan. 10, 2002: Only Morton Abromowitz gone. 2012 board of directors (just about the only person still there is Francis Fukuyama): The Honorable Richard A. Gephardt (Chairman).
289. As far as seen by author:
     *) Thomas Kean went to Bilderberg in 1989, where he was listed as "Governor of the State of New Jersey". Lee Hamilton went to Bilderberg in 1997, where he was listed as "Congressman (D, Indiana)".
     *) Lee Hamilton certainly appeared on Trilateral Commission membership lists of 1993, 1998 and 2003. Kean reportedly appeared on a 1992 Trilateral Commission list.
290. See note 282.
291. See note 282.
292. September 15, 2001, Salon.com, 'Spying eyes and ears': "On the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, in a room on the House side of the Capitol, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla. — the chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, respectively — met for breakfast. Also at the meeting were Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., and some other members of the House Intelligence Committee. They were meeting with the Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., Maleeha Lodhi, and the director of Pakistani intelligence, Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed. They were talking about the late-August trip Goss, Graham, and Kyl had made to Pakistan. There they had met with Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf to discuss various security issues — including the extradition of Osama bin Laden, officially wanted in the U.S. for allegedly plotting the two U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998. Musharraf had told the delegation that there was really nothing he could do about the matter, however close he and his government have been with the Taliban. "Musharraf insists the Taliban cannot be influenced and the matter is a bilateral problem which should be solved through talks between Kabul and Washington," Agence France Press reported on Aug. 28. They had also met with Abdul Salam Zaeef, the ambassador to Pakistan from the Taliban, Afghanistan's ruling militia. According to an account at the time from the Afghani embassy, as reported in the Afghan Islamic Press, "Zaeef assured the delegation that the Taliban government wanted to settle the issue" — of extraditing bin Laden — "through negotiations." "Zaeef assured (the) U.S. delegation that the Taliban would never allow bin Laden to use Afghanistan to launch attacks on the U.S. or any other country," the Afghan Islamic Press said. Whatever Graham, Goss, and Kyl had felt about their sojourn to Pakistan — whatever confidence they may have had in the words of Musharraf and Zaeef — that all changed, perhaps forever, when a Goss staffer entered the room and handed the former CIA agent a note. Goss opened it. Two planes had just crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack. He passed the note to Graham. They all turned on the TV. Soon they were all evacuated from the Capitol building. Graham, Goss and Kyl are now more assured than ever that they can't rely on the assistance of the Musharrafs and Zaeefs of the world. The U.S. needs to do more on its own, they feel. This is not a new position. Since the mid-1990s, Graham and Goss in particular have been advocating safeguards against events like Tuesday's. Fighting the entrenched bureaucracy of the intelligence community and the nonchalance of their colleagues and various administrations, the two have been arguing that with the end of the Cold War the U.S. had been lulled into a false sense of security. They wanted more money and more of an emphasis on "human intelligence" — spies, agents and informants. Now, the resistance they had previously encountered stands to change. In the horrific wake of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks, leaders of the House and Senate intelligence communities anticipate greater support for the measures they've been shouting about from the rooftops for years. When the Senate reconvenes on Thursday, it stands to address the Senate Intelligence Bill, which was reported out of committee on Sept. 6, as well as a specific counter-terrorism bill co-sponsored by Kyl and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who work closely as vice-chair and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Technology. Additionally, Graham and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the ranking Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, have agreed to hold hearings in the fall on "what went wrong" that led to Tuesday’s horror, according to a source on the committee."
293. See ISGP's article on the AFIO/OSS Society.
294. *) See See note 156.
     *) Youtube, 'Senator Bob Graham is Confronted by Philly 9/11 Truth' (accessed: January 8, 2013): "[Graham:] Porter and I had just been to Pakistan, two weeks earlier, and we had spent a lot of time with the man who is the head of Pakistani intelligence. His name is General Ahmed."
295. April 21, 2002, Sunday Times, 'The British Jackal': "It would appear that the ISI had its own reasons for holding Sheikh for a week before announcing to the world that he was in custody. One thing it would have wanted to do was to make sure that its protege did not give more away than absolutely necessary about his relationship with Pakistan's intelligence services. This "missing week" shed new light on unsubstantiated Indian reports last October that Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmed, director-general of the ISI, had been forced into retirement after FBI investigators uncovered credible links between him and Sheikh in the wake of September 11. According to these reports, the FBI team established that in early September, Ahmed had instructed Sheikh to transfer $ 100,000 to Mohammed Atta, leader of the hijackers who crashed into the World Trade Center."
296. September 7, 2001, New York Times, 'Pakistan: Leaving U.S. Sanctions in Place Would Be Grave'.
297. August 2002, Vanity Fair, 'The journalist and the terrorist'.
298. Ibid.
299. November 11, 2001, Ocala Star-Banner, 'Bin Laden Tells Journalist He Has Nukes, Chemicals: Pakistani reporter says he interviewed bin Laden in cold mud hut'.
300. See ISGP's Coast to Coast AM article for details.
301. Secinfo.com, Stratesec Inc, 10-K, For 12/31/02, filed on April 15, 2003, SEC File 1-13427: "The Company held its annual meeting on December 23, 2002 to elect five members of the Board of Directors. Wirt D. Walker, III, Barry W. McDaniel, Emmit J. McHenry, Charles W. Archer, and Lt. General James A. Abrahamson, USAF (Retired) were elected. ... Lt. General James A. Abrahamson, USAF (Retired), age 68, has served as a director of the Company since December 1997. General Abrahamson is the Chairman and CEO of International Air Safety, LLC. ... Prior to joining the Company, Mr. McDaniel was employed by BDM International from 1989 to 1996, most recently as Vice President of Material Distribution and Management Systems. ... Wirt D. Walker, III, [distant cousin of Bushes] age 55, has served as Chief Executive Officer of the Company since January 1999; he has served as a director of the Company since 1987, and as Chairman of the Board of Directors since 1992. Since 1982, Mr. Walker has served as a director and the Managing Director of KuwAm Corporation, a private investment firm."
302. SEC info on Stratesec in 1997: "Marvin Bush, director... James A. Abrahamson, director... Revenues increased by 108.6% from $5.8 million in 1996 to $12.1 million in 1997. The increase was due to work completed for new clients and an increase in work completed on existing projects. Revenues from the World Trade Center project, which commenced in October 1996, increased from $1.6 million in 1996 to $6.6 million in 1997." SEC info on Stratesec in 1998: "Revenues decreased by 45% from $12.1 million in 1997 to $6.6 million in 1998. The decrease was due to the closeout of the World Trade Center Project." After 1999 Marvin Bush's name doens't appear in SEC filings anymore. The WTC is also not mentioned anymore in SEC filings.
303. January 20, 2002, Margie Burns for American Reporter (the first (award-winning) online newspaper), 'Secrecy surrounds a Bush brother's role in 9/11 security': "- A company that provided security at New York City's World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., and to United Airlines between 1995 and 2001, was backed by a private Kuwaiti-American investment firm with ties to a brother of President Bush and the Bush family, according to records obtained by the American Reporter. ... Marvin Bush has not responded to repeated telephoned and emailed requests for comment on this story. The American Stock Exchange delisted Stratesec's stock in October 2002. Securacom also had a contract to provide security at Los Alamos National Laboratories, notorious for its security breaches and physical and intellectual property thefts. According to its present CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down."
304. February 26, 2003, BBC, 'Lessons of first WTC bombing'.
305. December 5, 2001, Mansoor Ijaz for the Los Angeles Times, 'Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize': "President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year. I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities. From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's president and intelligence chief. President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who wanted terrorism sanctions against Sudan lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of Bin Laden and detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas. Among those in the networks were the two hijackers who piloted commercial airliners into the World Trade Center. The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening. As an American Muslim and a political supporter of Clinton, I feel now, as I argued with Clinton and Berger then, that their counter-terrorism policies fueled the rise of Bin Laden from an ordinary man to a Hydra-like monster. Realizing the growing problem with Bin Laden, Bashir sent key intelligence officials to the U.S. in February 1996. The Sudanese offered to arrest Bin Laden and extradite him to Saudi Arabia or, barring that, to "baby-sit" him--monitoring all his activities and associates. But Saudi officials didn't want their home-grown terrorist back where he might plot to overthrow them. In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked Bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere. Bin Laden left for Afghanistan, taking with him Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the U.S. to be the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain electronic equipment for Al Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden's personal secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of carrying out the embassy attacks. Some of these men are now among the FBI's 22 most-wanted terrorists. The two men who allegedly piloted the planes into the twin towers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, prayed in the same Hamburg mosque as did Salim and Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian trader who managed Salim's bank accounts and whose assets are frozen. Important data on each had been compiled by the Sudanese. But U.S. authorities repeatedly turned the data away, first in February 1996; then again that August, when at my suggestion Sudan's religious ideologue, Hassan Turabi, wrote directly to Clinton; then again in April 1997, when I persuaded Bashir to invite the FBI to come to Sudan and view the data; and finally in February 1998, when Sudan's intelligence chief, Gutbi al-Mahdi, wrote directly to the FBI. Gutbi had shown me some of Sudan's data during a three-hour meeting in Khartoum in October 1996. When I returned to Washington, I told Berger and his specialist for East Africa, Susan Rice, about the data available. They said they'd get back to me. They never did. Neither did they respond when Bashir made the offer directly. I believe they never had any intention to engage Muslim countries--ally or not. Radical Islam, for the administration, was a convenient national security threat. And that was not the end of it. In July 2000--three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen--I brought the White House another plausible offer to deal with Bin Laden, by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from one of the United States' closest Arab allies--an ally whose name I am not free to divulge--approached me with the proposal after telling me he was fed up with the antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials. The offer, which would have brought Bin Laden to the Arab country as the first step of an extradition process that would eventually deliver him to the U.S., required only that Clinton make a state visit there to personally request Bin Laden's extradition. But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family--Clintonian diplomacy at its best. Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history. * Mansoor Ijaz, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is chairman of a New York-based investment company."
306. paladincapgroup.com/teams/sag/ (accessed: December 30, 2012): "[Strategic advisory group:] R. James Woolsey, Chairman ... Richard A. Clarke ... General Wesley K. Clark (ret.) ... "
307. September 12, 2001, ABC News, James Woolsey interviewed by Peter Jennings (the second interview of that day). Note (if one attaches value to NLP): Woolsey has a very strong tendency to look to the upper and midright while making many of his Iraq claims, indicating he's accessing the creative aspects of his mind instead of recollecting real memories and real information - i.e., he appears to be lying.
308. *) 2004, Richard Clarke, 'Against All Enemies', p. 48: "[Abramowitz was my] boss and mentor".
     *) March 23, 2004, New York Times, 'An Accuser’s Insider Status Puts the White House on the Defensive': "Morton I. Abramowitz, whom Mr. Clarke served as a deputy when he was assistant secretary of state for intelligence in the Reagan administration, and who later served as the first Bush administration's ambassador to Turkey, said he had always valued Mr. Clarke's advice. "I can only tell you I think Dick has enormous credibility," Mr. Abramowitz said. "He's got a first-class intellect. He's very dedicated. He tries to make things happen. He doesn't hesitate to take unpopular stances, and he doesn't hesitate to push the envelope." He added: "Dick is a serious player. He's been involved in this business for years. You can't overlook what Dick is saying.""
     *) February 1, 1999, New York Times, 'The Man Who Protects America From Terrorism': "Under President Reagan, Mr. Clarke was the second-ranking intelligence officer at the State Department. His boss was Morton Abramowitz. ''Dick is aggressive,'' Mr. Abramowitz said, ''a man with strong views, with a great ability to tell people what the issues are without spending 10 years doing it. He's a low-profile guy. He has mixed feelings about having a profile at all.'' Mr. Clarke's profile first surfaced in 1986. He was an intellectual author of a plan to use psychological warfare against the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi. Under his plan, flights of SR-71 spy planes set off ''sonic booms over his head, to tell him his air defenses couldn't stop us,'' and mysterious American rafts floated up on the shores of Tripoli, Mr. Clarke said. The operation backfired when the Reagan White House was caught planting a false report in The Wall Street Journal about Libya's support of terrorism."
309. September 11, 2001, NBC, 12:46, Paul Bremer interview.
310. September 12, 2001, ABC News, Lawrence Eagleburger interviewed by Peter Jennings (the second interview of that day).
311. January 7, 2002, Arnaud de Borchgrave for United Press International (UPI), 'Haig: Syria should be next target'.
312. September 11, 2001, FOX 11, live interview with Alexander Haig.
313. American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus (previously: Chechnya), about section, (accessed April 11, 2001) (more lists in the Pilgrims Society membership/biography list): "The American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, formerly known as The American Committee for Chechnya, was founded on February 9, 2000, by the Committee's co-chairs Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, General Alexander M. Haig Jr., and Ambassador Max M. Kampelman. ACPC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, privately funded committee representing a distinguished membership of Americans including academics, journalists, politicians, and foreign policy experts calling for a stronger response to the crisis in Chechnya. The committee is housed in the Washington, DC office of Freedom House. ACPC also cooperates with The Jamestown Foundation to distribute the newsletter Chechnya Weekly, authored by Stanford University Russia Scholar John Dunlop. The war in Chechnya is well into its second year and continues to be a massive humanitarian tragedy that has produced more than 400,000 refugees (40 percent of the population). Chechen civilians are subjected to indiscriminate shootings, bombings, mines, arbitrary arrests, summary executions, torture, rape, and beatings. Although the Kremlin continues to argue that the aim of this war is to root out Chechen terrorists, it is clear that the use of force is indiscriminate. Given a history of ethnic cleansing in the Caucasus during Stalin's deportations of Chechens in 1944 in addition to reports of atrocities and war crimes committed in the first war (1994-1996) and in the current conflict, the international community must not turn a blind eye to the humanitarian and political catastrophe in Chechnya. The American Committee for Peace in Chechnya is dedicated to promoting a peaceful resolution to the conflict by providing information on the war on our website, organizing events and activities to raise awareness and concern about the crisis, and providing recommendations to policymakers."
314. Evgeni Savostianov, former Moscow FSB/KGB chief, on the March 2000 NTV program about the Moscow apartment bombings of September 1999.
315. American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus website (previously: Chechnya) (accessed April 12, 2001): "Morton Abramowitz. Elliott Abrams. Kenneth Adelman. Bulent Ali-Reza. Richard V. Allen. Audrey L. Alstadt. Vadim Altskan. Antonio L. Betancourt. John Bolsteins. John Brademas. Zbigniew Brzezinski. Richard Burt. John Calabrese. Eric Chenoweth. Walter C. Clemens. Eliot Cohen. Nicholas Daniloff. Ruth Daniloff. Midge Decter. James S. Denton. Larry Diamond. Paula Dobriansky. Thomas R. Donahue. Robert Dujarric. John Dunlop. Charles Fairbanks. Sandra Feldman. Geraldine A. Ferraro. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. Erwin Friedlander. Frank Gaffney. Charles Gati. William W. Geimer. Richard Gere. Douglas Ginsburg. Paul Goble. Marshall I. Goldman. Orlando Gutierrez. Barbara Haig. Alexander M. Haig, Jr. Robert P. Hanrahan. Paul B. Henze. Eleanor Herman. Peter J. Hickman. Norman Hill. Irving Louis Horowitz. Glen E. Howard. Bruce P. Jackson. Robert Kagan. Max M. Kampelman. Thomas Kean. Mati Koiva. Guler Koknar. Harry Kopp. William Kristol. Janis Kukainis. Saulius V. Kuprys. Kenneth D. S. Lapatin. Michael A. Ledeen. Robert J. Lieber. Seymour M. Lipset. Robert McFarlane. Mihajlo Mijajlov. Bronislaw Misztal. Joshua Muravchik. Julia Nanay. Johanna Nichols. Jan Nowak. William Odom. P.J. O'Rourke. J. Dimitry Panitza. Richard Perle. Richard Pipes. Norman Podhoretz. Moishe Pripstein. Arch Puddington. Peter Reddaway. Peter R. Rosenblatt. David Saperstein. Gary Schmitt. William Schneider. Alexey Semyonov. Andrew M. Sessler. Philip Siegelman. Sophia Sluzar. Helmut Sonnenfeldt. Gregory H. Stanton. Leonard R. Sussman. William H. Taft, IV. Barry Tharaud. Sinan Utku. George Weigel. Caspar Weinberger. Curtin Winsor. R. James Woolsey. Tatiana Yankelevich."
316. September 16, 2001, CNN, 'Bin Laden says he wasn't behind attacks'.
317. September 28, 2001, Karachi Ummat, Osama bin Laden interview (FBI translation).
318. November 1, 2001, Osama bin Laden discussing details of the attack in a private discussion with close associates. A videotape of this was found by U.S. forces on November 9 and released on December 13, 2001.
319. BBC News (Youtube, no date, but would have been at May 8-10, 2011 or so): "If the aim was to persuade the doubters, it didn't work." The image was front page news in Pakistan today, but in Abbottabad, where he met his end, there was plenty of skepticism. "It's all a fake. Nothing happened," said Mohammed, who has been selling newspapers here for over fifty years. Shavir says it is a case of mistaken identity. He claims the man in the picture is his neighbor. ... We have now spoken to more than fifty people in the market and only one believes that the man in the video watching television was, in fact, Osama bin Laden. People say here the Americans haven't proven anything. They haven't shown bin Laden's dead body. many still don't believe that the AL Qaeda leader was living here, or that he was killed here."
320. July 10, 2004, Salon.com, 'I married a Bin Laden'.
321. March 3, 1980, Der Spiegel, 'Franz Josef sein Milljöh' (Franz Josef's milieu): "On 13 February 1979 the CSU parliamentary deputy Hans Graf Huyn wrote in a - "personal, confidential" - letter to the "very honorable, dear Mr. Strauss": "I would also like to inform you that I have just received a notification from Riyadh, from Prince Turki ben Faisal, head of Saudi intelligence and brother of the Foreign Minister, who pledged to come to the Cercle in Wildbad Kreuth. I believe that given the situation in the Middle East his participation will be of particular interest.""
322. 2005, Peter Dale Scott, 'The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America', p. 62: "Prince Turki himself acknowledged the private network for the first time in an uncharacteristically candid speech given to Georgetown University alumni in February 2002: ‘And now I will go back to the secret that I promised to tell you. In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything. It could not send spies, it could not write reports, and it could not pay money. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. The principal aim of this club was that we would share information with each other and help each other in countering Soviet influence worldwide, and especially in Africa. In the 1970’s, there were still some coun­tries in Africa that were coming out of colonialism, among them Mozambique, Angola, and I think Djibouti. The main concern of everybody was that the spread of Communism was tied up. Congress had literally paralyzed the work not only of the U.S. intelligence community but of its foreign service as well. And so the Kingdom, with these countries, helped in some way, I believe, to keep the world safe at the time when the United States was not able to do that. That, I think, is a secret that many of you don’t know. I am not say­ing it because I look to tell secrets, but because the time has gone and many of the actors are gone as well.’"
323. June 21, 2005, Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia - London / Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 'Ambassador [Turki al Faisal] talks to major foreign policy-security group [Le Cercle]'.
324. 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Welcome to Terror Land: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida' (digital): "At the same time he was receiving the most painful kind of humiliating coverage in the local press ("Huffman Rent Is Late, Again"), Rudi Dekkers and Wally Hilliard blithely launched an airline. They called it Florida Air, or FLAIR. We were not surprised to discover no one in the local aviation community thought the move made any business sense. All agreed that FLAIR was a doomed venture from day one. Once again, the question was why were they doing it. If both had not had business with Mohamed Atta, it might not have mattered. But they had. They chose, as partner, a man named Rick Boehlke, who owned an air carrier called Harbor Air, in Gig Harbor, Washington. Boehlke was also, just then, a participant in Portland, OR., in the $340 million looting of pension funds of mostly Mob-led unions, like the Laborers Union. We wondered: who had the temerity to steal pension money from Mob-led unions? Then we learned newspapers were calling the looting "Mob-led", too. ... big part of Rudi Dekkers European sales pitch, and was played up in the company's advertising. "I kept ads from flying magazines from 2000," said Bill Bersch, a former manager at Huffman. "'Come to Huffman to train, and then fly with our Florida Air airline."' "The flight school was advertised as a feed into Florida Air as future employer of Huffman's flight school students. Florida Air put the ads in everywhere, but when it came down to it they couldn't offer flying jobs, because there wasn't an airline for very long." While this would seem to be a pretty serious crime, there had been no FAA investigation, which isn't surprising. During the course of his 'aviation career' in Florida, Rudi Dekkers received so many free "passes" from the FAA that they should enshrine it with an exhibit at the Air & Space Museum. ... Rick Boehlke's friend Jeff Grayson had made a $6 million investment with Title Loans of America, a Georgia company that lends to individuals with low credit ratings at extremely high interest rates. The loans are secured by the titles to the borrowers' cars. Some call it legalized loan-sharking, which is pretty accurate, because Georgia Title is owned by Alvin Malnik, the man labeled in print as "Meyer Lansky's heir" so often he should put it on his business cards. The New Jersey Casino Control Commission found Malnik to be a "person of unsuitable character" to have any role in the industry. Malnik was so intimately associated with organized crime figures that they denied licenses to two businessmen who had done deals with him. But it wasn't Malnik's gangster ties that made our jaw drop ... It was his connection with the Saudi Royal Family. Alvin Malnik, who admits only to being a Jewish lawyer from Miami, has extremely close ties -- family ties actually -- to a leading prince of the Saudi royal family, King Fahd's brother, Prince Turki Al-Faisal. Malnik's son, Mark, converted to Islam, changed his name to Shareef, and married the daughter of Sheik Al-Fazzi, whose other daughter is married to Prince Turki. "The Saudi Prince not only blessed the marriage, but regularly works with the US organized crime associates," read one account. "The Saudi King would frequently send his private 747 to Florida to pick up Malnik and his associates, so they could conduct business on the plane away from prying eyes." In Miami, Malnik owns the Forge, a restaurant law enforcement sources call the biggest mob hangout south of New Jersey, attracting what one account called "men with big cigars and women with tiny resumes." We wondered if Mohamed Atta ever smoked cigars there. As we have already seen, he and Marwan had been hanging out in the Miami area with women known to "consort regularly with high rollers.""
325. alvinmalnikmemories.com/lansky.html (accessed: January 3, 2013): "Contrary to popular belief, I (Al Malnik) never worked for Meyer Lansky. I knew him, and he was a good friend who I spent a lot of time with, but I never represented him in legal matters. To me, Meyer was quite the grandfather type. If you knew him and talked to him, you could never imagine that any of the stories you heard about him had any veracity. You could never imagine that he was responsible for doing the things people said he did. He was not a person to give in to rage."
326. See note 188 .
327. *) Wolf Blitzer of CNN interviews Faisal in January 2001 (aired February 1, 2001): "The last time I met him [Osama Bin Laden] was perhaps early 1990. It was after the soviets withdrew and he was back in the Kingdom, and he came to say hello, and he had other projects in mind which I turned down at the time, because they were so extraordinary and unacceptable." (what kind of projects Blitzer didn't ask)
     *) November 5, 2001, The New Yorker, 'The House of Bin Laden': "Both Al-Fagih [Saad Al-Fagih, a London-based surgeon and Saudi dissident, who heads a group called Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia] and Abdel Bari Atwan [editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi, an Arabic daily newspaper in Britain, interviewed Osama bin Laden in November, 1996, and is well acquainted with people close to bin Laden] claim that bin Laden's mother has twice met with her son since he moved to Afghanistan, in 1996. Atwan said that a trip in the spring of 1998 was arranged by Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the head of Saudi intelligence. Turki was in charge of the "Afghanistan file," and had long-standing ties to bin Laden and the Taliban. Indeed, Osama, before becoming an enemy of the state, had been something of a Turki protege, according to his biographers. Prince Turki, Al-Fagih said, "made arrangements for Osama's mother and his stepfather to visit him and persuade him to stop what he was doing... he didn't promise anything... The second trip, according to Al-Fagih, occurred last spring [2001]...They wanted to find out his intentions concerning the royal family. They gave him the impression that they wouldn't crack down on his followers in Saudi Arabia" as long as he set his sights on targets outside the desert kingdom."
328. *) November 1, 2001, The Guardian, 'CIA agent alleged to have met Bin Laden in July': "Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent [Larry Mitchell], according to the French newspaper Le Figaro... [French] Intelligence sources say that another CIA agent was also present; and that Bin Laden was also visited by Prince Turki al Faisal, then head of Saudi intelligence, who had long had links with the Taliban, and Bin Laden. Soon afterwards Turki resigned, and more recently he has publicly attacked him..."
     *) November 14, 2003, China Daily, 'CIA rejects claim it sought Osama deal before 9/11': "The CIA rejected as fantasy claims in a new book that it tried to negotiate a non-aggression pact with Osama bin Laden just two months before the September 11, 2001 airliner attacks against the United States. Richard Labeviere, author of "The Corridors of Terror," released on Thursday, says the CIA's Dubai station chief approached bin Laden while the al Qaeda leader was being treated for a serious kidney complaint in the United Arab Emirates. He said the meeting took place in the American Hospital in Dubai on July 12, barely eight weeks before al Qaeda militants slammed fuel-laden hijacked airliners into the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center, killing almost 3,000 people. "Such an allegation is sheer fantasy, no such thing occurred," CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said, echoing an earlier rebuttal by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency of French media reports in October 2001 about the alleged Dubai meeting. Labeviere said he learned of an encounter from a contact in the Dubai hospital, and said the event was confirmed in detail during a separate interview in New York with a Gulf prince who presented himself as an adviser to the Emir of Bahrain. The prince, who the author met in a Manhattan hotel in November 2001, appeared very well-informed about the CIA-bin Laden meeting. Labeviere said the second contact told him the face-to-face had been arranged by Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of the Saudi General Intelligence Department. He quoted the second contact as saying: "By organizing this meeting...Turki thought he could start direct negotiations between the Saudi millionaire (bin Laden) and the CIA on one fundamental point: that bin Laden and his supporters end their hostilities against American interests." In exchange, the CIA and the Saudi (intelligence) services undertook to allow bin Laden to return to his native country, even though he was stripped of his Saudi nationality in July 1994. The Dubai meeting was a failure, Labeviere said. The Saudi intelligence chief was sacked in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Labeviere named Larry Mitchell as the CIA station chief who met bin Laden, describing him as a colorful figure well-known on the Dubai social circuit. Mitchell left the Gulf state on July 15, 2001 and Labeviere said CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, had told him the operative was unavailable for interview because he was on his honeymoon. At the time, bin Laden had a multi-million dollar price on his head for his suspected role in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people. Bin Laden was treated between July 4 and July 14 in the urology department of a kidney specialist at the American Hospital, Labeviere said, adding that the hospital denied this."
329. November 18, 2001, Los Angeles Times, 'Long Before Sept. 11, Bin Laden Aircraft Flew Under the Radar': "For years, Persian Gulf state elites hunted rare birds of prey, houbara bustards, in the bleak hills surrounding Kandahar. In the late 1990s, according to former U.S. and Afghan officials, a number of prominent Persian Gulf state officials and businessmen flew into Kandahar on state and private jets for secret hunting expeditions. For days at a time, the hunters would roam the hills, releasing falcons trained to catch the bustards. Some satisfied hunters heaped donations on their Taliban hosts, officials said--and on Al Qaeda leaders who occasionally joined them. Among the reported visitors were high-ranking UAE and Saudi government ministers. According to U.S. and former Afghan civil air officials, the hunters included Prince Turki al Faisal, son of the late Saudi King Faisal. He headed that nation's intelligence service until late August, maintaining close ties with Bin Laden and the Taliban. Another visitor, officials said, was Sheik Mohammed ibn Rashid al Maktum, the Dubai crown prince and Emirates defense minister. Persian Gulf state officials cast doubt on the reports. "People go hunting in Pakistan. They don't go to Afghanistan," said Adel al-Jubeir, foreign policy advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. Similarly, the UAE's Alsadoosi said he did "not recall" any Afghan hunting trips made by Sheik Mohammed. U.S. security sources and former Afghan officials said they did not know what transpired during the visits by the two ministers. But on other occasions, Bin Laden and Omar mingled with the hunters. Former intelligence official Sirrs said a Taliban defector who claimed he was a hunting camp guard described "rich Saudis and top Taliban officials there." The man also said Bin Laden and Omar went off to fish together. An Afghan source said the two militant leaders often fished at a dam west of Kandahar."
330. September 5, 2003, MSNBC.
331. September 20, 2001, World Net Daily, 'Chief Saudi spy fired before attack 25-year official failed to deliver bin Laden to U.S.'.
332. Dr. Muhammad al-Massari, head of the head of the London-based Saudi opposition group, Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights (CDLR), in a November 2003, published by the neocon Jamestown Foundation: "The real point is that Western intelligence can not penetrate these groups. We are talking about two divorced worlds with diametrically opposed cultures. Western intelligence is used to using bars, prostitutes and dancing clubs to entrap people, and of course the Jihadists have nothing to do with these things. Even Saudi intelligence, many of whose officers are devout classic Wahabists, has a hard time penetrating these groups. I knew someone in Kabul, and he told me that almost every one in Kabul knew, just before 9/11, that something big was going to happen in America. But of course Western intelligence had no clue."
333. November 23, 2002, Los Angeles Times, '9/11 Kin Expand Suit That Aims to Bankrupt Al Qaeda': "Moreover, the complaint contains new allegations against one previously named defendant, Prince Turki al Faisal al Saud, the former Saudi intelligence chief. The suit cites a sworn statement by Mullah Kshar, a former Taliban official who has defected, which implicates Turki in large money transfers from wealthy Saudis to the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan."
334. *) August 31, 2003, Time magazine, 'Confessions of a Terrorist': "By March 2002, the terrorist called Abu Zubaydah was one of the most wanted men on earth. A leading member of Osama bin Laden's brain trust, he is thought to have been in operational control of al-Qaeda's millennium bomb plots as well as the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000. After the spectacular success of the airliner assaults on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, he continued to devise terrorist plans. ... Posner elaborates in startling detail how U.S. interrogators used drugs—an unnamed "quick-on, quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the old movie truth serum—in a chemical version of reward and punishment to make Zubaydah talk. When questioning stalled, according to Posner, cia men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions. ... Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, writes Posner, "his reaction was not fear, but utter relief." Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you what to do." The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd's and a publisher better known as a racehorse owner. His horse War Emblem won the Kentucky Derby in 2002. To the amazement of the U.S., the numbers proved valid. When the fake inquisitors accused Zubaydah of lying, he responded with a 10-minute monologue laying out the Saudi-Pakistani-bin Laden triangle. Zubaydah, writes Posner, said the Saudi connection ran through Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz , the kingdom's longtime intelligence chief. Zubaydah said bin Laden "personally" told him of a 1991 meeting at which Turki agreed to let bin Laden leave Saudi Arabia and to provide him with secret funds as long as al-Qaeda refrained from promoting jihad in the kingdom. The Pakistani contact, high-ranking air force officer Mushaf Ali Mir, entered the equation, Zubaydah said, at a 1996 meeting in Pakistan also attended by Zubaydah. Bin Laden struck a deal with Mir, then in the military but tied closely to Islamists in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (isi), to get protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaeda. Zubaydah told interrogators bin Laden said the arrangement was "blessed by the Saudis." Zubaydah said he attended a third meeting in Kandahar in 1998 with Turki, senior isi agents and Taliban officials. There Turki promised, writes Posner, that "more Saudi aid would flow to the Taliban, and the Saudis would never ask for bin Laden's extradition, so long as al-Qaeda kept its long-standing promise to direct fundamentalism away from the kingdom." In Posner's stark judgment, the Saudis "effectively had (bin Laden) on their payroll since the start of the decade." Zubaydah told the interrogators that the Saudis regularly sent the funds through three royal-prince intermediaries he named. The last eight paragraphs of the book set up a final startling development. Those three Saudi princes all perished within days of one another. On July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed was felled by a heart attack at age 43. One day later Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, 41, was killed in what was called a high-speed car accident. The last member of the trio, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, officially "died of thirst" while traveling east of Riyadh one week later. And seven months after that, Mushaf Ali Mir, by then Pakistan's Air Marshal, perished in a plane crash in clear weather over the unruly North-West Frontier province, along with his wife and closest confidants. "
335. *) Ibid.
     *) July 22, 2002, Saudi Embassy press release, 'Death of Prince Ahmad bin Salman announced'.
     *) July 23, 2002, Saudi Embassy press release, 'Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki killed in car accident'.
     *) July 29, 2002, Saudi Embassy press release, 'Desert tragedy kills Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud Al-Kabeer'.
336. September 1, 1991, Washington Post, 'Pakistan's illicit economies affect BCCI bank...': "According to diplomatic sources, Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki bin Faisal -- working with Pakistan's main intelligence agency -- distributed over $1 billion in cash to Afghan guerrillas during the late 1980s... The financial transactions were handled principally between Saudi intelligence and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), the main liaison between the United States, Saudi Arabia and the Afghan guerrillas, the sources said... As for drug trafficking, the sources acknowledged that Pakistan's ISI routinely condoned heroin manufacture and sales by some Afghan guerrilla groups. But they said there were also occasions when ISI cooperated with U.S. government efforts to eradicate poppy fields in Afghanistan."
337. *) September 27, 2001, No. 39, L'Hebdo, 'Islamic Financial Networks: Three Swiss Leads' ('Réseaux financiers islamistes: Les trois pistes suisses'): "The past week has been trying for Yeslam, called as a witness by federal inspectors, as part of an investigation against X by the prosecution, after the attack on the World Trade Center. According to our information, Berne took the opportunity to ask the businessman about the activities of several of his Swiss companies, the Saudi Investment Company (SICO), and Avcon Business Jets SA, a subsidiary of the airline company, Avcon AG. Yeslam acknowledged that the company offered pilot training. Moreover, "Le Monde" on September 26 has revealed that Yeslam funded flight training of a Cannes policeman. Disturbing coincidence: at the same school in Florida some of the September 11 suicide bombers were also trained."
     *) September 26, 2001, Le Monde, 'Un frère Ben Laden aurait financé les cours de pilotage d'un policier français.' ('A brother of Bin Laden funded the pilot training of a French policeman'): "Yeslam bin Laden, fifty-one years, a businessman living in Geneva who owns a villa on the heights of Cannes, during the year 2001 allegedly financed travel to the United States [of a] police commander responsible for monitoring the Cannes-Mandelieu airport. Preliminary reports sent to Paris do not indicate any link between the preparation of the attacks and movement in the United States, according to the French police. In the current context, prosecutor de Grasse seems to find it nevertheless necessary to carry out additional checks by a specialized group. The Cannes-Mandelieu Airport welcomes private planes belonging exclusively to French or foreign businessmen, companies and wealthy personalities. Aircraft movements were monitored very important until July - the Schengen agreements governing the free movement within Europe led to the departure of the PAF [Air and Border Police] - by a team of a dozen policemen led by the suspected Commander of Police in this case. According to his statements, which were collected during the preliminary inquiry by Grasse, September 14, he would have met Yeslam Bin Laden, along with his wife, "by chance". He claimed to have established friendly relations with him.... Retired since August, he acknowledged having accepted from Yeslam bin Laden, "with his passion for aviation," the 40 000 francs which allowed him to travel to the United States and follow flying lessons in one of the most famous schools of Florida. The center, known worldwide, has also hosted some of the kamikaze pilots that died in the attacks [that would be Venice Airport with Rudi Dekkers' Huffman Aviation and the school of Arne Kruithof on it]. At the end of his training, he failed in obtaining his pilot's license. To prove his good faith, he explained that he had refused the loan of money he was offered by Bin Laden to buy an apartment. Yeslam bin Laden is the head of a financial company, the Saudi Investment Company [SICO], whose main activity is the management of offshore subsidiaries of the family's Saudi Binladin Group (SBG). The SBG is a group that works in the building and public works, electricity, petroleum equipment, electronics, telecommunications and satellites. Western intelligence services are questioning the financial links between Osama bin Laden's business and those of his family. They monitor especially Saudi Investment Group [SICO], Yeslam bin Laden, whose opaque financial circuits could have allowed the transit of funds for Osama bin Laden."
338. *) 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Welcome to Terror Land: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida' (digital): "What the FBI left unanswered was why they had done nothing to shut it down. But if what we were witnessing was some kind of CIA-protected drug trafficking operation, then the FBI's failure to take action against terrorists which the Bureau has acknowledged knowing were flight training in the U.S. can be explained by the Bureau's historical reluctance to meddle on another Federal Agency's turf. "Early on I gleaned that these guys had Government protection," said a former Huffman executive. "We heard that 16 of the 19 terrorists had been on Interpol's Most Wanted list. They were let into this country for a specific purpose. It was a business deal." The new information added to long-standing suspicions of drug trafficking voiced by local aviation observers in Venice. One told us he had learned that Dekkers and Hilliard's operation had what he termed a "green light" from the DEA at the Venice Airport. "They were told to stay away from that (Dekkers) operation." "Who was told?" we asked. "The Sarasota County Drug Interdiction people," came the response. "They were told that they had a green light to operate and that they were to stay away from them, that they were some type of ... alluded to the fact that they may have some type of government protection. And the local Venice Police Department were also warned to leave them alone." Government protection of Rudi Dekkers would explain his sweetheart coverage in the major media. ... "When Rudi was reported to the FAA for violations, an FAA guy came out and sat us down and said: 'I suggest you back out of this.' I couldn't believe it. I called the FAA to report a violation and was warned to leave him alone." "Villada dropped a bombshell. "After Wally's plane was impounded with the heroin and his pilots had machine guns stuck in their faces, the DEA came to visit our maintenance facility and Wally shouted out to me -- right in front of the DEA guy -'Make sure all the heroin and cocaine gets hidden!"' "That was in August of 2000. When I found out later that the DEA wouldn't let him have his plane back, I knew why." Hilliard's mock warning to hide the drugs, explained Villada, had been Wally's way of telling the DEA how little he thought of them. The DEA hadn't forgotten. Villada seemed surprised we hadn't heard of the bust of Wally's plane. ... We had soon confirmed Villada's assertion: Hilliard's Lear jet had been involved in a major bust in Orlando. ... Financier Hilliard ran money-losing flight schools. Now we discovered he leased jets to drug smugglers too. Major drug smugglers."
     *) August 2, 2000, Orlando Sentinel, 'Record-setting heroin seizure nets 30 pounds' (plane of Wally Hilliard): "In the largest seizure of the drug in Central Florida, about 30 pounds of South American heroin with a street value of several million dollars has been confiscated in Orlando. It's perhaps the largest find of its kind in the southeastern United States in recent years, officials said Tuesday. The drugs arrived last week aboard a private Learjet at Orlando Executive Airport. The plane originated in Venezuela and stopped in Fort Lauderdale before landing in Orlando, with New York as its final destination. A federal grand jury in Orlando on Tuesday indicted five people in connection with the seizure. Three additional suspects were arrested in New York. "It confirms the sad fact that a massive amount of heroin is coming through Central Florida," U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Brent Eaton said Tuesday. ... After Darwich's arrest, DEA agents were waiting when the Learjet landed at the airport on July 25, Eaton said. Passengers Edgar Javier Valles Diaz, 51, and Neyra Aracely Rivas Casanova, 48, both of Caracas, Venezuela, were arrested after 13 kilograms of heroin were found hidden in the soles of tennis shoes stashed in their luggage, Eaton said. The pilot was not arrested because of a lack of evidence. Five kilograms were destined for Orlando and eight were scheduled to continue to New York, officials said."
     *) December 14, 2012, Daniel Hopsicker, 'FINALLY! Rudi Dekkers Behind Bars for Drug Trafficking': "Three weeks after [9/11 ringleader Mohammed] Atta showed up at Huffman Aviation, the flight school's owner, Wally Hilliard, had his Learjet (N351WB) seized on a runway at Orlando Executive Airport. It carrying 43 lbs of heroin. In the drug business, that amount of heroin is what is known as "heavy weight." At the time of the bust, July of 2001, something like 80% of the world's heroin came from Afganistan, where Atta is known to have spent time. Osama bin Laden still lived there. But no alarm bells went off. It didn't matter. It was of no consequence. It was thought unremarkable.
     Dekkers first came to the attention of U.S. law enforcement in 1996, according to sources who worked with him at the Naples Airport. He was the subject of a multi-agency Federal task force, investigating allegations, and numerous sources said they were much more than mere allegations, that Dekkers was exporting state-of-the-art computer memory chips out of the U.S. illegally. ...
     According to the affidavit filed with the criminal complaint, a drug kingpin named Arturo Astorquiza, described as "the head of an international drug trafficking organization (DTO)," introduced Rudi Dekkers to an associate of his, who he did not yet know was an undercover agent. Dekkers told the agent, quoting the affidavit, that he was "involved in narcotics transportation using private aircraft and that he has flown narcotics and currency previously without any problem." ...
     The next week, Dekkers phoned the undercover agent "on his own accord" to tell him that Astorquiza had been busted by the ATF. ... Dekkers then went on to inform him he would soon be flying in to Houston Intercontinental Airport on his way to do a drug flight, and would still be interested in working something out. Dekkers said he would be picking up 6 kilos of cocaine, for which he was to be paid $9000. ...
     In Houston, Dekkers was placed under round-the-clock surveillance. He was spotted meeting with Rogelio Martinez-Flores, who proceeded to hand Dekkers something the affidavit refers to in all caps as THE BLUE ROLLING SUITCASE.
     Moments later, agents moved in. ... One surprise: Instead of the 9 kilos Dekkers said he’d be transporting, in the suitcase was 18 kilos of cocaine, as well as 860 grams of heroin."
339. 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Welcome to Terror Land: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida' (digital): "Not too many suckers are friends with the President of the United States. Hilliard was friends with Bill Clinton. He kept a picture taken of himself with Clinton prominently displayed in his $3 million Naples, Florida home. "Wally knew Clinton well," confirmed a former employee. "Clinton called Wally a couple of times when I was there.""
340. For more information go to ISGP's article/compilation on the Mena affair.
341. *) September 27, 2001, No. 39, L'Hebdo, 'Islamic Financial Networks: Three Swiss Leads' ('Réseaux financiers islamistes: Les trois pistes suisses'): "A "check" will be necessary again. For if, at this stage, there is no reason to doubt that Yeslam Binladin has well cut ties "over the past twenty years," as he says, with his terrorist half-brother ... [the financial cooperation hypothesis is] still taken seriously by some intelligence services. ... In 1999, "The Terror Dollars" Richard Labeviere was the first to question the official story of a complete break between the terrorist Osama and the rest of the wealthy bin Laden clan - 54 brothers and sisters - the head the SBG (Saudi BinLaden Group), the largest construction company in the Middle East. SICO of Yeslam Binladin (founded in 1980 as an international subsidiary of the parent SBG), was then presented as the key link in this construction, apparently legal, but can "hide what experts call the "legal financing" of terrorism, a sort of "reverse money laundering"". At the time, Yeslam Binladin did not think it useful to file a defamation suit... explaining, in private, he did not want to advertise a book "full of errors". And three years later, no questions about the affairs of the most westernized of Bin Laden has been debunked. Even if new elements emerge every day. The French site www.intelligenceonline.fr, generally very well informed, recently published a confidential report on "the economic environment of Osama bin Laden," ... once more the SICO Geneva [is named], surrounded by opaque offshore structures themselves connected to other networks. ... Among the directors of SICO, explanations of Dunant Baudouin were also welcome. L'Hebdo categorically ran into a "no comment". According to the intelligenceonline report, the Geneva lawyer has indeed helped to establish a network of opaque offshore companies around the SICO."
342. *) I believe the above "Geneva lawyer" was reported to be CIA in the same article, but the article disappeared from the net soon after making this translation. Strange, because all other articles of the issue in question are still available. The headline doesn't even appear anymore in the online issue. Google also doesn't produce any results anymore.
     *) 2001, PBS Frontline, 'About the bin Laden family': "Since 1980, the bulk of the bin Laden group's international activities are routed through the Geneva offices of Saudi Investment Company (SICO), which was established on 19 May 1980 and whose capital was increased to SF100 million on 30 April 1991. Located at 13 rue Ceard, the company is chaired by Yeslam bin Laden. Board members are Beatrice Dufour, Baudoin Dunant and Tilouine el Hanafi. Beatrice Lafour is Yeslam bin Laden's sister-in-law. She is of Iranian origin and is married to a Swiss financier. Baudoin Dunant, one of French-speaking Switzerland's leading lawyers, is on the boards of over twenty companies in Geneva, Fribourg, Morges, Nyons, etc. He received international publicity in 1983, when he represented Swiss banker Francois Genoud. Genoud, an admirer of Hitler and heir to the rights to Goebbels' writings, had helped finance the FLN during the Algerian Ward and was on trial for participation in international terrorism. ... During the `80s, the board of directors also included members of the Swiss Wyss family, a branch of which controls the Holderbank Company, which has just signed a $100 million contract with Qatar National Cement. Also on the board were members of the Shakarshi family, whose name is linked to a money-laundering scandal and drug trafficking in Zurich. A Shakarshi family member was also a director of the SICO London branch. As a result of these scandals and bent on avoiding any publicity, the bin Ladens decided that it was necessary to break publicly with the Shakarshis. In actual fact, the Shakarshis were never overly troubled and it appears that the Zurich company was just another CIA front used to finance the Afghan resistance. The tie between Yeslam bin Laden and the Shakarshi family would thus seem quite consistent with both family and royal policy. Our information tells us that Yeslam bin Laden continues to maintain relations as usual with the Shakarshi group. One might also note that the chairman of board of the Zurich Shakarshi company was Dr. Hans Kopp. Kopp is an important lawyer (his wife was then Justice Minister, since resigned) known for his international activities, particularly with the American [intelligence?] services (since the `60s), and is close to the Swiss defense industry (Oerlikon-Buhrle/Contraves). The Geneva-based SICO is the parent house for the Group's international financial activities and investments, with branches in London and Curacao. The Curacao branch, established in 1984, manages the bin Laden group's partnership with the American Daniels Realty Corporation (Duspic), part of the Fluor Corporation conglomerate. It is partly through the bin Ladens' influence that the Fluor group was one of the major recipients of reconstruction contracts in Kuwait. Despite a few recent attempts (particularly with the Swiss Contraves group), the bin Laden family has never been directly involved in weapons contracts and has never been bent on adding this activity to its portfolio. ... The bin Laden family (and Yeslam bin Laden in particular) have thus had long-standing and close ties to the London/Geneva-based Albilad company, created in the `70s by Mohammed Ben Fahd and taken over by Saud Ben Nayef in 1984. Albilad was the main instrument for negotiation of the Anglo-Saudi Al Yamama agreement. Saudi interests were represented by businessman Wafik Said, while the British side was represented by Jonathan Aitken, currently a minister in the Major government. It might be noted that a major player in these negotiations was none other than Mark Thatcher, son of the former Prime Minister and very close to Wafik Said."
343. July 10, 2004, Salon.com, 'I married a Bin Laden'.
344. *) 2001, PBS Frontline, 'About the bin Laden family': "The bin Laden family has been present in international finance for many years. With regard to France, this was the case with the Banque Al Saoudi, whose vicissitudes in recent years are common knowledge. Shored up by Banque de France in 1989 to avoid bankruptcy, it was partially taken over by Banque Indosuez, becoming Banque Francaise pour l'Orient, which has just merged with Rafik Hariri's Mediterranee group. It is interesting to note that the bank's honorary chairman was none other than Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd, and its board of directors included Sheik Salem bin Laden, Sheik Bogshan and Khalid Ben Mahfouz. Banque Al Saoudi and Indosuez' special connections in the Middle East were instrumental in financing a portion of the weapons contracts of the `70s and `80s. Banque Al Saoudi was 75%-owned by the Paris-based Saudi Arab Finance Corporation, which also controlled a number of other companies: 75% of Saudi Finance Corporation (Saudifin), headquartered in Geneva and in turn controlling the Saudi Arab Finance Corporation and the Arab Finance Corporation International, both in Luxembourg.. Generally speaking, the same set of shareholders was involved: Salem bin Laden, Khalid Ben Mahfouz [and others]."
345. See ISGP's 1001 Club article. The author had access to 1001 Club membership lists from 1978, 1987 and 2010.
346. *) February 17, 2002, Washington Post, 'Al Qaeda's Road Paved With Gold': "A 70-page French intelligence report, prepared for Parliament in October and obtained by The Washington Post, outlined some details of this network. The financial network of bin Laden, as well as his network of investments, is similar to the network put in place in the 1980s by BCCI for its fraudulent operations, often with the same people (former directors and cadres of the bank and its affiliates, arms merchants oil merchants, Saudi investors)," the report said. "The dominant trait of bin Laden's operations is that of a terrorist network backed up by a vast financial structure." A senior U.S. investigator said U.S. agencies were looking into these ties because "they just make so much sense, and so few people from BCCI ever went to jail. BCCI was the mother and father of terrorist financing operations." The report identifies dozens of companies and individuals who were involved with BCCI and were found to be dealing with bin Laden after the bank collapsed. Many went on to work in banks and charities identified by the United States and others as supporting al Qaeda. The French report highlighted the role of Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, a former director of BCCI, whose sister is married to bin Laden. In 1995 bin Mahfouz paid a $225 million fine in a settlement with U.S. prosecutors for his role in the BCCI scandal and went on to serve as director of the National Commercial Bank, one of Saudi Arabia's largest. But in April 1999 bin Mahfouz was placed under house arrest in a hospital in Taif when Saudi officials, at the urging of the United States, audited his bank and found that millions of dollars were being funneled through the bank to charities controlled by bin Laden, U.S. officials and the French document said. While retaining shares in the bank, the report said, bin Mahfouz no longer directs the institution and remains under house arrest. In the past he has denied ties to terrorist activities. U.S. intelligence officials said Washington pushed for the audit of bin Mahfouz's bank but was never allowed to question him. Saudi officials "weren't willing to let us talk to him," said one U.S. source with direct knowledge of events, "and we asked at a very senior level." U.S. and European investigators said it is al Qaeda's ability to tap into commodities such as gold, and to move its resources through both the hawala system and banking structures, that makes it so hard to disrupt."
     *) 2004, Craig Unger, 'House of Bush, House of Saud', p. 286: "Salem was a contemporary and friend of Khalid bin Mahfouz ... Khalid was also on the Golden Chain, the list of wealthy Arabs who helped fund Al Qaeda at its inception. He founded Muwafaq (Blessed Relief), which the U.S. Treasury Department called "an al Qaeda front that transfers millions from wealthy Saudis to Bin Laden.""
347. March 11, 2008, Phil's Stock World, ' $200 Oil - Whos Going to Pay For It?': "Interesting note: The first Iraq war is what made our current President his first millions as he sold his stock the same month his dad invaded Iraq and spiked oil from $18 a barrel in July 1990 to $27 in August. After bankrupting his first company (aptly called Arbusto Energy), in which he was partners with Salem Bin Laden (Osama's Father) through James Bath (who also worked with BCCI who conducted the largest bank fraud in US history while laundering gun money for George I in the 80s), Junior merged Arbusto with Spectrum 7, became the CEO and bankrupted them. Spectrum 7 was then sold to Harken with the financial help of BCCI's Kalid bin Mahfouz, who took over for Bin Laden on his death and bought 17% of Harken in exchange for the Bush bail-out which ended up giving him 400,000 shares of Harken stock (Bush was investigated by the SEC but was cleared - how would he know his dad was going to invade Iraq?!?)"
     *) 2004, Craig Unger, 'House of Bush, House of Saud': "Closely tied as they were to both the royal family and the United States, at this point the bin Ladens had only indirect connections to the Bush family and its allies. James Bath, the American business representative of Salem bin Laden, knew both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush. Khalid bin Mahfouz, who was close to both the bin Ladens and the royal family, had helped finance the Houston skyscraper for the Texas Commerce Bank, in which James Baker had a significant stake. He also had ties to Bath. But these Bush-bin Laden "relationships" were indirect - two degrees of separation, perhaps - and at times have been overstated. Critics have asserted that money may have gone from Khalid bin Mahfouz and Salem bin Laden through James Bath into Arbusto Energy, the oil company started by George W. Bush, but no evidence has ever been found to back up that charge, which appears to be unfounded. ... Bath had fronted for Saudi billionaires Salem bin Laden [1001 Club, which was BCCI linked] and Khaled bin Mahfouz [BCCI] on other deals, but in this case he says "One hundred percent of those funds were mine. It was a purely personal investment." Bin Laden and bin Mahfouz, he insists, had nothing to do with either the elder George Bush or his son. "They never met Bush," Bath says. "Ever. And there was no reason to. At that point Bush was a young guy just out of Yale, a struggling entrepreneur trying to get a drilling fund.""
348. 2004, Craig Unger, 'House of Bush, House of Saud', p. 168: "In 1995, the bin Ladens joined in, investing $2 million in the Carlyle Partners II Fund, a relatively small sum that was widely reported to be part of a larger package. And according to Cherif Sedky, Abdulrahman and Sultan bin Mahfouz, two sons of Khalid bin Mahfouz's, became investors that year as well by making an investment "in the neighborhood of $30 million." Carlyle put a cousin of the bin Mahfouzes, a Saudi investment manager named Sam Ba’arma who oversaw their finances, on one of its boards. Now that key Saudis, who had the blessing of the royal famil, shared in the profits, it was not difficult for Carlyle’s defense companies to win contracts in Saudi Arabia. … In 1995, after a visit to the kingdom by Carlucci, Vinnell won a $163-million contract to modernize the Saudi Arabian National Guard."
349. See note 62 .
350. 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Welcome to Terror Land: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida' (digital)
351. July 26, 2002, San Francisco Chronicle, 'Myron Du Bain -- Fireman's Fund ex-CEO': "In 1957, he was named manager of the marine department, and regular promotions followed every few years. He served as assistant vice president, vice president, senior vice president and executive vice president. In 1974, he was named president and chief executive officer of the $3 billion-a-year insurance colossus. The following year, he was elected chairman of the board. ... Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Mr. Du Bain's longtime friend, called him a man of "boundless optimism, tremendous buoyancy and patriotism." ... Fireman's Fund, a subsidiary of American Express, operated for decades out of its historic headquarters on California Street in Laurel Heights. The company, founded in San Francisco in 1863 to benefit firefighters, moved to Novato and San Rafael in the 1980s and was acquired in 1991 by Allianz, a big German conglomerate. Mr. Du Bain was a native of Cleveland and a graduate of UC Berkeley. During World War II, he commanded a rescue boat in the South Pacific. He also served during the Korean War. He was a member of more than a dozen corporate boards, including American Express, Wells Fargo, Transamerica, Pacific Gas and Electric and Chronicle Publishing Co., former owner of The Chronicle. In 1983, he retired from Fireman's Fund to become chairman of Amfac, the hotel chain, and later of SRI International, the former Stanford Research Institute. ... He was a member of the Bohemian Club..."
     *) October 14, 1981, Associated Press, 'Fireman's Frim to Acquire Wisconsin Firm': "Fireman's Fund Inc. of New York will acquire the Wisconsin Employers Group insurance company under an agreement in principle reached by the two firms, a Wisconsin Employers spokesman said Tuesday. The acquisition must be approved by Wisconsin's insurance commissioner and the directors of both firms, the spokesman said. Terms of the sale were not released. All Wisconsin Employers stock is held by Ronald A. Weyers, president, and Wallace J. Hilliard, chairman of the board. They founded the firm in 1969 [by Hilliard]."
     *) 2012, Sander Hicks, 'Slingshot to the Juggernaut', p. 85: "In the mid-2000s, when we were still friends, Battuello often bragged that she was a financial researcher who had been trained inside a "CIA bank." She had cut her teeth at the United California Ban (UCB), right after former CIA director John McCone served as chairman. "UCB had been on the brink of collapse, under the weight of highly irregular loans," Battuello told me then. UCB had been known as John McCone’s "piggy bank," and, with businessman Myron DuBain on the board, it allegedly "attempted to recover monies looted and missing" by Saudi arms dealers, like Adnan Khashoggi and former CIA personnel."
352. May 3, 2004, Daniel Hopsicker for Mad Cow Morning News, ''Terror Flight School Owners' Flew Saudis on "unsupervised flights" all over the country'. Article not on MadCowProd.com anymore anno 2024, after Daniel Hopsicker's death.
353. April 16, 2010, Daniel Hopsicker, 'It didn't start with 9/11': ""Venice was a kind of quiet Mena (Arkansas)," stated a former drug pilot for The Company. "Jackson Stephens built this huge headquarters next to the airport. And he was in charge. But I do remember seeing Porter Goss around the airport a lot." ... The airport where three of the four terrorist pilots in the 9/11 attack learned to fly was a hub of operations in the 1970’s and early ‘80’s for "The Company," an international drug smuggling organization headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky and Mena, Arkansas. ... "The Company," whose name is a commonly-used euphemism for the CIA, was profiled in Sally Denton’s best-selling book "The Blue-Grass Conspiracy," which raised pointed questions about the involvement of the CIA with the group. The 60-year secret history of covert CIA and military operations at the Venice Municipal Airport now coming to light goes well beyond anything previously known to have taken place there."
354. January 7, 2008, Human Events: Powerful Conservative Voices, 'J. Cofer Black Should Make Voters See Red': "Black served the CIA for 28 years and directed its Counterterrorist Center (CTC) for less than three – from June 1999 to May 2002. In January 2000, Black’s CTC briefed top CIA, FBI, and White House officials on a 9/11 planning summit in Kuala Lumpur. Hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar attended. Alas, these two left Malaysia, then vanished in Bangkok. But in early March 2000, the CIA learned that Hazmi had flown to Los Angeles that January 15, as did Mihdhar. "No one outside of the Counterterrorist Center was told any of this," the 9/11 Commission Report states (page 181). "The CIA did not try to register Mihdhar or Hazmi with the State Department’s TIPOFF watchlist…" In January 2001, the CIA tied Mihdhar to "Khallad," an al-Qaeda agent who bombed the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in October 2000. "Yet we found no effort by the CIA to renew the long-abandoned search for Mihdhar or his travel companions," the 9-11 Commission concluded (page 266). It added, CIA director George "Tenet and Cofer Black testified before Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11 that the FBI had access to this identification from the beginning. But drawing on an extensive record…we conclude this was not the case." Were Mihdhar "watchlisted," he could have been arrested when he returned from Mecca on July 4, 2001. Instead, he resumed his mass-murder plans. These botched opportunities also prevented the FBI from activating a California source who knew Hazmi and Mihdhar. "The informant’s contacts with the hijackers, had they been capitalized upon, would have given the San Diego FBI field office perhaps the Intelligence Community’s best chance to unravel the September 11 plot," the Congressional Joint Inquiry’s declassified December 2002 report heartbreakingly observes. "Given the CIA’s failure to disseminate, in a timely manner, intelligence information on the significance and location of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, that chance, unfortunately, never materialized." They finally were watchlisted on August 23, 2001, 19 days before they plowed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. As for flagging Hazmi and Mihdhar, "It should have been done," the former CTC chief told the Joint Inquiry. "It wasn’t…And I think what contributed to that was [that] these same officers watching this operation were also doing a lot of other things." On August 25, 2005, the Associated Press’ Katherine Shrader revealed that CIA Inspector John Helgerson’s then-classified report "recommended disciplinary reviews" for Black, Tenet, and former clandestine service head Jim Pavett. "The former officials are likely candidates for proceedings before an accountability board," Shrader wrote. Tenet’s successor, Porter Goss, took no disciplinary action. Despite Helgerson’s rebuke, last April 26, Romney named Black "Senior Adviser on counter-terrorism and national security issues." The CIA declassified Helgerson’s 2005 report last August 21, confirming that the Inspector General recommended at least six times that the former CTC chief and others face an accountability board for financial mismanagement, poor coordination, incoherent leadership, and more. In one episode, when NSA invited the CIA to examine transcripts of terrorist intercepts, "CTC sent one officer to NSA for a brief period of time in 2000, but failed to send others, citing resource constraints." Romney elevated Black to run his counter-terror advisory board. Despite deep, declassified dismay with Black’s pre-September 11 tenure, it’s been onward and upward for Black on Team Romney. Few heads rolled after 9/11, despite the incompetence that allowed al-Qaeda to massacre 2,978 human beings. Cofer Black kept his head, and now uses it to advise someone who promoted him in September, and praised him on CNN in late November."
355. November 23, 2009, The Nation, 'The Secret US War in Pakistan': "Blackwater's work for JSOC [targeted assassinations] in Karachi is coordinated out of a Task Force based at Bagram Air Base in neighboring Afghanistan, according to the military intelligence source. While JSOC technically runs the operations in Karachi, he said, it is largely staffed by former US special operations soldiers working for a division of Blackwater, once known as Blackwater SELECT, and intelligence analysts working for a Blackwater affiliate, Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), which is owned by Erik Prince [and ran by Cofer Black]. The military source said that the name Blackwater SELECT may have been changed recently. Total Intelligence, which is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia, is staffed by former analysts and operatives from the CIA, DIA, FBI and other agencies. It is modeled after the CIA's counterterrorism center. ... Until recently, Total Intelligence was run by two former top CIA officials, Cofer Black [also vice chair of Blackwater 2005-2008] and Robert Richer, both of whom have left the company. In Pakistan, Blackwater is not using either its original name or its new moniker, Xe Services, according to the former Blackwater executive. "They are running most of their work through TIS because the other two [names] have such a stain on them," he said. ... In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA, the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, according to the military intelligence source. Blackwater does not actually carry out the operations, he said, which are executed on the ground by JSOC forces. "That piqued my curiosity and really worries me because I don't know if you noticed but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan," he said. Blackwater, according to the military intelligence source, is not doing the actual killing as part of its work in Pakistan. "The SELECT personnel are not going into places with private aircraft and going after targets," he said. "It's not like Blackwater SELECT people are running around assassinating people." Instead, US Special Forces teams carry out the plans developed in part by Blackwater. The military intelligence source drew a distinction between the Blackwater operatives who work for the State Department, which he calls "Blackwater Vanilla," and the seasoned Special Forces veterans who work on the JSOC program. "Good or bad, there's a small number of people who know how to pull off an operation like that. That's probably a good thing," said the source. "It's the Blackwater SELECT people that have and continue to plan these types of operations because they're the only people that know how and they went where the money was. It's not trigger-happy fucks, like some of the PSD [Personal Security Detail] guys. These are not people that believe that Barack Obama is a socialist, these are not people that kill innocent civilians. They're very good at what they do.""
356. *) June 29, 2012, Daily Mail, 'Top CIA spy is accused of being a HITMAN for Miami mobsters': "Top CIA spy Enrique 'Ricky' Prado has been accused of working as a hitman for mobsters in Miami. The shock allegations are outlined in a new book, How to Get Away with Murder in America, by journalist Evan Wright. In the blockbuster story, Mr Wright claims the now retired agent started his career dropping bodies in Miami's criminal underworld and kept working for the mob even after joining the CIA. A veteran of the Central American wars, Mr Prado ran the Central Intelligence Agency's operations in Korea and was a top spy in America's espionage programs against China. Later he became deputy to counter-terrorist chief Cofer Black and before doing a stint at Blackwater, according to Wired. But Mr Wright, who is also the author of Generation Kill, the story of the Iraq invasion, alleges Mr Prado was involved with the Mafia throughout his revered career, which ended with him as head of the agency's secret assassination squad against Al Qaeda. 'In protecting Prado, the CIA arguably allowed a new type of mole — an agent not of a foreign government but of American criminal interests — to penetrate command,' Mr Wright says in the book. The author details years-long investigations into the Miami mafia by state and federal police that either went nowhere, were side-lined by those at the top or were derailed by light sentences. As well as Mr Prado, the book tracks the life of notorious cocaine trafficker Alberto San Pedro, one of Mr Prado's childhood friends. Mr Wright claims San Pedro hosted parties for Miami's rich and famous, lost one of his testicles in a drive-by shooting, tortured guard dogs for fun and imported tens of millions of dollars of cocaine into the United States each year, according to Wired. Meanwhile, Mr Prado was moonlighting as a killer, according to the journalist who claims investigators with the Miami-Dade Police Department's organised crime squad suspected him of participating in at least seven murders and one attempted murder. And the bodies continued to fall as Mr Prado was working his way up inside the CIA, the book purports, with one alleged victim, a cocaine distributor in Colorado, being killed by a car bomb."
     *) 2012, Even Wright, 'How to get away with murder in America' (digital): "But former OCS [Organized Crime Squad] investigators I interviewed about [Enrique] Prado often referred to him as a "doper," their generic term for anyone connected to the drug trade. When I informed Mike Fisten and Al Morciego of Ricky's SIS-2 rank, they dubbed him "Major General Doper." As the investigators see it, when the CIA hired Prado the agency was penetrated by a mole--a spy of divided, secret allegiances. Prado's allegiances weren't to another country but rather to the criminal underworld. If, as evidence suggests, he participated in murders after he joined the CIA, it wasn't simply to show loyalty to Albert. ... A decade ago, Prado's fried Robert Nieves appeared on PBS's Frontline to deny accusations that under his watch the DEA had allowed the CIA to smuggle cocaine into the United States in order to fund its contra efforts. These allegations were discredited, and Nieves's own record appeared spotless. But the fact that the former DEA agent turns out to have been close friends with a suspected drug trafficker and CIA officer involved in the contra program--a man he met while the DEA may or may not have been facilitating CIA drug smuggling--will no doubt revive old conspiracy theories. Nieves will probably not be the only official facing questions about his interactions with Prado. His current employer, Jefferson Waterman International, where Prado is a principal in its "security and intelligence" subsidiary, Crosshatch International, may also wish to examine its relationship with him. JWI, run by a former co-chairman of the National Intelligence Council, is dedicated to assisting businesses and government entities in counterterrorist and counternarcotics efforts. Prado is reportedly on assignment for JWI in Mexico, though a company spokesman refused to confirm or deny this. He did confirm that Prado held a senior position at Crosshatch. Major General Doper is still on the job. In March, another source confirms to me the FBI investigation into Prado's activities at Blackwater and the OCS-file murders, especially those allegedly involving Albert and Bobby Erra."
     *) October 4, 2010, The Nation, ' Blackwater's Black Ops: Internal documents reveal the firm's clandestine work for multinationals and governments.': "The coordinator of Blackwater's covert CIA business, former CIA paramilitary officer Enrique "Ric" Prado, set up a global network of foreign operatives, offering their "deniability" as a "big plus" for potential Blackwater customers, according to company documents. The CIA has long used proxy forces to carry out extralegal actions or to shield US government involvement in unsavory operations from scrutiny. In some cases, these "deniable" foreign forces don't even know who they are working for. Prado and Prince built up a network of such foreigners while Blackwater was at the center of the CIA's assassination program, beginning in 2004. They trained special missions units at one of Prince's properties in Virginia with the intent of hunting terrorism suspects globally, often working with foreign operatives. A former senior CIA official said the benefit of using Blackwater's foreign operatives in CIA operations was that "you wouldn't want to have American fingerprints on it." ... While the network was originally established for use in CIA operations, documents show that Prado viewed it as potentially valuable to other government agencies. In an e-mail in October 2007 with the subject line "Possible Opportunity in DEA—Read and Delete," Prado wrote to a Total Intelligence executive with a pitch for the Drug Enforcement Administration. That executive was an eighteen-year DEA veteran with extensive government connections who had recently joined the firm. ... For $5,000 a day, clients could hire Prado or former senior CIA officials Cofer Black and Robert Richer for "representation" to national "decision-makers." ... As Blackwater became embroiled in controversy following the Nisour Square massacre, Prado set up his own company, Constellation Consulting Group (CCG), apparently taking some of Blackwater's covert CIA work with him, though he maintained close ties to his former employer. In an e-mail to a Total Intelligence executive in February 2008, Prado wrote that he "recently had major success in developing capabilities in Mali [Africa] that are of extreme interest to our major sponsor and which will soon launch a substantial effort via my small shop." He requested Total Intelligence's help in analyzing the "North Mali/Niger terrorist problem." ... What relationship Prado's CCG has with the CIA is not known. An early version of his company's website boasted that "CCG professionals have already conducted operations on five continents, and have proven their ability to meet the most demanding client needs" and that the company has the "ability to manage highly-classified contracts." CCG, the site said, "is uniquely positioned to deliver services that no other company can, and can deliver results in the most remote areas with little or no outside support." Among the services advertised were "Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence (human and electronic), Unconventional Military Operations, Counterdrug Operations, Aviation Services, Competitive Intelligence, Denied Area Access...and Paramilitary Training." ... The Nation has previously reported on Blackwater's work for the CIA and JSOC in Pakistan. New documents reveal a history of activity relating to Pakistan by Blackwater. Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto worked with the company when she returned to Pakistan to campaign for the 2008 elections, according to the documents. ... Black wrote that [Kevin] Wilson [th security manager for global issues of Monsanto] "understands that we can span collection from internet, to reach out, to boots on the ground on legit basis protecting the Monsanto [brand] name.... Ahead of the curve info and insight/heads up is what he is looking for." Black added that Total Intelligence "would develop into acting as intel arm of Monsanto." Black also noted that Monsanto was concerned about animal rights activists and that they discussed how Blackwater "could have our person(s) actually join [activist] group(s) legally." Black wrote that initial payments to Total Intelligence would be paid out of Monsanto's "generous protection budget"..."
357. *) March 14, 1986, St. Petersberg Evening Independent, 'Graham's bathroom mirror used for letter supporting felon's request for a pardon': ""[Bob Graham about San Pedro:] I'm concerned that Mr. San Pedro is sort of being cast under a shadow [due to a 1971 murder conspiracy conviction]... It has been a long time since the criminal offense for which he's requesting pardon was committed and he has an impressive statement of his community record." ... San Pedro was subsequently arrested Feb. 13 [1986] on charges of bribery, and then arrested March 2 on charges of murder conspiracy and cocaine trafficking."
     *) June 1, 1986, Sun Sentinel, 'San Pedro 'Friends' Denounce His Name': "Once, Alberto San Pedro had lots of powerful friends in important places -- from Hialeah City Hall to the governor`s mansion to the Capitol in Washington. Now, those former friends are treating San Pedro like the plague. Caught by hidden police microphones bragging about bribing politicians, San Pedro is in the middle of the splashiest political scandal to hit South Florida in decades. Since his arrest three months ago on a variety of drug, bribery, weapons and murder-conspiracy charges, some Dade County public figures are biting their nails, worried lest their past association with San Pedro stain their careers. ... The case has all the elements of a good soap opera. On the tapes and in depositions, there are hours of talk about casual sex, mounds of cocaine, murders, shootings, political power and money. ... Metro-Dade police launched an extensive investigation. The key operatives were undercover officers, who pretended to be corrupt, and San Pedro`s kiss- and-tell girlfriend, Roxanna Greene, whom police paid $200 a week to spy. Greene told bizarre tales of living with and informing on San Pedro. Once, San Pedro, who reportedly had a Secret Service clearance to meet with President Reagan last year, chased her through his house trying to get her to sniff cocaine, as the drug flowed off a nail file onto the floor, she said. Another time she recalled going over a list of judges to be invited to the St. Lazarus party. ``And the judges would show up at the party like good little soldiers in a war,`` Greene testified."
358. *) falken.us/advisory-board (accessed: October 8, 2014): "Enrique "Ric" Prado is the Intelligence and Special Operations Program Advisor for Falken Industries. Mr. Prado is a twenty five year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency where he served in six overseas posts, including as Chief of Station in a Muslim country. Domestically, he served as Chief of Operations for the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Counter-terrorist Center under Ambassador Cofer Black during the 11 September, 2001 attacks and the subsequent war on terrorism. He also served as the Deputy Chief on the original Osama bin Laden Task Force. ... As C/OPS at CTC, then a Senior Intelligence Service (SIS) officer, Mr. Prado oversaw CIA’s counter-terrorist efforts post 9/11 and coordinated SPEC-OPS activities with the National Security Council (NSC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as well as elite U.S. Military representatives from Operational Detachment DELTA, and the Naval Special Warfare Development Group who were detailed to the CIA. Mr. Prado was also Deputy Chief of the East Asia Division, running CIA’s Korean Operations and previously, as Chief of CIA Liaison in Seoul, Korea. He spent his first ten years in CIA as a Paramilitary Officer serving in dangerous areas, to include 18-months in the jungles of Central America as the first CIA officer living in the anti-Sandinista "Contra" camps, and running CT operations in Peru and the Philippines. He is a former member of the elite USAF Pararescue. Upon retirement from the CIA, he worked as a Special Adviser to MITRE Corporation and subsequently served as Vice President for Special Government Programs at Blackwater U.S.A. Throughout his Agency career and post-retirement work in support of the U.S. Intelligence Community, Mr. Prado has developed a substantial network of intelligence operations officers, investigators, and military and police officer contacts worldwide. He now brings these resources to Falken Industries."
     *) jwidc.com/people/crosshatch (accessed: October 8, 2014): "[He] served as the Deputy Chief on the original Osama bin Laden Task Force [back in 1996]... As Chief of Operations in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center (CTC) after the September 11th attacks, Mr. Prado coordinated special operations (SPECOPS) activities with the National Security Council and FBI, as well as with elite U.S. military representatives from DELTA and SEAL-Team Six, then detailed to CIA."
359. 2010, Charlotte Dennett, 'The People V. Bush: One Lawyer's Campaign to Bring the President to Justice', pp. 182-183: "In January, 2003, the CIA's Robert Richer had his British counterpart, Michael Shipster, meet secretly in Jordan with Saddam's head of intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Takriti. At the meeting, Habbush declared point-blank that if the U.S. invaded, it would find no WMDs. When word of this got back to Washington, Bush reportedly muttered, "Why don't they [the British] ask him to give us something we can use to help us make our case?"211 That "something" would eventually materialize in the fall of 2003. As suskind describes it, "[in September, 2003] the White House orders the CIA to have a letter fabricated from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July, 2001, which solves the hite House's political problems." The letter linked al-Qaeda's Mohamed Atta (one of the 9/11 hijackers[ringleader]) to Saddam Hussein. As the feoreign correspondent for Britain's Daily Telegraph reported, "Now ths is really concrete proof that al Qaeda was working with Saddam. ... It basically says that Atta was in Baghdad being trained under Saddam's guidance prior to the 9/11 attack. It's a very explosive development." In fact, it was a forgery. Meanwhile, we now know (thanks to the DOJ's release of the torture memos in April, 2009) that during the month of March, 2003--in the days leading up to the war in Iraq--al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (known as KSM) was waterboarded 183 times. He was also beaten continuously, suspended from the ceiling by his arms for eight hours a day..."
360. November 17, 2007, New York Times, 'Brothers, Bad Blood and the Blackwater Tangle': "The concern about a conflict resulted Friday in the resignation of Alvin B. Krongard--Buzzy--from the Blackwater advisory board he had just joined. Alvin Krongard, 71, who left a $4 million-a-year job in investment banking to serve in top posts at the Central Intelligence Agency from 1998 to 2004, played what he describes as a routine role as an intermediary in helping Blackwater get its first big security contract from the agency for guards in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Howard Krongard, 66, a former general counsel at the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche who took the State Department job in 2005, was grilled this week by House Democrats. They accused Mr. Krongard (who does not use his nickname professionally, as his brother does) of alienating his staff and improperly interfering in investigations, including a Justice Department inquiry into allegations of weapons smuggling by Blackwater employees."
361. *) October 9, 2001, Michael Ruppert for From the Wilderness, 'Suppressed details of criminal insider trading lead directly into the CIA's highest ranks; CIA executive director "Buzzy" Krongard managed firm that handled "put" options on UAL [United Airlines]'
     *) Based on: September 29, 2001, San Francisco Gate, 'Suspicious profits sit uncollected / Airline investors seem to be lying low': "The source familiar with the United [Airlines] trades identified Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of the options. Rohini Pragasam, a bank spokeswoman, declined comment. Investigators' attentions previously had been drawn to Germany because of the residence there earlier in the year of some of the principal suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks and unusual patterns in the short-selling of insurance, airline and other financial company stocks there prior to the attacks."".
362. *) 2011, Jeremy Scahill, 'Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army', p. 108: "[Krongard] won't reveal how he met the CIA director, except to say that it was through "mutual friends.""
     *) June 19, 2014, Chesapeake Energy press release: "Mr. Krongard served as an Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2001 to 2004 and also served as a Counselor to Director of Central Intelligence from February 1998 to March 2001. Prior to such time, Mr. Krongard served in various capacities at Alex.Brown, Incorporated, including as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board. Upon the merger of Alex.Brown with Bankers Trust Corporation in September 1997, Mr. Krongard became Vice Chairman of the Board of Bankers Trust and served in such capacity until joining the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001. ... Mr. Krongard serves as a Member of Board of Trustees of In-Q-Tel, Inc. He has been an independent director of Iridium Communications Inc. since August 9, 2006 and serves as its Member of Government Advisory Board."
363. *) May 15, 1994 dated Alex. Brown Inc. Sec.gov document: "A. B. Krongard, Chairman of the Board. ... A. B. Krongard, Chief Executive Officer and Director, April 25, 1994. ... Benjamin H. Griswold IV Director April 25, 1994..."
     *) March 29, 1994 dated Alex. Brown Inc. Sec.gov document: "Benjamin H. Griswold IV, 53, Chairman and Director. A. B. Krongard, 57, Vice Chairman, Chief Executive Officer. ... Alex. Brown Incorporated (together with its subsidiaries, the "Company"), incorporated in 1986, is a holding company which is the successor to the investment banking business founded in 1800 by Alexander Brown. The firm began operating in partnership form in approximately 1805 and continued in that form until 1984 when the firm's investment banking business was transferred to Alex. Brown & Sons Incorporated ("Alex. Brown"), the Company's principal operating subsidiary. ... Mr. Griswold was first employed by the Partnership in 1967 and became a general partner in 1972. Mr. Griswold was Vice-Chairman of Alex. Brown from 1984 until February 1987 when he became Chairman of Alex. Brown and the Company. Mr. Krongard was first employed by the Partnership in 1971 and became a general partner in 1980. He has been a Managing Director of Alex. Brown since 1984 and was elected Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chairman of the Company and Alex. Brown in July 1991."
364. May 15, 2005, New York Times, 'Family Business, 200 Years Later': "New voyages often begin in familiar harbors. Just ask Benjamin H. Griswold IV, who retired last month as the senior chairman of Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown. Mr. Griswold, 64, represents the seventh generation of his family to have worked at the financial institution, known as Alex. Brown & Sons until it merged with Bankers Trust in 1997. Deutsche Bank bought the combined company two years later. Although he has left the company that his great-great-great-great-grandfather, the Irish-born, Baltimore-based shipping magnate Alexander Brown, founded more than 200 years ago, Mr. Griswold has joined a firm it created and spun off. He was recently named chairman of the two main operating units of Brown Advisory, an investment firm based in Baltimore. It was founded by Alex. Brown & Sons in 1993 and acquired five years later by some former Alex. Brown executives - including Mr. Griswold."
365. September 19, 2001, CBS News, 'Profiting From Disaster?': "Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market. An extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines stock price would fall. The trades are called "puts" and they involved at least 450,000 shares of American. But what raised the red flag is more than 80 percent of the orders were "puts", far outnumbering "call" options, those betting the stock would rise. Sources say they have never seen that kind of imbalance before, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. Normally the numbers are fairly even. After the terrorist attacks, American Airline stock price did fall obviously by 39 percent, and according to sources, that translated into well over $5 million total profit for the person or persons who bet the stock would fall. ... At least one Wall Street firm reported their suspicions about this activity to the SEC shortly after the attack. The same thing happened with United Airlines on the Chicago Board Options Exchange four days before the attack. An extremely unbalanced number of trades betting United’s stock price would fall — also transformed into huge profits when it did after the hijackings. "We can directly work backwards from a trade on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange. The trader is linked to a brokerage firm. The brokerage firm received the order to buy that ‘put’ option from either someone within a brokerage firm speculating, or from one of the customers," said Randall Dodd of the Economic Strategy Institute. U.S. investigators want to know whether Osama bin Laden was the ultimate "inside trader" — profiting from a tragedy he’s suspected of masterminding to finance his operation. Authorities are also investigating possibly suspicious trading in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Japan."
366. September 29, 2001, San Francisco Gate, 'Suspicious profits sit uncollected / Airline investors seem to be lying low': "Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades and market data. The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors -- whose identities and nationalities have not been made public -- had advance knowledge of the strikes. "Usually, if someone has a windfall like that, you take the money and run," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Whoever did this thought the exchange would not be closed for four days. "This smells real bad." The source and others in the financial industry speculate that the purchaser or purchasers -- having initially assumed the money could be picked up without detection -- now fear exposure, or that the account has been frozen. The markets were closed for four days after the attack, giving investigators time to notice the anomalous trades. Securities regulators and law-enforcement agents throughout the United States and Europe are investigating unusual patterns in short sales and the purchase of "put" options, both of which are financial-market bets that the price of a given stock will fall. Authorities here and abroad have not publicly disclosed any conclusions they have reached and refuse to discuss the case. There was an unusually large jump in purchases of put options on the stocks of UAL Corp. and AMR Corp. in the three business days before the attack on major options exchanges in the United States. On one day, UAL put option purchases were 25 times greater than the year-to-date average. In the month before the attacks, short sales jumped by 40 percent for UAL and 20 percent for American. A put option gives the buyer a right to sell the underlying security at a certain price on a certain date; the purchaser profits when the share price drops lower than the agreed sale price. In a short sale, an investor borrows stock from a broker and sells it, hoping to buy it back at a lower price. October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each. Those options are now selling at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called "put" options outstanding, according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp. ... Meanwhile, in Herzliya, Israel, a group headed by former Israeli intelligence officials -- the Interdisciplinary Center, a counter-terrorism think tank -- has issued a report on Osama bin Laden's finances ("Black Tuesday: The World's Largest Insider Trading Scam?") saying insiders profited by nearly $16 million. The money was made on Sept. 6, 7 and 10 in transactions involving United, American, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co., the center said. Morgan Stanley occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center; Merrill Lynch's headquarters offices were nearby. The figure excluded other unusual trades involving insurance companies with significant exposure to damage claims resulting from the attacks. These include Munich Re of Germany, which expects to pay out more than $1.5 billion, and the AXA Group, a French firm, which could be on the hook for $550 million. A spokesman for the Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment on a New York Times report yesterday that the SEC had found "benign" explanations for the trading activity.
367. June 2, 2002, Newsmax, 'Still Silence From 9-11 Stock Speculation Probe': "Within a month of 9-11, the SEC, acting in concert with the Department of Justice, distributed a target list of 38 stocks to securities firms around the world looking for information about who might have profited by at least apparent pre-knowledge of the aerial attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. To date there has not been a public word from any agency as to whether they have snagged anyone. According to market analysts, the investment of choice by someone with pre-knowledge of the catastrophe would be a type of market speculation involving so-called "put" options. Simplified, a put is a bet that a particular stock will go down. The two most obvious stocks for such speculation by anyone with "insider" dope on the attacks are American and United airlines, the two hapless carriers that had planes hijacked and used as aerial bombs. Both carriers are on the SEC list, which includes among others: Continental, Northwest, Southwest, USAirways, Lockheed Martin, John Hancock, MetLife, General Motors, Raytheon, W.R. Grace, Lone Star Technologies, American Express, the Bank of New York, Bank One, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley. Those in the industry are speculating themselves – and the best bet so far is that the official silence by the investigating agencies is owing to a lack of much to report. As FBI Director Robert Mueller has conceded, precious little -- if any -- paper trail concerning the hijackers themselves has been detected after eight months of investigation. It would be surprising, therefore, that an alternate paper trail of illicit profits in the market would be any less elusive. Furthermore, market experts say that the history of pre-Sept. 11 "puts" in the key United and American stocks indicates nothing unusual and netted investors what is deemed by industry experts as only modest profits as those two stocks fell predictably. On Sept. 6, 2001 2,075 put options were made on United Airlines, and on the day before the attacks, 2,282 put options were made on American Airlines. Using the United transaction as an example -- the 2,075 put options, with each put option representing 100 shares of stock -- indicates that someone controlled 207,500 shares of United. The stock dropped from $31 to $18, giving the speculator a $13 profit. The action in the American Airlines is equally unspectacular – at least by industry standards where the big players may pick up or drop hundreds of millions in such transactions. Between United and American, about $22 million in profits was made on the put options. Business As Usual Not only does the relatively modest action belie some daring market conspiracy by those in touch with terror plans, but the pre-Sept. 11 market history is also consistent, more or less, with business as usual. Adam Hamilton of Zeal LLC, a consulting company that does research on markets worldwide, has crunched the numbers and recently told Insight magazine: "The market was in bad shape in the summer and early fall, and you know there were a lot of people who believed that there would be a sell-off in the market long before Sept. 11. For instance, American Airlines was at $40 in May and fell to $29 on Sept. 10; United was at $37 in May and fell to $31 on Sept. 10. These stocks were falling anyway, and it would have been a good time to short them." The downward trend in the airline stocks was backed up in the pre-Sept. 11 trading picture. Insight reported that there were repeated spikes in put options on American Airlines during the year before Sept. 11 (June 19 with 2,951 puts, June 15 with 1,144 puts, April 16 with 1,019 and Jan. 8 with 1,315 puts). In the same period, United Airlines had slightly more action (Aug. 8 with 1,678 puts, July 20 with 2,995, April 6 with 8,212 and March 13 with 8,072). With United and American stock transactions, and across the board, there is an automated system called the CBOE Market Surveillance System, which automatically records information trades. The existence of this sophisticated surveillance system, designed to ferret out inside-traders, would have given federal investigators a pretty quick look at what, if anything, was untoward in the market just prior to 9-11. All the more reason to wonder what’s going on and taking so long, say the experts. And it is not just the SEC and FBI that is still mired in the 9-11 profiteering probe. Japan, Germany, the U.K., France, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Spain have their own investigations running. Like their U.S. counterparts, nothing has been forthcoming. So far, the only break in the silence has been the apparent impromptu courtroom outburst of assistant U.S. attorney Kenneth Breen, who recently accused Amr Ibrahim Elgindy, an Egyptian-born stockbroker on trial in San Diego, with knowing in advance about 9-11 and capitalizing on the insider information by attempting to unload $300,000 worth of shares on Sept. 10, 2001. In court Breen charged that on the afternoon of Sept. 10, Elgindy contacted his broker at Salomon Smith Barney and asked him to sell the stock, confiding in the broker that the Dow Jones industrial average, which at the time stood at about 9,600, would soon dive to below 3,000. Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics."
368. September 24, 2001, Miami Herald, ''Insider trading' by terrorists is suspected in Europe': "The president of Germany's central bank said Saturday there was mounting evidence that people connected to the attacks in New York and Washington sought to profit from the tragedy by engaging in "terrorism insider trading'' on European stock and commodity markets. Bundesbank chief Ernst Welteke said a preliminary review by German regulators and bank researchers showed there were highly suspicious sales of shares in airlines and insurance companies, along with major trades in gold and oil markets, before Sept. 11 that suggest they were conducted with advance knowledge of the attacks. Welteke said his researchers came across what he considers almost irrefutable proof of insider trading as recently as Thursday, but he refused to release any detailed information pending further consultation with regulators in Europe and the United States. "What we found makes us sure that people connected to the terrorists must have been trying to profit from this tragedy,'' he told European finance ministers and central bankers. Besides massive short-selling of airline and insurance stocks, Welteke said "there was a fundamentally inexplicable rise'' in world oil prices just before the attacks that suggest certain groups or people were buying oil contracts that were then sold for a much higher price. He said German researchers also detected movements in gold markets "which need explaining.'' "If you look at the movements in markets before and after the attacks, it really makes your brow furrow,'' Welteke said. "It is extremely difficult to really verify it, but we are confident we will be able to pinpoint the source in at least one or two cases.'' The comments by the central bank chief of Europe's biggest economy were the first public confirmation that regulators were close to proving that groups linked to the U.S. attacks sought to reap windfall gains by exploiting their advance knowledge through trades in international markets. Welteke's announcement stunned the finance ministers and central bankers, who met in the eastern Belgian city of Liege this weekend to discuss plans to introduce the first notes and coins of the euro, Europe's single currency, at the end of the year. Their agenda was dominated instead by economic fallout from the attacks. They agreed on an emergency plan to help European airlines pay for insurance, averting a possible shutdown by European airlines on Monday. While ruling our direct government aid, banned under EU rules, finance ministers agreed to allow governments to act as guarantors for the airlines for at least a month, Bloomberg News reported. Financial authorities in Europe said their scrutiny of stock sales is part of a broader inquiry into the global dealings of Osama bin Laden, who is widely suspected as the mastermind of the terror bombings."
369. See note 465.
370. See note 466.
371. September 19, 2003, Chicago Sun-Times, 'No profiteering on terror attacks': "Somewhere out there are hedge funds or individual investors who profited from the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. But they had no foreknowledge of the catastrophes, an FBI spokesman said Thursday. Spokesman Ed Cogswell said the FBI has closed its investigation of stock and option trading that took place days before the attacks. He said the investigation turned up "absolutely no evidence'' of anyone with inside knowledge of what would happen. After the attacks, in which terrorists commandeered planes owned by the two biggest airlines, United and American, traders in the Chicago options market noticed suspicious pre-Sept. 11 spikes in volume. Put options for stocks in the airlines' parent companies, UAL Corp. and AMR Corp., registered huge trading increases in the week before the attacks. Investors can use puts, which confer the right to sell a stock at a pre-determined price, to make money when the underlying share price falls, similar to shorting a stock. The terrorist attacks and their effect on the travel industry caused shares of UAL and AMR to fall dramatically when the markets reopened Sept. 17. Cogswell said most of the options trading was carried out by hedge funds with bearish outlooks. He did not name any of the funds, which pursue risky investment strategies on behalf of wealthy clients. Market regulators in other countries opened similar investigations after the attacks, but Cogswell said he believes all have been concluded with no evidence that allies of Osama bin Laden were involved. He said the FBI interviewed trading professionals and other witnesses, sharing its findings with the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission. On Sept. 10, 2001, put options on AMR were 17 times their average volume of 269 contracts. On Sept. 6, 2001, UAL put options were traded at more than four times their average volume of 711 contracts. At the same time, some experts cautioned that because of the light volume in most option contracts, an increase can seem eye-popping. London regulators thought they had something in the short-selling of big airline stocks before Sept. 11, but traced the activity to one of their small competitors."
372. September 13, 2013, financial journalist Lars Schall for Asia Times, '9/11: Currency joins insider trades claims': "In March 2012, Asia Times Online published my report of a special investigation that took a critical look at the issue of informed trading prior to the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States (see Insider trading 9/11 ... the facts laid bare). I concluded at the time that there could be no dispute that speculative trade in put options - a contract in which the option purchaser bets that a stock will drop in value by a specified date - spiked in the days around 9/11 - even if the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the 9/11 Commission will not say so. More than a few people must have had advance warning of the terror attacks, and they cashed in to the tune of millions of dollars. Yet, the SEC concluded that this never happened. So I forwarded three weeks ago for this article the following inquiry to the SEC press department:
     'Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, My name is Lars Schall, I am a financial journalist from Germany for Asia Times Online, Hong Kong. I write to you related to the findings of the 2002 Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of informed trading connected to the 9/11 terror attacks. The SEC review - entitled "Pre-September 11, 2001 Trading Review" - states, "We have not developed any evidence that suggests that those who had advance knowledge of the attacks traded on the basis of that information. In every instance where we noticed unusual trading before the attack, we were able to determine, either through speaking directly with those responsible for the trading, or by reviewing trading records, that the trading was consistent with a legitimate trading strategy." However, there are three scientific papers that come to very different conclusions: Allen M Poteshman: "Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001", published in The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, 2006, Vol 79, Edition 4, page 1703-1726. Marc Chesney, Remo Crameri and Loriano Mancini: "Detecting Informed Trading Activities in the Option Markets", University of Zurich, April 2010, online here. Wing-Keung Wong, Howard E. Thompson und Kweehong Teh: "Was there Abnormal Trading in the S&P 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacks?", published at Social Sciences Research Network, April 2010, see here. Please let me summarize them for you just briefly. In the first scientific study which had been carried out in 2006 regarding the put option trading around 9/11 related to the two airlines involved, United Airlines and American Airlines, US economist Allen M Poteshman from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign came to this conclusion: "Examination of the option trading leading up to September 11 reveals that there was an unusually high level of put buying. This finding is consistent with informed investors having traded options in advance of the attacks." Another scientific study was conducted by the economists Wong Wing-Keung (Hong Kong Baptist University, HKBU), Kweehong Teh (National University of Singapore, NUS), and Howard E Thompson (University of Wisconsin), whose findings were published in April 2010 under the title "Was there Abnormal Trading in the S&P 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacks?" The authors looked at the Standard & Poor's 500 Index (SPX Index Options), in particular with a focus on strategies emanating from a bear market. Basically, Wong, Thompson and Teh came to the conclusion "that our findings show that there was a significant abnormal increase in the trading volume in the option market just before the 9-11 attacks in contrast with the absence of abnormal trading volume far before the attacks". More specifically, they stated, "Our findings from the out-of-the-money (OTM), at-the-money (ATM) and in-the-money (ITM) SPX index put options and ITM SPX index call options lead us to reject the null hypotheses that there was no abnormal trading in these contracts before September 11th." Instead, they found evidence for "abnormal trading volume in OTM, ATM and ITM SPX index put options" for September 2001, and also in "ITM-SPX index call options" for the same month. "In addition, we find that there was evidence of abnormal trading in the September 2001 OTM, ATM and ITM SPX index put options immediately after the 9-11 attacks and before the expiration date. This suggests that owning a put was a valuable investment and those who owned them could sell them for a considerable profit before the expiration date." From all of this, they took the position that whilst they couldn't definitively prove that insiders were active in the market, "our results provide credible circumstantial evidence to support the insider trading claim". Moreover, the review of the SEC from 2002 states that the SEC looked at "broad and narrow indices". However, as Prof Paul Zarembka from the State University of New York, who has specialized in econometrics, pointed out in an interview with me for Asia Times Online related to the study of abnormal trading in the S&P 500 index options prior to the 9/11 attacks: "What is very interesting about their results is that the underlying reports that were made available to the 9/11 Commission (which we didn't see until later) say that they could not examine the S&P 500 index options because trading in it is too extensive. Now why that becomes interesting is because the 9/11 Commission report had said that they made a wide-ranging study and they found no evidence of any sort of financial irregularities before 9/11, but also said the S&P 500 index options couldn't even be investigated - so the commission is kind of contradicting itself. "And more than that, when some did investigate the S&P 500 index options, they find out that in fact it did have abnormal trading before 9/11, with high probability." (See: "Economists are scared" by Lars Schall, Asia Times Online, April 27, 2012.) Different to the assessment of the SEC review of 2002 is also the scientific work that Chesney, Mancini and Crameri had published in April 2010 at the University of Zurich, "Detecting Informed Trading Activities in the option markets". In the segment that is dedicated to the terror attacks of 9/11, the three authors come to the conclusion, that there had been notable insider trading shortly before the terrorist attacks on September 11 that was based on prior knowledge. Without elaborating on the detailed explanation of the mathematical and statistical method which the scientific trio applied during the examination of the put option transactions on the CBOE for the period between 1996 and 2006, I summarize some of their significant conclusions. "Companies like American Airlines, United Airlines, Boeing" - the latter company is a contractor of the two airlines as aircraft manufacturer - "and to a lesser extent, Delta Air Lines and KLM seem to have been targets for informed trading activities in the period leading up to the attacks. The number of new put options issued during that period is statistically high and the total gains realized by exercising these options amount to more than $16 million. These findings support the results by Poteshman (2006) who also reports unusual activities in the option market before the terrorist attacks." In the banking sector, Chesney, Crameri and Mancini found five informed trading activities in connection to 9/11. "For example the number of new put options with underlying stock in Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch issued in the days before the terrorist attacks was at an unusually high level. The realized gains from such trading strategies are around $11 million." In a new version of their study that was published on September 7, 2011, the authors stuck to their findings from April 2010. They added the emphasis that in no way the profits gained with the put options to which they point could have been achieved due to sheer fortunate coincidence, but that in fact they were based on prior knowledge which had been exploited. My question: How does the SEC comment on these scientific studies and their findings that contradict the assertion of the SEC (and subsequently that of the 9/11 Commission) that no individuals used foreknowledge to profit from the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Furthermore, may I ask you for information concerning your response to a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the pre-9/11 put options that was submitted by David Callahan, the executive editor at that time of SmartCEO. The SEC responded: "This letter is in response to your request seeking access to and copies of the documentary evidence referred to in footnote 130 of Chapter 5 of the September 11 (9/11) Commission Report. (...) We have been advised that the potentially responsive records have been destroyed." My question: Why did the SEC destroy its records on the 9/11 insider trading issue? Thank you for your attention! Kind regards, Lars Schall.'
     The response of the SEC to my inquiry was ... well, to make a short story even shorter: there was none. Thus, the issue remains pretty much unresolved - and should be treated in the field of research as a dramatic gap in the official narrative of the event going forward."
373. Ibid. Photocopy f the letter swirls around on the internet.
374. Ibid.
375. September 13, 2013, Lars Schall for Asia Times, '9/11: Currency joins insider trades claims': "Another field of 9/11 research that deserves more attention is the issue of an astounding increase in currency in circulation a few weeks prior to 9/11. Connected to this question is also the case of William Bergman, a former senior financial market analyst at the Federal Reserve. He explained to me in an interview that I had published in September 2012 what caught his eye in terms of the M1 money supply increase of the US dollar in July / August 2001: "Specifically, the currency component of M1 caught my eye, because while working on a money laundering project in late 2003 I noticed an extraordinarily rapid increase in the data for July / August 2001. "The currency component of M1 is a measure of currency circulating outside of banks. ... (T)he currency component of M1 is cash - Federal Reserve Notes - circulating outside of banks. It can go up because people withdraw cash out of their bank accounts. "As of late 2003, when I was working on this stuff at the Fed, from June to August 2001, this measure (in the non-seasonally adjusted data) posted the largest growth rate for a June to August 2001 since World War II. In the seasonally adjusted data (data adjusted for seasonal monthly trends), August 2001 was the third fastest growing single month in the 650-plus months since World War II, trailing only December 1999 (Y2K, along with other relevant things) and January 1991 (the onset of US military action in Iraq, as well as an important enforcement month in the BCCI money laundering scandal). "It also seems curious that January 2000 turned up as the fourth fastest growing month, and November 1980 as the fifth fastest growing month, since World War II." LS: Did you ring the alarm? WB: Well, not exactly. But I had also noticed that the Federal Reserve Board had issued a non-routine supervisory letter to the Reserve Banks on August 2, 2001, urging them to continue to scrutinize suspicious activity reports. This letter arrived during the surge in currency shipments related to the data above, as well as a spike upward in the number of suspicious activity reports being filed by depository institutions. Terrorism and its financing were not mentioned specifically in the letter, but they were known to be part of the realm of suspicious activity. In a draft primer I was writing on money laundering, I asked why the Board issued this letter, and was asked to answer the question. I called Board staff in a relevant area, asked if it was related to any intelligence warnings of a heightened risk of a terrorist attack, and was planning (in good conscience, not in a "gotcha" sort of way) to talk about the currency shipments and the need to investigate them for relationships to the events of 9/11. LS: What happened to you afterwards? WB: The call was shorter than I expected. A week later my money laundering assignment was terminated, and I lost my credentials for access to confidential information. A month later my position in the bank was eliminated. LS: Thank you. On August 28, I wrote for this article the following media inquiry to Michelle Smith, a senior spokesperson for the Federal Reserve Board in Washington D.C.: 'Dear Ms Smith, My name is Lars Schall, I am a financial journalist for Asia Times Online in Hong Kong. Related to an investigation that I am conducting I became aware of this anomaly in USD currency production in the summer of 2001. The graph shows the change over a ten-week period prior to 9/11 ($18 billion vs $8 billion): [GRAPH] May I ask you on behalf of the Federal Reserve for an official explanation, please? May I also ask you why William Bergman was fired as a Federal Reserve economist after he discovered this anomaly? Kind regards, Lars Schall.' The response of the Federal Reserve in Washington DC equaled the Arabic number of zero. On the same day I showed that graph also to Jack Gutt at the New York Federal Reserve’s press office in order to ask him afterwards: "May I ask you on behalf of the Federal Reserve (New York) for an official explanation, please? Apparently, most of this anomaly occurred at the NY Fed." The response of NY Fed was zero as well."
376. See note 466.
377. November 9, 2004, New York Times, 'Judge in Stock Adviser's Trial Bars Testimony on Terrorism': "For five days, jurors have seen dozens of e-mail messages, a litany of Internet chat room logs and countless company reports as federal prosecutors presented their conspiracy case against Anthony Elgindy [changed his name from Amr Ibrahim Elgindy], the San Diego stock adviser accused of obtaining illegal information from an F.B.I agent to manipulate the stock market. But they will not hear evidence supporting an assertion that prosecutors once made suggesting that Mr. Elgindy might have had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a judge said yesterday. ... Mr. Cleveland was allowed to continue with his testimony, recounting how he learned that Mr. Elgindy was a subject in a criminal investigation. Mr. Cleveland said that Jeffrey A. Royer, an F.B.I. agent who was the source of that information and a defendant in the case, told him that investigators were looking into $6 million that Mr. Elgindy had liquidated from two brokerage companies, Charles Schwab and Salomon Smith Barney, shortly before Sept. 11. Mr. Royer also relayed information that the government was examining the money Mr. Elgindy gave to Mercy International, which Mr. Breen described as a "Middle Eastern charity." "
378. Ibid.
379. *) DueDil.com: "Mercy International Relief Agency Limited was founded on 16 Dec 1992 and has its registered office in Dublin 4. The organisation's status is listed as "Dissolved" and it had 7 directors at the time it closed. It was founded by Waheed Almasry, Faisal Alahmadi, Abdalaziz Farsi, Dr Safar Alhawali, Dr Abdallah Aldomaiji, Dr Mohamed Said Algahtani, Dr Soliman Alsaloomi. Mercy International Relief Agency Limited does not have any subsidiaries."
     *) February 23, 2002, The Guardian, 'Terrorist material found in Sarajevo charity raid': "Since September 11, Saudi-funded charities in half a dozen countries have been linked to al-Qaida. Mercy International Relief Agency, registered as a company in Dublin in 1992 by six Saudi dissident academics, was used by the cell which bombed the US embassy in Kenya in 1998. Nato suspicions about the presence of an al-Qaida cell in Bosnia were triggered when US intelligence discovered that one of the six men arrested, Bensayah Belkacem, had been making telephone calls to Bin Laden's operations chief in Afghanistan, Abu Zubayah. Numerous blank western passports were found at Belkacem's house in the central town of Zenica."
     *) November 22, 2002, US District Court for the District of Columbia, case no. 1:02CV01616(JR), pp. 300, 373-376: "Two officers from Taibah International’s United States branch, Samir Salah and Abdulrahman al-Amoudi (or "al-Amoudi"), play a large role with United States organizations that have come under scrutiny for their ties to al Qaeda. Both of them are officers of a number of organizations in the SAAR Network. Abdulrahman al-Amoudi, Taibah’s Vice-President, is a past employee of the SAAR Foundation, the hub of the SAAR Network, and currently heads a few SAAR Network charities. Al-Amoudi also runs the United States operations of the Saudibased International Islamic Relief Organization. Samir Salah, Taibah’s Secretary, serves as a director at many SAAR Network organizations, including CFO at Piedmont Poultry. Samir Salah also managed the Caribbean branch of the Bank al-Taqwa. ... In September 1998, the Kenyan government canceled the registration of five Islamic relief agencies for allegedly supporting terrorism including Defendant Al-Haramain Foundation, Help African People, the Islamic Relief Organization, the Ibrahim bin Abdul Aziz Al Ibrahim Foundation, and Mercy Relief International. The authorities claimed that materials for the bomb were smuggled in as relief aid with the help of Islamic relief agencies. ... The Saudi-backed Mercy International Relief Agency (a/k/a Mercy International, a/k/a Mercy) (or "MIRA") was incorporated in Dublin, Ireland in 1992 with the ostensible purpose of embarking on charitable activities around the world. All the incorporators of the charity are all of Saudi nationality and listed their address at Makkah, Saudi Arabia. MIRA also has branches in Somalia and Kenya. Its Dublin branch dissolved on January 16, 1998. 614. MIRA is funded by Saudi businessmen. During the trial of Osama bin Laden’s personally secretary Wadih el-Hage, convicted for his role in the 1998 United States Embassy bombings in East Africa, Wadih el-Hage’s testimony before a grand jury establishes that MIRA was funded by "Saudi merchants". ... An al Qaeda member maintained that MIRA was an al Qaeda charity. L’Houssaine Kherchtou, a 36-year old Moroccan, joined al Qaeda in 1991. He affirmed this in his testimony as a government witness in the United States Embassy bombings trial. He worked for al Qaeda in Kenya, and noted specifically that MIRA served and sponsored al Qaeda’s purposes. In his testimony, Kherchtou asserted that several al Qaeda members were workers at MIRA, received identity cards from MIRA, and that the organization was dealing directly with Osama bin Laden himself. ... [witness:] Q. Who were those people? Which al Qaeda people were dealing with Mercy International? A. Bin Laden, Mohammad Masry. Q. Are you talking about the military commander? A. Yes. Q. Abu Mohammad, are you talking about Saleh lay again? A. Yes. Q. Were there any people inside Mercy International who were part of al Qaeda in the past or the present? A. Well, in the past Abu Jamal he was the manager of that relief agency but he was in the past of al Qaeda. Q. You said Abu Jamal? A. Yes. Q. Anyone else in Mercy International who was a member of al Qaeda in the past or while in Kenya? A. The accountant of Mercy International, too, he was of al Qaeda but in the past his name Abu al Kheryemeni. ... Q. Did you ever hear whether or not al Qaeda members in Nairobi obtained identification cards from Mercy International Relief agency? A. Yes. Q. Who did you hear obtained those cards? A. I heard that Abu Mohammed Amriki and Bin Laden they had identity card. ... FBI Agent John Michael Anticev interviewed Mohammed Odeh, who was convicted for his role in the 1998 Embassy bombings. Mr. Anticev testified that Mohammed Odeh explained to him that MIRA was working for al Qaeda. ... The individual referred to above as Tawhili [running MIRA] is also known as Sheikh Ahmad Salem Suweidan, one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists. Therefore, a fugitive al Qaeda member ran MIRA at all relevant points up to the Embassy bombings. ... Documents found in MIRA’s branch in Dublin link the charity to Zacarias Moussaoui. Travel documents found in a raid at a flat which served as one of MIRA’s offices in Dublin are linked to forged documents used by alleged 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, criminally charged in the September 11, 2001 attacks. The documents relate to air travel financed by Mustafa Ahmed al Hisawi, an alleged paymaster of September 11th. The documents show that Moussaoui’s travel was financed by Hisawi. FBI agents maintain that the evidence found at MIRA’s office "proves ‘without a shadow of a doubt’ that Moussaoui is linked to Osama bin Laden." 623. Dr. Safar Alhawali, Dr. Soliman Alsaloomi, Dr. Mohamed Said Alghtani (a/k/a Alghatani, Al-Qohtany), Dr. Abdallah Aldomaiji (a/k/a Aldonaji), Abdalaziz Farsi, Faisal Alahmadi, and Waheed Almasry were co-conspirators, aiders and abettors, agents of MIRA and material sponsors of international terrorism. ... Abdurahman Alamoudi, the Secretary of the Success Foundation, has openly stated his support for HAMAS and Hizbollah, both designated terrorist organizations."
380. 2000, Richard Labeviere, 'Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam', p. 364.
381. See note 373.
382. October 16, 2004, Washington Post, 'Muslim Activist Sentenced to 23 Years for Libya Contacts': "A federal judge yesterday sentenced Muslim activist Abdurahman Alamoudi to the maximum 23-year prison term for illegal dealings with Libya that included his involvement in a complex plot to kill the Saudi ruler. ... His attorneys urged a lighter sentence, portraying Alamoudi, as a minor player in the scheme to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. ... "He saw an opportunity make a buck in a murder-for-hire plot," Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven P. Ward said. ... The sentence marked the final downfall of one of America's best-known Muslim activists -- a former head of the American Muslim Council who met with senior Clinton and Bush administration officials in his efforts to bolster Muslim political prominence. Alamoudi, 53, of Falls Church also helped found the Pentagon's Muslim chaplain program and was involved in a variety of other Islamic political and charitable organizations. ... Born in Eritrea, Alamoudi is a naturalized U.S. citizen who automatically lost his citizenship when he pleaded guilty to engaging in prohibited transactions with Libya, along with tax and immigration counts. Court documents said the assassination plot arose from a March 2003 conference at which Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and Prince Abdullah had a heated exchange. Angered at how Gaddafi was treated, Libyan officials recruited Alamoudi. Even after he learned that the target was Abdullah, Alamoudi shuttled money and messages between Libyan officials and the two Saudi dissidents in London, the documents said. Although Gaddafi is not named as a planner, sources familiar with the case have said he appears in the documents as "Libyan government official #5," who met personally with Alamoudi."
383. April 27, 2022, CBS News, 'Newly released video shows 9/11 hijackers with alleged Saudi intelligence operative'.
384. July 31, 2003, The Guardian, 'Saudis to let CIA interview 9/11 suspect': "The Saudi government has bowed to US pressure to let the FBI and CIA interrogate a mysterious figure at the heart of the September 11 investigation: a suspected Saudi intelligence agent who befriended and helped two of the hijackers in America. Omar al-Bayoumi's role in the events leading up to September 11 plot was highlighted by a congressional report on the attacks released last week. Some of the section on him was deleted "in the interests of national security" but it says the FBI concluded that he had "connections to terrorist elements". Mr Bayoumi, who is employed by the Saudi civil aviation authority, left the US to study at Aston University in Birmingham two months before September 11. He was questioned there by British and US officials, but was released and allowed to leave the country under circumstances that remain unclear. According to a report in Newsweek this week, the Saudi embassy may have intervened. The report has revealed further information about his links to the hijackers, and the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, asked the visiting Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, to make him available for questioning. He is likely to be interviewed in Saudi Arabia in the presence of Saudi officials.
     The congressional report says he visited the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles in January 2000, and then went straight to a restaurant where he met two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar. He told investigators that it was a chance encounter, but the report says: "According to several FBI agents, the meeting at the restaurant may not have been accidental. "In fact, the FBI's written response to the joint enquiry refers to the restaurant encounter as a 'somewhat suspicious meeting with the hijackers.' "According to another person the FBI interviewed after September 11, al-Bayoumi said before his trip that he was going to Los Angeles to pick up visitors." It is unclear whom he met at the Saudi consulate before going to the restaurant, but Newsweek said US officials believe it was Fahad al-Thumairy, a member of its Islamic and cultural affairs section, who was stripped of his diplomatic visa and barred from the US on suspicion of having links with terrorism. Mr Bayoumi looked after the two hijackers when they moved to San Diego in February 2000, allowing them to stay in his flat until he found them one of their own. He co-signed their lease and paid their first month's rent and security deposit.
     The congressional report said: "Despite the fact that he was a student, al-Bayoumi had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia." At one point he delivered $400,000 (£250,000) to buy a mosque in San Diego for the Saudi government. The report added: "One of the FBI's best sources in San Diego informed the FBI that he thought that al-Bayoumi must be an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power." Ali al-Ahmed, a dissident at the Saudi Institute in Washington, said Mr Bayoumi exhibited "classic Saudi intelligence officer's behaviour". He was frequently seen at gatherings of Saudi expatriates in California.
     One connection omitted from the congressional report is a money trail to the wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the US. The FBI discovered that Princess Haifa had given $2,000 a month to the wife of Osama Bassnan, an associate of Mr Bayoumi. Bank documents showed that some of the money was transferred to Mr Bayoumi's wife. When the transactions were revealed earlier this year Princess Haifa angrily denied that she had knowingly supported anyone suspected of terrorist links. The declassified part of the report says that the FBI "developed information clearly indicating that Bassnan is an extremist and a Bin Laden supporter."
     Robert Baer, a former CIA officer and author said: "There are too many Saudis involved in this at every corner for it to be a coincidence." Prince Saud rejected suggestions that Saudi officials could have been involved in the September 11 attacks, saying that the accusers "must have a morbid imagination"."
385. Ibid.
386. Ibid.
387. April 27, 2022, CBS News, 'Newly released video shows 9/11 hijackers with alleged Saudi intelligence operative'.
388. Dec. 16, 2020, wilsoncenter.org, 'Battle Royal over Israel in the House of Saud': "On the other side is Prince Turki al-Faisal, 75, head of Saudi intelligence for 22 years and then ambassador first to Britain and then to the United States. His father, Faisal bin Abdulaziz, was king from 1964 to 1975. The two princes are closely related as Bandar is married to Turki’s sister, Haifa."
389. April 16, 2014, The Guardian, 'End of an era as Prince Bandar departs Saudi intelligence post'.
390. Ibid.: "Known as "Bandar Bush" from his 22 years as Saudi ambassador to the US."
391. *) 2010, Rodney Stich, 'Japanese and U.S. World War II Plunder and Intrigue', p. 244: "The CIA provided part of the startup funding for BCCI. It moved large amounts of money through BCCI during its entire operation. Former CIA Director Richard Helms tried to arrange for the purchase of First American by BCCI and failed. Clark Clifford then sought to arrange the purchase using BCCI front men, obtaining U.S. regulatory approval based upon Clifford’s false representations."
     *) September 15, 1991, Sunday Telegraph, 'Saudi intelligence figure key part of huge BCCI scandal': "Richard Helms, former CIA director and U.S. ambassador to Iran, said Western bank regulators and business don't understand the business culture of the Middle East. Adham probably viewed his relationship with BCCI in the First American takeover as nothing out of the ordinary," he said."
     *) 2005, Joseph J. Trento, 'Prelude to Terror', pp. 99-106: "One of George Bush’s most significant accomplishments in his year as CIA Director was to switch the Agency’s reliance, for regional intelligence, from Israel to Saudi Arabia [in total contrast to Angleton]. … Although Bush has been given much of the responsibility for the shift, in reality he had always been a strong supporter of Israel, despite ties to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that went back to his father and grandfather. During George Bush’s Zapata-Offshore years, he had met most of the Gulf region’s royals and had developed close personal relationships with several of them. … The most important friendship Bush had was with a quiet, dignified man named Sheikh Kamal Adham, Director of Saudi Intelligence, whom Bush had met through his father. Bush has told reporters, "I never met Kamal Adham personally." But according to lawyers for the late Saudi Intelligence head and several officials at the CIA who served under Bush, there were several official meetings inside and outside the United States, both before and after Bush was the DCI. "Bush and Kamal were old friends. I was present when they met in New York when Bush was still United Nations Ambassador," Sarkis Soghanalian said. Bush and Adham shared a fascination with intelligence. Bush also took a deep interest in the Sheikh’s American-educated nephew, HRH Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud. Prince Turki had been the subject of CIA interest ever since his father had sent him to prep school at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. Agency talent spotters on the faculty at Georgetown University kept close track of Turki until he out of Georgetown to return home at the outbreak of the 1967 war with Israel. And later completing his education in England, Turki again returned home to prepare himself to eventually succeed his uncle Kamal Adham as Director of Saudi Intelligence. "On his visits here," Robert Crowley recalled, ‘Agency management made Turki welcome, knowing full well that at some point Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Department [GID] would fall under his control." As a young Saudi bureaucrat, Prince Turki was cultivated by various CIA operatives, including Shackley, Clines, and Terpil. In the early 1970s, when Terpil and Wilson first started operations in Libya, Terpil set Wilson up with a Geneva lawyer named Robert Turrettini, who also handled banking matters for Turki. Terpil told Wilson that he went back years with Turki through Turki’s personal assistant. When Wilson needed financial backing for several large-scale operations, Prince Turki put up the cash. In 1992, Wilson said he shared millions of dollars with Turki in a Swiss bank account from an old operation. Both Prince Turki and Kamal Adham would play enormous roles in servicing a spy network designed to replace the official CIA while it was under Congressional scrutiny between the time of Watergate and the end of the Carter administration. … "Clark Clifford approached Kamal Adham and asked that the Saudis consider setting up an informal intelligence network outside the United States during the investigations," Robert Crowley said. Crowley, in his role as the CIA’s liaison to the corporate world, was privy to the plan, in which worldwide covert operations for the Agency were funded through a host of Saudi banking and charity enterprises. Several top U.S. military and intelligence officials directed the operations from positions they held overseas, notably former CIA Director Richard Helms, at this time Ambassador to Iran. Ed Wilson and his associates supported the network. According to Wilson, Prince Turki was used to finance several of his intelligence operations during this time period. According to Wilson, the amounts were in the millions of dollars. According to Tom Clines, the relationship between the Saudis and the private U.S. intelligence network grew out of the activities of Clines and his colleagues was "vital… these operations were so sensitive, they could not be revealed." Mike Pilgrims, who also played a role in the operations of the private network during the 1980s, said, "It got to the point where we were used to support GID operations when the CIA could not." According to those involved, there was no line drawn between what was official and what became personal business. … [Prince Turki’s admission at Georgetown that he helped set up the Safari Club in 1976] … Turki’s "secret" was that the Saudi royal family had taken over intelligence financing for the United States. It was during this time period that the Saudis opened up a series of covert accounts at Riggs Bank in Washington. Starting in the mid-1970s, bank investigators say, these accounts show that tens of millions of dollars were being transferred between CIA operational accounts and accounts controlled by Saudi companies and the Saudi embassy itself. Turki worked directly with agency operatives like Sarkis Soghanalian and Ed Wilson. "If I needed money for an operation, Prince Turki made it available," Wilson said. … Their [the Saudi’s] interests included keeping the shah in charge in Teheran and keeping an eye out on increasingly militant Libya. … Sarkis Soghanalian was close to Sheikh Kamal Adham during this period. Adham frequently asked Soghanalian "about what kind of shape the shah was in. He complained the CIA was not giving him the full picture of how the shah was losing control." Adham believed that binding Saudi Arabia with the United States would increase the House of Saud’s chances of surviving an Islamic resurgence. "Believe me," Soghanalian said, "Kamal did not do these things out of charity, but survival." Adham worked closely with George Bush on the plan to provide covert banking services for CIA operations. … In 1976, when the CIA needed an influx of cash for operations, Adham agreed to allow Nugan Hand Bank’s Bernie Houghton to open a branch in Saudi Arabia. … Adham understood that creating a single worldwide clandestine bank was not enough to assure the kind of resources necessary to stave off the coming Islamic revolutions that threatened Saudi Arabia and the entire region. The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine, buying banks around the world in order to create the biggest clandestine money network in history. Bush had an account with the BCCI established at the time he was at the CIA. The account was set up at the Paris branch of the bank. [black network reports] … What no one reported at the time was that the bank was being used by the United States and Saudi Arabia as an intelligence front. There had never been anything like it. Paul Helliwell may have made the mold, but Adham and BCCI founder Sheikh Agha Hasan Abedi smashed it. They contrived, with Bush and other intelligence service heads, a plan that seemed too good to be true. The bank would solicit the business of every major terrorist, rebel, and underground organization in the world. The invaluable intelligence thus gained would be discreetly distributed to "friends" of BCCI. … Adham and Abedi believed the United States needed monitoring. … Adham did not rely simply on money to carry out the plan. Adham and Abedi understood that they would also need muscle. They tapped into the CIA’s stockpile of misfits and malcontents to help man a 1,500-strong group of assassins and enforcers. Time magazine called the group a "black network.""
392. December 31, 2004, Wall Street Journal, 'Riggs Bank Had Longstanding Link To the CIA': "Riggs Bank, which is under investigation by the Justice Department for money laundering, has had a longstanding relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency, according to people familiar with Riggs operations and U.S. government officials. ... Riggs, a storied Washington institution that used to refer to itself as the "bank of presidents," has come under intense scrutiny following revelations that it overlooked tens of millions of dollars in suspicious transactions by Saudi diplomats and dictators from Africa and South America. ... Prince Bandar's connections to the CIA have long been a significant, albeit little-discussed, aspect of the Riggs affair. During the initial phase of the controversy over Saudi accounts at Riggs in early 2003, Prince Bandar detailed his work for the CIA in a meeting with Treasury Secretary John Snow, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials who interpreted the disclosure as an explanation for the prince's large unexplained cash transactions at Riggs. ... During the 1980s, Prince Bandar helped fund the anticommunist Nicaraguan Contra rebels at the request of the White House and CIA, and later helped support Afghan rebels fighting the Soviet Union. More recently, he helped broker a diplomatic rapprochement between the U.S. and Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. ... A summary of former Chairman Joe L. Allbritton's "international business development activities" states that the Chilean military's international mission offices had more than $50 million deposited at Riggs in 1996, including $30 million from the Chilean Air Force solicited by Mr. Allbritton personally on a trip to Chile. ... As of February 2002, Chilean government deposits at Riggs exceeded $100 million."
393. *) May 3, 2004, Daniel Hopsicker for Mad Cow Morning News, ''Terror Flight School Owners' Flew Saudis on "unsupervised flights" all over the country'. Article not on MadCowProd.com anymore anno 2024, after Daniel Hopsicker's death.
     *) Jan. 4, 2005, Daniel Hopsicker for Mad Cow Morning News (MadCowProd.com), 'Rogue State: The Cover Op That Ate The World': ""They were flying for the Saudis," said an aviation executive familiar with the operation."
394. *) January 4, 2005, Daniel Hopsicker for Mad Cow Morning News, Adnan Khashoggi, 'Rogue State: The Covert Op That Ate The World': "But its Hilliard’s involvement with ADNAN KHASHOGGI, THE SAUDI BILLIONAIRE and international fugitive, which is most intriguing. We learned of it from a business rival of the two men, both vying for rights to build a casino on a remote island in the Bahamas. ... "
     *) 2008, Peter Dale Scott, 'The Road To 9/11', p. 63: "The Safari Club met at an exclusive resort of the same name in Kenya, which in the same year, 1976, was visited and eventually bought by Adham's friend Adnan Khashoggi. 65 [source: 1988, Ronald Kessler, 'Richest Man in The World: The Story of Adnan Khashoggi', pp. 239-241]"
     *) 2004, Jonathan Beaty, Samuel C. Gwynne, 'The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride Into the Secret Heart of BCCI', p. 312: "Another founding director [of Hong Kong Deposit and Guaranty and Tetra Finance] was Hassan Yassin, a former Saudi Arabian official who has been described as a close business associate of Kamal Adham and a confidant A. R. Khalil. Yassin, a cousin of arms broker Adnan Khashoggi, was named by Kamal Adham as the man who brought him into the First American Bank deal. ... Investigators are also trying to discern a connection between another company, Tetra Tech, of Pasadena, California, whose operations in Oman were managed by Casey's friend and associate John Shaheen in 1981."
     *) 2003, Gil Feiler, 'Economic Relations Between Egypt and the Gulf Oil States', p. 77: "Private Arab Investment ... Outstanding personalities among the investors were the Saudi Kamal Adham (King Faysal's brother-in-law), the Shabukshi family, Prince Khaled Ibn Turki, Adnan Khashoggi and Prince Muhammad al-Faysal, one of King Faysal's sons. Prince Muhammad al-Faysal engaged primarily in Islamic banking."
     *) 1992, The BCCI Affair: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Second Congress, First Session: "with respect to the role of former White House political director Ed Rogers in connection with BCCI front man Kamal Adham, we have learned that Mr. Rogers met Saudi arms broker Adnan Khashoggi before agreeing to represent Adham in the United States, and that he discussed the representation with Mr. Khashoggi. "
395. 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Welcome to Terror Land: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida' (digital): "Saudis were a highly visible presence at Maxwell Air Force Base, she said. "There were a lot of them living in an upscale complex in Montgomery. They had to get all of them out of here." "They were all gone the day after the attack." ... "In interviews with the Globe yesterday, flight instructors in Florida said that it was common for 'students with Saudi affiliations' to enter the United States with only cursory background checks, and sometimes none." Ah-ha. Gotcha. Students with 'Saudi affiliations.' This was new, or new to us: students with Saudi affiliations were accorded special treatment in Florida, said flight instructors there, that allowed them to enter and leave the U.S. more easily. Saudis were getting special treatment in Florida from our government. That much seemed clear, even though we weren't sure we had a working definition yet of what 'special treatment' meant. And it wasn't just Saudis who got special treatment, reported the Globe, but students with "Saudi affiliations" as well. Saudis had a lot of juice in Florida. Chuck Clapper, owner of an air charter company in Lantana, Florida, told the Globe that several Florida flying schools had contracts with Saudi Arabian Airlines that enabled them to bypass much of the red tape involved in obtaining visas for their students. Saudi Arabia had authority to 'pass through' anyone they wanted. They didn't even need to be Saudi. They just needed 'Saudi affiliations.' "The Saudi cover may have enabled one of the dead hijackers, Mohamed Atta, to deflect attention from the fact that he was wanted in Israel in connection with a bus bombing in 1986," the paper reported. 'The Saudi Cover.' It sounded like the title of a Robert Ludlum novel."
396. 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Welcome to Terror Land: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida' (digital): "We wanted to know if Dekkers had any local 'priors.' But it made Sergeant Marty Treanor sigh. Then he started to say something, thought better of it, and sighed again. He said he couldn't tell us if Dekkers had been in any trouble in Venice, because all of his files were gone. "Gone?" "The FBI took all our files, everything. They loaded the files right outside this window," said Treanor, indicating a parking lot outside the station, "into two Ryder trucks, then drove them right onto a C-130 military cargo plane at the Sarasota airport, which took off for Washington with Jeb Bush aboard." We will come back to visit the question of the Governor of Florida's national security responsibilities. The important point was that taking files was a lot different than copying them."
397. May 31, 2000, Riggs Bank press release, 'Dudley Elected Chairman of Riggs Investment Management Subsidiary; Bush to Serve as President & CEO': "Riggs Bank N.A. today announced that the Board of Directors of RIMCO, a wholly owned investment management subsidiary, has elected Jonathan J. Bush President & Chief Executive Officer and a Director, replacing Philip Tasho who resigned. In addition, Henry A. Dudley, Jr. was elected Chairman. Mr. Bush will continue as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of J. Bush & Co., an investment management company he founded in 1970, which Riggs acquired in 1997. Mr. Dudley, a 24-year veteran of Riggs, will continue to be responsible for all of Riggs Bank's investment management, trust and private banking business."
398. *) 1978, Burroughs Adding Machine Company, 'The Burroughs Clearing House', Volume 63, p. 93: "[executive changes:] Henry A. Dudley, Jr., and Robert K. Ratcliff, The Riggs National Bank, Washington, D.C."
     *) 1984, Journal of Commerce, 'Directory of United States importers', p. 1283: "Riggs National Bank of Washington, DC. ... President - Joe L. Allbritton [in 1980 bought $24 million in Riggs stock from Jorge Carnicero, a DynCorp chairman in 1987-1988; took control of Riggs Bank in 1984] Senior Vice President - Henry A. Dudley. Jr."
     *) 1987, The Washingtonian: "Henry A. Dudley, Jr. offers an advantage no other private banker can: Riggs National Bank. As Executive Vice President, Mr. Dudley can command the full financial resources and acumen of Riggs to work on your behalf."
     *) 1989, Middle East Institute, 'Middle East organizations in Washington, DC., part 3', p. 90: "World Affairs Council of Washington ... Officers: Philip A. Odeen, Chairman. Patrick W. Gross, Vice Chairman. James G. Roche, President. Henry A. Dudley, Jr., Treasurer."
     *) Executive vice president of Riggs Bank N.A. and Senior executive director of Riggs & Co. (March 2000, Proxy Statement, Riggs National Bank).
399. *) Washington, '85, Comprehensive Directory of the Key Institutions and Leaders of the National Capital Area, p. 401: "George Town Club (1966). 1530 Wisconsin Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20007. Tel. (202) 333-9330. Robert Keith Gray, Chairman of the Board. Kenneth M. Crosby, President. Lloyd N. Hand, V. President. Norman L. Larsen, Club Secretary and General Manager. Other Board Members: Anna C. Chennault, Henry A. Dudley, Jr., Brg. Gen. Richard A. Edwards, John Thomas Malatesta, Dr. John H. McDonough, Mnsgr. John J. Murphy, Frank Spinetta, Marion H. Smoak, William E. Timmons."
     *) Nov. 26, 1981, Jet magazine, Vol. 61, no. 10, p. 11: "The brightest activity was the celebration of last November's GOP victory at a thousand-person reception held at the exclusive Georgetown Club. Vice President George Bush headed the VIP slate along with White House aide Edwin Meese and ex-Sen. Edward Brooke, who seldom attends such functions. Co-hosts were Stephanie Lee Miller and Lance Wilson, young members of the GOP."
     *) 2000, Ken Silverstein, Private Warriors, p. 63, pp. 83-85: "The Pentagon's birthday party was hosted by Nottingham—a friend and sometimes shipping agent of Glatt’s—and was held on the same night that then Vice-President George Bush was feted in another part of the club. Glatt's well-wishers included a number of senior intelligence officials, general officers, and several bankers who washed money for the Pentagon's black programs. The Georgetown Club is secretive—membership status seems to be most commonly revealed in one’s obituary—and Nottingham, still a higher-up there, politely declined a request for a tour. Col. Ryan, who attended the birthday party…. Didn't anyone object to his choice of the Black Eagle—a symbol of Nazi Germany—as a name for his Virginia property, I asked? Not at all, he replied: "Glatt was viewed as a source, potentially our most lucrative source of Russian arms. We weren't considering him for citizenship...""
     *) See note 75 in the American Security Council for an extensive analysis of historical George Town Club directors and members.
400. See ISGP's Republican Society / Pim Fortuyn article.
401. September 10, 2002, Pravda, 'Russia Did Berezovsky Buy Off Communists for US Intelligence?': "Berezovsky is much more interesting from the point of view of different manipulations in domestic and partially in foreign political life. For this very purpose, British special services "handed Berezovsky over" to American colleagues. We have information that Fritz Ermarth, former CIA officer and specialist on special operations in the East-European region, is in close contact with the oligarch. Russiagate, the scandal on Russian budgetary finance laundering through BONY in August to September of 1998, was one of his projects. He is in contact with Former CIA Director Woolsey, who has no official job in Washington but is known as a person close to Cheney. It is not ruled out that it was Ermarth who suggested that Berezovsky switch his attention from the weak and unpromising micro-party Liberal Russia to financing and cooperation with the Communist Party. Some time ago, Berezovsky used to say that the threat of communism in Russia was even more dangerous for him than the threat of Putin and the special services. However, he suddenly changes his opinion, and his personal view didn't change, as he still a staunch anti-communist. However, his new masters think that Berezovsky's old contacts with communists are much more promising than control over a group of unpopular liberals."
402. *) September 3, 1999, Jerusalem Post, 'A mess of mafia money - fact or fancy?': "Israel is facing the fact that its liberal immigration laws and bank secrecy policies have made it one of the major financial 'laundromats' in the developed world. ... In the latest scandal, a Ukrainian Jewish gangster named Semyon Mogilevich is at the center of an alleged plot to launder up to $ 10 billion in crime proceeds and money skimmed by government officials - including International Monetary Fund aid designed to rescue the Russian economy - through a series of shell companies, Swiss banks and the Bank of New York. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Mogilevich, who acquired Israeli citizenship in the early 1990s, has allegedly been engaged in arms dealing, drug smuggling, prostitution, contract murders and international art theft. ... British authorities began investigating Mogilevich's group over four years ago, seeking to unravel a worldwide network of shell companies implicated in money-laundering, contraband sales, stock manipulation and investor fraud. The FBI began investigating Mogilevich's apparent relationship with the Bank of New York last year after a tip from Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service. ... Indeed, several Russian Jewish "oligarchs" besides Mogilevich figure prominently in the Bank of New York investigation. Among them are Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a leading banker and oil executive; Boris Berezovsky, a former Yeltsin aide with close ties to the president's family; and Vladimir Guzhinsky, president of the Russian Jewish Congress and a part-owner of Ma'ariv Holdings, which owns, among other things, the Ma'ariv daily. All three headed Russian banks implicated in the Mogilevich investigations. Also under investigation is Bruce Rappaport, an Israeli citizen and Swiss financier."
     *) August 29, 1999, Ha'aretz, 'Top News: Jews and Israelis in Global Money-Laundering Scheme': "Several Jews, including some with Israeli citizenship, have been questioned in connection with a worldwide probe into an alleged money-laundering operation. In what may be the biggest such case in history, investigators are trying to find out whether Russian mobsters funneled billions of dollars through accounts at the Bank of New York. ... The Swiss are also investigating the financial dealings of two companies associated with the Russian national carrier, Aeroflot - Andava and Forus Services. The Swiss suspect the companies used the airline to transfer money to private bank accounts abroad. This month, the accounts in Switzerland of Boris Berezovsky, a Russian businessman who in the early 1990s obtained Israeli citizenship but apparently gave it up about two years ago in order to take a government position in Russia. Among those said to have profited from the bank accounts and the bribes from Mabetex are President Boris Yeltsin, his wife Naina, their daughters Tatyana and Yelena, and Yelena's husband, Valery Okulov, the managing director of Aeroflot. ... The name of Israeli-born businessman Bruce Rappaport, the founder of Geneva's Inter Maritime Bank, has been mentioned in connection with the transfer of funds via offshore accounts in banks in Antigua. Rappaport is Antigua's ambassador to Russia. Also named in the scandal are Alexander Krasnenker, Roman Abramovich and the Runikon company, which is jointly owned by Abramovich and three companies owned by the Lev brothers and Michael Chernoi - Israeli citizens with dealings with the Bank of New York."
403. Ibid.
404. July 26, 2000, The Australian (The Times), 'Russian PM linked to missing billions': "SWISS officials are eager to question Russia's new Prime Minister about allegations that he helped funnel a $US4.8billion ($8.2 billion) loan from the International Monetary Fund into several foreign bank accounts after the August 1998 financial crash. Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta, citing sources close to the Swiss chief prosecutor in Geneva, reported that Mikhail Kasyanov, appointed Prime Minister earlier this year, was involved in a complex series of transfers by which the loan never reached Russia but was "absorbed" by commercial accounts in the West. The vanishing billions, lent by the IMF to prop up the rouble in late 1998, have been the subject of investigations by the FBI and Swiss officials, linked to the even larger Bank of New York scandal involving the alleged laundering of up to $US10 billion in dirty Russian money. ... American inquiries into the Bank of New York affair have established that much of the missing money, including most of the IMF loan, ended up in US accounts belonging to 18 commercial Russian banks, many of which have since ceased trading. Several of them have admitted to buying IMF dollars from the Russian Central Bank and keeping them in US accounts. ... According to Novaya Gazeta on August 14, 1998, the $US4.8 billion was transferred from the New York Federal Reserve to accounts at the Republic Bank of New York controlled by Edmund Safra, the billionaire Lebanese banker who died in a fire in Monte Carlo last year. The Russian Central Bank defaulted on most of its short-term debt three days later, triggering the crash."
     *) July 25, 2000, Jamestown Foundation, 'Newspaper scandal over IMF diversion expands': "The scandal surrounding allegations that a US$4.8 billion IMF "stabilization credit" in the summer of 1998 was diverted before reaching Russia with the help of Mikhail Kasyanov... Even more sensationally, the author of Novaya gazeta's investigation, Oleg Lurye, claims that following the diversion of the IMF credit and the subsequent collapse of the ruble and Russia's banking system, Edmond Safra, the late head of the New York-based Republic National Bank, gave evidence to the FBI concerning the diversion. Safra died in December of last year of asphyxiation as the result of a fire in his Monte Carlo residence. Lurye quotes Geneva prosecutor Bertrand Bertossa as saying that Safra was murdered for giving evidence to both the FBI and Swiss prosecutors concerning the diversion of the IMF credit. Both La Repubblica and Novaya gazeta claim that the US$4.8 billion credit went from the New York Federal Reserve Bank to Republic National Bank and then to various banks in Switzerland and elsewhere, but not to Russia. Lurye also claims that at the start of autumn 1999 Boris Berezovsky visited Safra at his estate in southern France. The two men, according to Lurye, had a three-hour conversation in "raised voices," after which Safra fled in a panic to his heavily fortified Monte Carlo residence (Novaya gazeta, July 24)."
405. *) See note 389.
     *) September 13, 1991, Wall Street Journal, 'Close links existed between BCCI, BNL': "BNL, he [Rep. Henry Gonzalez] said, "became Baghdad's banker in the U.S. before our regulatory cops at the Federal Reserve could locate Iraq on the map." The most prominent link between the banks [BNL and BCCI] involves Alfred Hartmann, a successful Swiss banker and businessman, who until recently was a BCCI director and the chairman of its Swiss unit, Banque de Commerce et Placements S.A., or BCP. Following the seizure of BCCI by Western regulators on July 5, Mr. Hartmann resigned from BCP, which has been sold to a Turkish group. In addition to serving BCCI in those capacities, Mr. Hartmann also serves as the chairman of BNL's unit in Zurich, known as Lavoro Bank AG. Finally, Mr. Hartmann is vice chairman of a small, joint-venture institution in Geneva called Bank of New York-Inter Maritime Bank. ... Mr. Hartmann links to these institutions were established by P. Network, a research service based in Geneva. ... employees at his [Hartmann's] various offices confirmed his roles in BNL and BCCI's Swiss units and at Bank of New York-Inter Maritime Bank. ... The involvement of the BCCI-BNL banker in the Bank of New York-Inter Maritime Bank is particularly intriguing. The chairman of that bank is Bruce Rappoport, an international oilman who has been thought for years to have close ties to the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities. ... According to published profiles, Mr. Rappaport was a friend and golfing companion of William Casey, the late director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He also employed E. Robert Wallach, an old friend of former Attorney General Edwin Meese, as his lawyer for a massive but ill-fated Iraqi oil pipe line project. ... BNL was far and away Iraq's largest source of foreign credit. Its Atlanta branch loaned or pledged more than $4 billion to Iraq between 1985 and the summer of 1989, about $2 billion of which went for farm goods. "
     *) August 22, 1999, New York Times, 'Russian Money-Laundering Investigation Finds a Familiar Swiss Banker in the Middle': "Most recently, Mr. Rappaport's bank was sued by the Justice Department in 1997, to recover proceeds that the Government asserted were from drug sales that had been deposited in the Bank of New York-Inter Maritime on the Caribbean island of Antigua by a known money-launderer. A Federal judge dismissed the case last year, though, citing lack of jurisdiction. The Government is appealing the decision."
     *) August 22, 1999, New York Times, 'Russian Money-Laundering Investigation Finds a Familiar Swiss Banker in the Middle': "Born in Haifa, now Israel, Mr. Rappaport has used his base in Geneva to pursue investments and business in a wide range of places, including Oman, Liberia, Nigeria, Haiti, Thailand, Indonesia, Belgium and the United States. Mr. Rappaport opened Inter-Maritime in Geneva in 1966. ... [Rappaport] was recently appointed Antigua's Ambassador to Russia. ... Menatep, according to Western law-enforcement officials, has also had dealings with Mr. Rappaport. ... Federal investigators are trying to determine whether some of the money that may have been laundered through the Bank of New York came from Menatep. Menatep, and related companies in Russia, are suspected by Western investors and Russian regulatory authorities of having looted money from the country."
     *) June 30, 1994, The Independent, 'Former BCCI directors claim Sheikh's family behind fraud': "One of the three behind the legal action, Alfred Hartmann, a senior Swiss banker, sat on various BCCI boards from 1982 to 1991. ... Dr Hartmann resigned from his chairmanship of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro's Swiss arm in September 1991, and also his chairmanship of the troubled Swiss bank Rothschild at the end of 1992. He helped to negotiate the swift sale of BCCI's Banque de Commerce & de Placement to the Turkish group Cukurova in July 1991, just over two weeks after BCCI was closed by bank regulators worldwide."
     *) May 25, 1989, Jerusalem Post, ''BUY GOLD'': "If you want to put your shekels in something secure, something that will bring a solid return on your investment, forget about gold - buy dollars. This was the advice given yesterday by Dr. Alfred Hartmann, vice chairman of the board of Rothschild Bank AG Zurich, at a Tel Aviv University seminar titled "Personal Asset Management." Gold's value is inching ahead slowly because the world's gold supply is increasing by nearly 10% a year, Hartmann said."
406. *) Ibid.
     *) Only source that additionally names banco Ambrosiano (CIA and P2 Lodge scandal related). 2001, David Whitby and Alan A. Block, 'The Organized Criminal Activities of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International', p. 38: "Hartmann had been a director of Banco Ambrosiano's holding company in The Bahamas. Also chairman of Lavoro Bank A.G. (BNL's Swiss Bank in Zurich), director [Bank of New York] Inter Maritieme Bank (Bruce Rappaport). Royal Bank of Scotland (Switzerland). Hartmann was chairman of BCCI's international audit committee (Luxembourg) but has never been investigated by the SFO or FBI."
407. August 24, 2000, USA Today, 'Swiss judge traces trail of laundered Russian funds': "The Swiss magistrate is following the trail of a $ 4.8 billion loan in 1998 to Russia from the International Monetary Fund. ... Last month, Kasper-Ansermet asked Deputy Prosecutor General Vasily Kolmogorov to question Russian central bank officials about the case to determine whether IMF funds had been improperly diverted to the Bank of New York and then to Swiss accounts. ... Russian officials deny they are stalling the money-laundering investigations, which have threatened to taint former president Boris Yeltsin's two daughters, Tatyana Dyachenko and Yelena Okulova. Yeltsin himself has been granted immunity from any prosecution."
408. *) Putin and his KGB/FSB were caught red-handed when an apartment bomb in Ryazan was discovered before it went off. The persons who placed to bomb turned out to be in direct contact with the KGB/FSB.
     *) Evgeni Savostianov, former Moscow FSB/KGB chief, on the March 2000 NTV program about the Moscow apartment bombings of September 1999: "I don't get it. Why did it take two whole days to tell the world it was an exercise? Frankly, it is incomprehensible. ... Let's start with the fact that they told us it was sugar in the bags [instead of RDX]. Does this mean that neither the FSB specialists nor the interior ministry know what sugar looks like? ... Let's just imagine that real explosives were planted and it was a real attempt at provocation in order to increase tension in the Caucasus and so on and so forth. Do we have any guarantee that we would have been given an accurate reply that we, the public, would find convincing to what had happened? I suspect, unfortunately, that we wouldn't." (short documentary)
     *) 2001, Alexander Litvinenko (later prominently assassinated by Russian intelligence agents) and Yuri Felshtinsky, 'Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within' (documentary)
409. *) Henry Kissinger was a patron of the Open Russia Foundation since 2001, together with Lord Jacob Rothschild. The Foundation was set up by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a controversial oligarch, later locked up by Putin. These men formed three of the four trustees of the foundation until Khodorkovsky was imprisoned by Putin in October 2003.
     *) 1995, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 'International Crisis Group [funded by George Soros], A proposal to strengthen and speed our capacity to respond, A proposal presented to the steering committee,' London, Carnegie Endowment (retranslated from Dutch): "Appendix 3 [steering committee ICG]: Morton Abramowitz ... Prince El-Hassan bin Talal ... Vernon Jordan ... Robert S. McNamara ... Christian Schwarz-Schilling ... George Soros ... Leo Tindemans ... Desmond M. Tutu ... Appendix 4: Members of the ICG board of directors 1995: George J. Mitchell, Chairman. ... Morton I. Abramowitz ... HRH El-Hassan bin Talal ... Michel Rochard ... Christian Schwarz-Schilling ... George Soros ... Leo Tindemans..."
     *) International Crisis Group, annual report 2002 (retranslated from Dutch): "Appendix 6: members of the ICG board of directors 2002: .... Morton Abramowitz ... Saud Nasir Al-Sabah ... Richard Allen ... Zbigniew Brzezinski ... Wesley Clark .... HRH El- Hassan bin Talal ... Carla Hills ... Mikhail Khodorkovsky ... George Soros." Khodorkovsky and Brzezinski joined (virtually) together in mid 2002, looking at various reports of the ICG, which usually lists the trustees.
410. See note 307.
411. *) The National Interest website, staff (accessed: May 26, 2000): "Publisher: Irving Kristol. Chairman of the Advisory Board: Conrad Black. Advisory Board: Eliot A. Cohen. Midge Decter. Martin Feldstein. Francis Fukuyama. Samuel P. Huntington. Josef Joffe. Chalmers Johnson. H.J. Kaplan. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick. Henry A. Kissinger. Charles Krauthammer. Daniel Pipes. Paul D. Wolfowitz."
     *) June 1, 2001, The National Interest, 'An Announcement': "Irving Kristol, who has been Publisher since the founding of the magazine, will step down and become Honorary Chairman of the Advisory Board. The new Publisher, we are pleased to announce, will be James Schlesinger, who needs no introduction to our readers. Conrad M. Black, another past contributor to our pages, will remain Chairman of the Advisory Board and will be joined in that position by Henry Kissinger. ... new nonprofit organization, The National Interest, Inc., will replace National Affairs, Inc. as the institutional publisher. This organization represents a partnership between Hollinger International, Inc. (of which Mr. Black is Chairman) and The Nixon Center in Washington, DC." Dov Zakheim's Linked-in paged says he has been vice chairman of the Center for the National Interest from May 2001-today.
     *) Number 78, Winter 2004/2005, The National Interest: "Chairman of the editorial board: Conrad Black. Co-chairman of the editorial board: Henry A. Kissinger. Publisher: James R. Schlesinger. ... Editorial board: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Martin Feldstein, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel P. Huntington, Josef Joffe, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Mandelbaum, Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes..."
     *) 2012, board of directors, Center for the National Interest, Guidestar: "Ambassador Richard Burt - Ambassador - McLarty Associates. ... Dr. Leslie Gelb - Council on Foreign Relations. Maurice Greenberg - Chairman - C.V. Starr & Co., Inc. ... Henry Kissinger - Honorary Chairman - Kissinger Associates, Inc. Julie Nixon Eisenhower - No Affiliation. ... Peter Peterson - Peter G. Peterson Foundation. ... James Schlesinger - MITRE Corporation. Brent Scowcroft - Scowcroft Group. ... Dov S. Zakheim - No Affiliation. Robert Ellsworth - Ambassador - Hamilton BioVentures."
412. freedomhouse.org/about.htm (accessed: January 17, 1997): "Chair Emeriti: Leo Cherne, Max M. Kampelman. Trustees: Zbigniew Brzezinski ... David Eisenhower [grandson] ... Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr., Theodore J. Forstmann ... Samuel P. Huntington ... Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, ... John Norton Moore ... Charles Morgan, Jr. ... Otto Reich ... Donald Rumsfeld ..."
     *) www.freedomhouse.org/aboutfh/bod.htm (accessed: April 13, 2001): "Bill Richardson, Chairman. Max M. Kampelman, Chairman Emeritus ... Zbigniew Brzezinski ... Paula Dobriansky ... Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr. Theodore J. Forstmann ... Samuel P. Huntington, John T. Joyce, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick ... R. James Woolsey..."
     *) Freedom House, annual report 2003, board of trustees: "R. James Woolsey* Chairman ... Max M. Kampelman* Chairman Emeritus. Peter Ackerman*. ... Zbigniew Brzezinski. ...Thomas S. Foley. Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr. Theodore Forstmann. ... Samuel P. Huntington. ... Jeane Kirkpatrick ... John Norton Moore ... Bill Richardson ... Diana Villiers Negroponte [joined in Nov. 2001]."
413. Names taken from H. Smith Richardson Foundation documents accessed through Guidestar. Along with Huntington, Brzezinski, Rumsfeld and Woolsey, Fred Ikle, Christopher DeMuth, General Edward Meyer, Martin Feldstein and others also appeared as governors in the mid 1990s. No specific citations backed up.
414. *) Youtube clip, 'Lewis Eisenberg is an Angel' (from an On The Record episode): "[Narrator:] Meet Christy Whitman's new Angel: Lewis Eisenberg. ... [Eisenberg:] I think I met Christy [Whitman] in 1991 where she was the guest speaker at a golf tournament that my firm was sponsoring. At that time she was heading a political action committee of her own ... she was basically talking about smaller, leaner government, less intrusive government, lower taxes. And that was a theme that struck well with the capitalists, among them the clients attending my golf outing. I became a supporter immediately."
415. August 20, 2004, The Jewish Daily Forward, 'Campaign Confiential': "Eisenberg, a former Republican National Committee finance chairman, is a multimillionaire financier from New Jersey who, more than once, mulled a Senate run and sometimes is named as a possible pick for a second-term Bush Cabinet. ... What is less well known about Eisenberg, however, is that he is an avatar of a certain brand of moderate Jewish Republicanism that the GOP brass is taking pains to highlight at the convention. ... The Democratic poll suggests that Eisenberg and other Republican moderates have made little headway in winning over Jewish voters (see Campaign Confidential, Page 7). The survey, commissioned by the National Jewish Democratic Council, found that 75% of Jews support Senator John Kerry, with only 22% backing Bush. In other words, not much appears to have changed since Democrat Al Gore captured 81% of the Jewish vote in 2000."
416. sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1317630/000104746905014033/a2155759zs-1a.htm: "Mr. Eisenberg has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition since November 1996 and a member of its Vice Chairman's Council since 1995. He served on the National Board of Directors for American Israel Public Affairs Committee from June 1998 to April 2003. "
417. *) iri.org/board.asp (accessed: April 12, 2000): "John McCain; Michael V. Kostiw; Ambassador J. William Middendorf, II; David Dreier; Lawrence S. Eagleburger; Lewis M. Eisenberg; Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr.; Edwin J. Feulner; Alison B. Fortier; James A. Garner; Susan Golding; Dr. Wendy Lee Gramm; Chuck Hagel; Cheryl F. Halpern; Dr. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick; Jim Kolbe; Bob Livingston; Peter T. Madigan; Janet G. Mullins; Constance B. Newman; David A. Norcross; Brent Scowcroft; Richard S. Williamson."
     *) Lewis Eisenberg appears in prior years also. His name shows up in a April 9, 2001 list, but has been removed from the website by November 4, 2001, the next available update. John McCain still heads the IRI today.
418. November 4, 1994, The Daily Gazette, 'Election ruled valid: Inspectors watch Macedonia vote': "... a preliminary [International Republican Institute, seemingly] report issued by the nine-member group led by Donald Rumsfeld, a former US defense secretary."
419. June 27, 1995, Senate.gov, 'Statement Regarding the Haitian Election': "Washington, D.C. -- Senator John McCain spoke on the floor of the United States Senate today regarding the Haitian Election, and gave the following remarks: ... [McCain:] "Mr. Goss led an accredited election observation team from the International Republican Institute (IRI). I have the honor of serving the Institute as Chairman of its Board of Directors. I am proud of IRI's work generally, and its work in Haiti specifically. I will talk some more about the quality of that work a little later in my remarks.""
420. June 23, 2003, iri.org, 'Christine Todd Whitman to Lead IRI Election Observation in Cambodia'.
421. peres-center.org, 'International Board of Governors' (accessed: May 30, 2000): " Hon. Mr. James A. Baker III ... Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali ... Mr. Charles R. Bronfman ... Mr. Jimmy Carter ... Mr. Warren Christopher ... Lester Crown President ... Mr. Jacques Delors ... Mr. Paul G. Desmarais ... Mr. Abba Eban ... Jacob A. Frenkel ... Mr. Leslie H. Gelb ... Mr. Valery Giscard d'Estaing ... Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev ... Mr. Vladimir Goussinsky [Gusinsky] ... Mr. Lee Iacocca ... Mr. Lionel Jospin ... Dr. Henry A. Kissinger ... Mr. F.W. de Klerk ... Mr. Joseph Lieberman ... Dr. Ruud Lubbers ... John Major ... Ms. Isabel Maxwell ... Mr. Daniel Patrick Moynihan ... Mr. Edgar de Piciotto ... Mr. Bruce Rappaport ... Mr. Michel Rocard ... Baron Eric de Rothschild ... Sir Evelyn de Rothschild ... Mr. Arlen Specter ... Mrs. Christine Todd Whitman ... Mr. John Whitehead Chairman ... Mr. Mortimer B. Zuckerman"
     *) peres-center-deutschland.de/?page_id=77 (accessed: August 25, 2013): virtually the same names, including Whitman. Not entirely up to date though. Some in the list have died in the mean time.
422. *) The Baltic region in the new Europe chapter by Butkevicius, Audrius. -- Centre for Defence Studies, CDS. King's College. University of London Source: Brassey's defence yearbook 1993. Brassey's defence yearbook 1993 pp. 169-178.
     *) Crime in Russia : the national international implications by Surikov, Anton; Centre for Defence Studies, CDS. University of London. King's College. Series: London defence studies, 25.Publisher: London, Brassey's 1995
     *) Pravda.info/aboutus/ (accessed: October 31, 2013) (translated from Russian): "In 1994 he was seconded to the UK as a research fellow of the Department raised Defence Studies at King's College, University of London. In 1995, the UK issued his two monographs on the Russian defense policy."
423. For Anton Surikov's CIA ties see notes 416, 438, and 449.
424. *) See ISGP's index of institutes for the CIA, State Department and U.S. Army ties of the Albert Einstein Institute.
     *) Albert Einstein Institution, Nonviolent Sanctions magazine, vol. 3, no. 3, Winter 1991/1992, 'Einstein Institution Hosts Lithuanian Defense Minister': "In a recent meeting in Vilnius, Defense Minister Audrius Butkevicius stated that Dr. Sharp’s book Civilian-Based Defense served as a basis for much of his planning of nonviolent resistance over the past year and a half. In mid-1990 Mr. Butkevicius had an early draft of the book translated into Lithuanian for use by government officials. "
     *) Albert Einstein Institution, Nonviolent Sanctions magazine, vol. 3, no. 4/vol. 4, no. 1, Spring/Summer 1992, 'Einstein Institution Hosts Lithuanian Defense Minister': "Audrius Butkevicius, minister of national defense of the Republic of Lithuania, visited Cambridge, Massachusetts in July as a guest of the Albert Einstein Institution. During the course of his visit he spent many hours with Einstein Institution staff, discussing how civilian-based defense might be incorporated into Lithuania’s overall defense policy. ... Butkevicius recounted some of the events that led up to Lithuania’s declaration of independence in March 1990. In 1987, he said, the Sajudis movement started organizing intellectuals and formulating a political structure that would be in direct opposition to existing Soviet structures. Then a movement of former political prisoners began calling for the return of the remains of some of the 400,000 Lithuanians who had been deported to Siberia in the 1940s and 1950s. In the summer of 1988, Butkevicius led a successful mission to return the remains of 300 of these deportees from Siberia. "
425. Daisyalliance.org/board-of-directors/robert-oneill.html (accessed: October 30, 2013): "In 1982 he was appointed Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London ... Chairman of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies 1996-2001 ... Chairman of the Council of the Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College, University of London 1991-96, and a Governor of the Ditchley Foundation ... Since returning to Australia in 2001 he has served as Chairman of the Council of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a board member of the Lowy Institute for International Studies,"
426. Lowyinstitute.org/board/index.html (accessed: August 15, 2003): "[8 members total:] Mr Frank Lowy AC ... Ambassador Martin S. Indyk ... Professor Robert O'Neill ... Mr Peter S Lowy ... Mr Steven M Lowy"
427. lowyinstitute.org/about/boards (accessed: October 31, 2013): "[Board of Directors:] Mr Frank Lowy AC ... Ambassador Martin S. Indyk ... Mr David H. Lowy AM ... Mr Peter S. Lowy ... Mr Steven M. Lowy... International Advisory Council: ... Dr Rita E. Hauser ... Prof. Francois Heisbourg ... Mr K. R. [Rupert] Murdoch AC ... Mr James D. Wolfensohn AO..."
428. Anton Surikov's bio at the Institute of Globalization Studies (accessed: August 18, 2006): "In the summer of 1990, at the invitation of the deputy director of the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies ... [Andrei] Kokoshin, he joined this leading research institution, where he worked until September 1996. The work at the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies required numerous travels to various countries of the CIS and far abroad."
429. *) November 15, 2005, Ivan Demidov for Obkom (Ukraine), 'ПЛОДЫ РЕВОЛЮЦИИ: Кто выдавливает сок из «наколотых апельсинов»?' (translated from Russia: 'Fruit of the revolution: Who squeezes the juice from the "pinned oranges?"'): "Let's try to carefully read a curious document. ... It's the end of the 1980s. Afghanistan, Shindand district. GRU "H" (drugs) Special Forces. Commander: Leonid Leonidovich Kosjakov. Deputy commander: Alexei Alexandrovich Likhvintsev [Far West]. Also part of special group "H" are officers Ruslan Saidov [Far West] and Anton Surikov [Far West]. The group's task: the fight against drug trafficking... [They are] allowed a lot, including unauthorized and unsupervised contact with representatives of U.S. intelligence. After Afghanistan [they helped] plunder the arsenals of Soviet Forces in Germany and sold weapons to the Kosovo Albanians. One [Surikov] coached Shamil Basayev's "Abkhazian battalion", others supplied weapons to Angolan blacks in exchange for diamonds. Life was stormy. But since 1998, they have all become respectable members of the board of directors of Far West Ltd., where this pleasant company is supplemented with former GRU agents Alfonso Davidovich (a citizen of Venezuela, GRU graduate school, Privolnaya Mykolaiv region) and Yakov Abramovich Kosman. Designated curator [manager] for the main contractor [KBR Halliburton]: Mr. F. Ermarth, former director of the CIA's Center for Strategic Studies."
     *) January 19, 2004, Compromat.ru, 'Откровения беглого кремлевского финансиста' ('Revelations of the Fugitive Kremlin Financier') (Sergei Petrov, a former Far West director later in the Putin camp, murdered a few days after this interview. His info seems to check out every time): " [Sergei Petrov:] I’ve known him since Afghanistan. They all served there: Anton, Valera, Alexei, Vladimir. There was also one Ruslan Saidov. They enjoyed special status, were in contact with open Dushmans [Mujahideen], with Masud’s emissaries, Ismail Khan’s people, even with Arabs. 7 They behaved as plain marauders. There were so many complaints; it was a complete disgrace, his pockets always full of hard currency. Just imagine [hard currency] in those times! 8 They stayed out of trouble because their commanding officer, Leonid Leonidovich Kosyakov, nicknamed "Slon" (the Elephant), shared [the loot] with others. I think Anton went over to the Americans already back then. He has a distant relative in the United States who, basically, held very high post in the CIA and was in Peshawar in the 1980s. Anton always kept this fact in secret, back in the Soviet time and later on. After all, he occupied very high positions in the Department, in the government and in the Duma. 9 Just imagine, he worked in all these high-level jobs and nobody cared! As a matter of fact, our bosses used his connections as the informal channel of communication with the Americans. That’s why Anton could have his way."
430. Transcript of an audio recording between Far West directors Anton Surikov (AS), Vladimir Filin (VF), Alexei Likhvintsev (AL) and Sergei Petrov (S). The recording was made at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, Austria, on September 27, 2003 [possibly September 1999]. Petrov, who had become close to Putin's circle, was murdered by this group in January 2004: "AS.---In fact, Sergachev was later done in by the Chechens around Bamut. As to him being a fool and not in the know, it was me who solved the situation. By the way, it was not [expletive] easy. Pasha [Pavel Grachev, defense minister from 1992 to 1996] personally made the decision. Nobody was even thinking to evacuate anything from there. During the reconnaissance they found only twenty Chechens in that place. A platoon of spetsnaz could have done the job. Actually, Sergach proposed to do exactly this. But I insisted on the Air Force and they bombed the [expletive] out of that place, everything. S.—Everything? But Imaev was able to get the drugs out of there, didn't he? He had the time to. You, Anton, gave him three days. VF.—That's all bull talk, Serge. S.—Well, why did Lunev [kill] the Tajiks back then? AL.—What Tajiks? S.—Well, Safarov, Saidov, Lyosha the Hunchback? AL.—What the [expletive] are you talking about? The decision on Sangak [Safarov] and Faizullah [Saidov] was made in 1993. It was purely political, not by the minister even, but Borka [Boris Yeltsin] himself. He sent in that pederast, [Serge] Stankevich [apparently Yeltsin's state councilor for political affairs]. As for the Hunchback [Tajik/Pamiri warlord and drug dealer Abdulamon Ayombekov; killed in 1994], it was also politics. Mahmadsaid [Ubaidulloev, head of Tajikistan Parliament and the mayor of Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan] drove Pasha [Pavel Grachev] completely nuts, Pasha bugged Lunev [about it? To kill him?]. As for the closing of the Pamir [Mountains], this is not our fault. S.—Well, what about those leaks through Baranov, the "Felix group," the fabrication about the ferry "Estonia"? I must say, Anton, everyone is fed up with this. AS.—It was the message to them to leave us alone, not to [expletive] with us. They did [expletive] with us, didn't they? As soon as Pasha [Pavel Grachev] was fired, they did."
431. *) November 15, 2005, Ivan Demidov for Obkom (Ukraine), 'ПЛОДЫ РЕВОЛЮЦИИ: Кто выдавливает сок из «наколотых апельсинов»?' (translated from Russia: 'Fruit of the revolution: Who squeezes the juice from the "pinned oranges?"'): "Let's try to carefully read a curious document. ... It's the end of the 1980s. Afghanistan, Shindand district. GRU "H" (drugs) Special Forces. Commander: Leonid Leonidovich Kosjakov. Deputy commander: Alexei Alexandrovich Likhvintsev [Far West]. Also part of special group "H" are officers Ruslan Saidov [Far West] and Anton Surikov [Far West]. The group's task: the fight against drug trafficking... [They are] allowed a lot, including unauthorized and unsupervised contact with representatives of U.S. intelligence. After Afghanistan [they helped] plunder the arsenals of Soviet Forces in Germany and sold weapons to the Kosovo Albanians. One [Surikov] coached Shamil Basayev's "Abkhazian battalion", others supplied weapons to Angolan blacks in exchange for diamonds. Life was stormy. But since 1998, they have all become respectable members of the board of directors of Far West Ltd., where this pleasant company is supplemented with former GRU agents Alfonso Davidovich (a citizen of Venezuela, GRU graduate school, Privolnaya Mykolaiv region) and Yakov Abramovich Kosman. Designated curator [manager] for the main contractor [KBR Halliburton]: Mr. F. Ermarth, former director of the CIA's Center for Strategic Studies."
     *) January 19, 2004, Left.ru, 'Revelations of the Fugitive Kremlin Financier': "And later on it was Anton [Surikov] who groomed Basaev in Abkhazia as early as in 1992. Everyone knows about this. Even nowadays, last summer he called Basaev on the satellite phone in my presence. He sounded very friendly: "Shamil, dear brother, I hug you…" [What did they talk about?] - About some shadowy money dealings with the Libyans, and Adnan Khashoggi too. It's a famous Saudi, international arms merchant. They also have ties with Prince Turki, former boss of Saudi intelligence. Vladimir [Filin] and Alexei [Likhvintsev] made Anton responsible for political ties with Americans, Arabs, and our communists and oligarchs too."
     *) January 24, 2000, Boris Kagarlitsky for Novaya Gazeta, 'We Don't Talk To Terrorists. But We Help Them? A version of apartment explosions in Russia': "Back in summer in the Versiya newspaper there was an article about the meeting of [Alexander] Voloshin [economist and businessman; chief of staff to Yeltsin and Putin March 1999 - October 2003; considered one of the few insiders to Putin's foreign policy strategies; widely regarded as pro-oligarch, pro-Yukos and pro-West, even though he refrained from public comments on the issue, in contrast to Putin; later chairman of corporate giants RAO UES and Norilsk Nickel; in business with oligarch and in 2011 at Berezovsky trial stated that Abramovich "was and still is my friend." Claimed Putin forced Berezovsky to sell his ORT television station to Abramowich after Berezovsky was exploiting the August 2000 Kursk accident for his own political career. Abramovich claimed "Mr Berezovsky was paid for providing political influence and protection from criminal gangs..."; Chairman Norilsk Nickel 2008-2010 and director 2011-2012, soon after which oligarch Vladimir Potanin became executive chairman: Nat Rothschild nominated to join board of Norilsk Nickel, but Potanin's friends blocked this] with Basayev in France. This did not happen in Paris, as some of the newspapers reported later, but on the villa of Adnan Khashoggi, Arabic millionaire, on the Mediterranean. ... Anton Surikov, the former member of army special forces (if there are former members among them), who earlier had supervised brothers Basayev in Abkhazia, met Voloshin in France. ... [conspiracy to have Basayev attack Dagestan] ... Having disturbed the Botlikhsky region, Basayev moved to Novolaksky, where he met some obstacles. Not only were the roads to Khasavurt closed by troops, but Karamakhi was blocked also. This was not a part of the plan. Basayev was mad. Anton Surikov had to go to Dagestan to resolve the problem. Despite that war was everywhere, the meeting went relatively quite. Basayev calmed down, but he did not know the whole truth at the time. General Kvashnin fights very good when he knows enemy plans. The operation in Dagestan went excellent, but he did not manage to stretch the war. At this point of time new events that were not agreed on started to happen. Kvashnin and Chubais had an advantage of not being bound by personal agreements with brothers Basayev. They had not known them as long as Berezovsky, they did not participate in the same operations with them, as Kvashnin did, and did not shake hands with them, as Voloshin did. Kvashnin and Chubais were in business with them, but they were not bound by any obligation."
     *) Surikov's response to the article: "In the beginning of 2000 Mr. Kagarlitsky visited me on his own initiative to talk about the alleged conspiracy between Mr. Basaev and the Kremlin in the summer of 1999. He asked me several questions. I responded at length to those questions that related to me personally and to the political situation in general. As to several of his central questions, I did not give him any answers at all... By the way, I have no intention to answer these questions in the future as well. I read Mr. Kagarlitsky's article of January 24, 2000 in Novaya Gazeta only after it had been published. I was neither thrilled nor disturbed by it. Back then I did not think it was of great importance. This publication did not affect my relations with Mr. Kagarlitsky at all. I just want to emphasize that I did not initiate his publication nor was I his main source of information for it."
     *) 2005, Jonathan Littell, 'The Security Organs of the Russian Federation: A Brief History: 1991-2005' (paper): "The GRU played a considerable role in Russia’s attempts to exploit the 1992-1993 war between Abkhazia and Georgia. While Moscow officially supported Georgia in the conflict, imposing sanctions against Abkhazia, the Minister of Defense, Pavel Grachev, provided considerable military support to the Abkhaz side, apparently on his own personal initiative. Anton Surikov, who as a GRU officer was directly involved in these events (many consider that he was Basaev’s kurator in Abkhazia, though he himself denies it), later stated: "That [Pavel Grachev] carried out in Abkhazia his own personal policy is true. And this, from the point of view of Russia’s interests, was a very useful and correct policy. Without Grachev Abkhazia would not have stood. He personally was the true organizer of the defense of the republic." The Russian military, under Grachev’s command, at the very least allowed the Confederation of the Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus to send several volunteer battalions to back the Abkhaz, which proved key to the Abkhaz victory in 1993; most probably, these battalions also received logistical support and training from the GRU. Information has persistently surfaced that the Caucasian battalions’ most talented commander, Shamil Basaev [Basayev], who was named Deputy Minister of Defense of Abkhazia, was trained at a GRU base near Volgograd in 1992. The GRU also reportedly deployed its own Spetznaz unit, under Surikov’s command, tasked, between August and October 1992, with eliminating Georgian field commanders.[33 - Maksim Kalashnikov, "Chelovek, kotoryi verboval Basaeva" ("The Man who Recruited Basaev"), Stringer, 10.07.02]"
     *) Pravda.info/aboutus/ (accessed: October 31, 2013) (translated from Russian) (The Pravda board completely overlaps with Far West. It appears Anton always loved to boast and drop hints about his intelligence intrigues, and his colleages seem to be helping them): " Anton Surikov, Chairman of the Editorial Board (2008-2009) ... In the first half of the mid-90's, he has repeatedly been in regions of armed conflict in the Caucasus (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya), in the words of Surikov, "to protect human rights and provide assistance to victims of conflict." According to the newspaper "Version", in 1992, he allegedly served under Sosnaliev Sultan, Minister of Defence of the Republic of Abkhazia ("Conspiracy" - "Version", N29, August 3, 1999) and under the name of Mansour, was responsible for the sabotage of the Abkhazian Separatists. The reaction of the Surikov in an interview with "Today": "... I have to visit and see Abkhazia. Was in Gagra Gantiadi, Leselidze in Sukhumi and Tkvarcheli, but as described by my actions during these trips in the newspaper" Version "I will leave on their conscience. A report of a sabotage me any need to prove, not to assert without proof. " ("Tomorrow", N22 (391). According to the newspaper "RT-Tribune" (formerly "working platform", 20.10.98), allegedly involved in supplying arms to Afghanistan, North Africa, and in Nagorno-Karabakh, where contact with the then president of the unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, Robert Kocharian."
     *) November 8, 2001, Pravda, 'Russia World Society Science Incidents Opinion Business Photo Advertising sections News » Russia Anton Surikov: USA used the terrorist attack of September 11th to set up a strong infrastructure of its military presence in the former USSR' (Surikov once again hinting at his own intrigues): "Question: There is another question coming up at this point. Do you remember the first Abkhazian campaign? Shamil Basayev was waging war on Abkhazia’s side. Why did the guerrillas change their "sympathies?" What is it, money? Answer [Surikov]: During the first Abkhazian war, Shamil Basayev was not closely connected with foreign special services, in particular with the Saudi services."
     *) Youtube clip of Basayev, '1997 Russian GRU Major Shamil Basayev', uploaded on September 8, 2012: "[Basayev:] I asked Dudayev to go to Abkhazia, but he first refused. So I wrote a notice of resignation and left for Abkhazia. Half of my Battalion went to Abkhazia with me."
432. *) June 13, 1995, PBS, 'Conflict in Russia: Russia's renegade republic': "October 27, 1991: Chechnya holds presidential elections in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. Retired Soviet army Gen. Dzhokhar Dudayev wins, claiming 90 percent of the vote. Russia's legislature does not recognize the election's legitimacy, pointing out that six of the 14 districts in the Chechen-Ingush republic did not take part in the voting. Dudayev declares Chechnya independent of Russia almost immediately after the elections. ... November 1991: Three militant Chechen separatists hijack a Russian passenger plane and force it to fly to Turkey with the intention of holding a news conference to condemn the Russian position on Chechnya. Afterwards, the three hijackers are not sent to Russian authorities for prosecution, but are instead allowed to return to Chechnya where they are reportedly greeted as "national heroes" according to John Dunlop's book, Russia Confronts Chechnya. One of the hijackers, Shamil Basayev, would later become a key figure in the separatist movement, leading militant attacks on Russian troops and a hospital in southern Russia. ... 1992: Chechnya adopts a constitution recognizing itself as an independent state with a president and parliament. Dudayev refuses to sign a treaty with Russia that would have made Chechnya a Russian republic with a great degree of autonomy, instead repeating earlier demands for complete independence. In the following months, thousands of ethnic Russians flee Chechnya as the region struggles to deal with its complex ethnic makeup. 1992-1993: According to a 1996 essay by Vera Tolz, there is no real local or federal authority or parliament in charge of Chechnya, and borders are ill-defined during this period. This leads to the creation of a huge black market for arms and drugs sales — a development that benefited Chechens and Russians alike, according to some regional observers. Official figures show industrial production drops in the Chechen and Ingush republics by some 30 percent in 1992 and another 61 percent in 1993, while unemployment skyrockets, author John Dunlop writes. According to Dunlop, this leads Dudayev and his partners to turn to illegal sources of income such as money counterfeiting, document falsification, weapons sales and the narcotics trade. "
433. *) 1999, Jos de Putter, 'The Making of a New Empire' documentary about Chechen mafia founder Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev: "[Noukhaev:] It was clear to me that this system was a communist government mafia. And that you can only fight a mafia like that if you set up a similar structure yourself. We had to earn money fast. And that was difficult. We had to bring Chechens to Moscow, because an army had to be formed. And that's how we started. This is what led to my activities in Moscow. My activities were described as mafia actions by the mass media in Russia and later worldwide: the Chechen mafia. ... They called us beasts, as cruel as wolves, that had to be exterminated. ... This [setting up our own mafia] helped us in our struggle for independence ... Dzhokhar was a truly great man. His way of thinking illustrated that. ... When hostilities broke out, I had just arrived in Moscow on Dudayev's orders. There I was to meet the head of Yeltsin's guard, Korzhakov. Because we knew what was going to happen. That they would start a war against us. I couldn't stay in Moscow and returned. When I came home, I went straight to the presidential palace. That was January 1, 1995. Mashadov and the General Staff were there too. And then I heard that Russian troops were already in Parliament. The Parliament was here opposite about 200 meters away."
     *) June 12, 1992, The Guardian, 'Mob Rule in Moscow': "As if Boris Yeltsin didn't have enough on his plate with the resignation of Moscow's mayor at the weekend, some of the roughest gangsters in the entire Commonwealth of Independent States - the Chechen mafias - are increasing their grip on the capital's drug-dealing, prostitution, extortion, transport and other forms of organised crime. ... In the words of the Chechen president, General Dzhokhar Dudayev, Chechnya's relations with Russia are under strain and it is prepared to arm up to 600,000 men. Dudayev and others are seeking ways of standing up to the Russian government. They say these could include turning Moscow into a poverty zone and that they have the mechanisms to carry out this threat, a fairly blatant reference to the mafias. ... Earlier this year, a curious report came out of Grozny, capital of Chechnya. Dudayev had signed a decree which said that no criminals within the republic's territory would be handed over to a state which did not recognise Chechnya. In other words, this corner of the Caucasus could become a haven for bandits. It is not difficult to imagine how Dudayev's decree was received in the criminal world, especially in Moscow where, according to Interior Ministry and Special Service intelligence, the big Chechen gangs are based. The three main ones - Centralnaya, Avtomobilnaya and Ostankinskaya - are named after districts of Moscow. Each has a well-defined structure consisting of a gang leader, his lieutenants, foot soldiers and reserves. The groups, which co-operate very closely, have their own [methods of fund raising] ... Mass unemployment in Chechnya ensures that the ranks of the Moscow clans are constantly filled with young recruits. ... There is a precise division of labour. The most powerful gang is Centralnaya, now based in the Belgrad, Zolotoe Kol'tso and Rossiya hotels. ... All three gangs run narcotics. Their network takes in parts of the Moscow military district. If in 1989 only 150 Chechens were doing their military service in Moscow, in 1990 there were 750, and in 1991, 1,700. Many of them traded in anasha - an opiate found in central Asia - hashish and opium. They also use this channel for arms supplies. The gangs, which are expanding into western markets, operating in Austria, Germany and Hungary, have set themselves the business aim of infiltrating joint stock companies trading in oil and gas with the West. ... The underlying question is: do the mafias help Dudayev? No one can give a definite answer to that. True, the special forces heard that terrorist groups were being prepared for transfer to Moscow, but this rumour remains unconfirmed. ... ALL the same, most Interior Ministry officials believe that Moscow cannot escape acts of terrorism. On balance, the Moscow cells wouldn't survive for long without active support from Chechnya. Therefore, to bolster their shaky authority and emphasise their loyalty to Chechnya, the criminals might agree to perform a series of terrorist acts. Neutralising them may not be all that easy, as gang security has increased."
434. *) This information is part of a much larger article on Russia that is still being prepared by ISGP. Calculations of murders in the early 1990s showed absolutely astronomical homicide rates: approximately 200 per 100,000 Russians, if not closer to 300. This is without counting murders of Chechens, who also suffered at the hands of Dudayev's criminal regime, although less extreme than the Russians. To put this 200 per 100,000 homicide rate in perspective: the most violent country in the world at this point, Honduras, has an annual murder rate of "only" 80 per 100.000. And that's the entire population, not just a minority. In Chechnya, looking at the period from 1989 to the beginning of the 1st Chechen War in December 1994, and it appears that about 2,000 Russians have been murdered on an average population of 200.000. That's 1 in every 100 people, or a whopping 1 percent of the Russian population in Chechnya. Considering this doesn't include all the reported robberies, beatings and rapes, and it is clear that just about every Russian family has to have been affected by these atrocities. Certainly these numbers explain the mass exodus of Russians that began in 1989, years before the 1st Chechen War.
     *) It's very hard to find information of the situation of Russians in Chechnya in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, because of the overdose of reporting on the 1st and 2nd Chechen wars.
     *) February 17, 2000, Vladimir Yanchenkov (Interior Ministry spokesman) article published at the Russian Information Centre (informationcentre.ru), Ministry for Press, Television, Radio Broadcasting and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, 'ИЗГОИ НА РОДНОЙ ЗЕМЛЕ. Документальные свидетельства геноцида русского населения в масхадовской Ичкерии', ('Fugetives in own country. Documented evidence of the genocide of the Russian population in Maskhadov's Ichkeria'): "Since the early 1990s more than 300,000 Russians have left Chechnya. In 1992 in Grozny alone, according to the official data of the Interior Ministry, 250 people of Russian nationality were murdered and another 300 went missing (the numbers are taken from the report submitted by the chairman of Russian Society of Chechnya, Oleg Makoveyev). ..."
435. *) September 10, 2011, Rumafia.com, 'Solntsevskaya gang tougher and cleverer than Shabalovskaya': "Gangsters had been Besides being the largest in size, power of Solntsevskaya group could be explained by the fact that they enjoyed the support of FSK-FSB. At that time the counterintelligence agency developed a program against the Caucasian criminal clans, which rapidly grew into large cities. Among other things, the program included tacit support of Slavic criminal groups as a real force in opposition to Caucasians. In St. Petersburg they supported Tambovskaya gang and in Moscow they chose Solntsevskaya. The only non-Slavs from the capital's gang, which enjoyed the support of the KGB, was Lazanskaya group consisting of Chechens which had close ties with the FSK-FSB. According to some sources, it was set up by security services to oppose Slavic gangs, which began to exercise their authority as a substitute to official government structures. It was this group that Solntsevskaya gang had a major conflict with."
     *) 2000, Paul Klebnikov, 'The Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky', Chapter 1 (digital): "Gangsters had been fighting and killing each other throughout the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years, but the bloodshed that was unleashed in 1993-94 was special. The "Great Mob War" was fought mostly in Moscow, but its echo was heard as far as Vladivostok, Krasnoyarsk, Sverdlovsk (Ykaterinburg), Samara, St. Petersburg, Tbilisi, Grozny, London, and New York. The root of the conflict was economic. Dozens of top gangster bosses had come out of prison after Communism fell, and they found the nation’s prime economic assets up for grabs. ... Though the mob war was largely a free-for-all, the main organized-crime groups generally adhered to one of two rival alliances. On one side were the Chechens and the thieves-professing-the-code allied with them. On the other side—loosely termed the Slavic alliance—was the Solntsevo Brotherhood and its allies. The Jap, from New York, lent his support to the anti-Chechen cause, as did Otarik. Another key ally of the Solntsevo Brotherhood was a young mobster recently freed from prison: Sergei Timofeyev (nicknamed "Sylvester" because of his resemblance to Sylvester Stallone). ... The Mafia chief had friends in high places. In November 1991—as the Soviet Union was falling apart—the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation freed the Jap, officially because of his bad health. ... One theory about the Jap' s premature release was that Russian law-enforcement authorities, including the former KGB, were anxious to produce a counterweight to the Chechen gangs dominating Russian streets in 1991. ... The leading role in the emerging anti-Chechen coalition was taken not by the Jap, Otarik, or any other traditional gangster boss, but by a new organization: the Solntsevo Brotherhood. ... In 1989, Mikhas and other top Solntsevo bosses were arrested on suspicion of "banditry" and imprisoned. Several Chechen gangs seized the opportunity to take control of parts of the old Solntsevo territory. But after the Soviet Union collapsed, Mikhas was freed from prison, and the Solntsevo boss was determined to reassert his authority in the city."
436. Badri Patarkatsishvili:
     *) Pravo.ru/store/interdoc/doc/288/Day_8.pdf‎ (October 11, 2011, unknown trial transcript) : "Q. Now, did Mr Curtis visit you at Cap d'Antibes on 17 May 2001? ... A. I wouldn't deny because I don't remember that. ... Q. This document was prepared in London at Mr Curtis's office while he was in Cap d'Antibes with you and it was faxed to the Villa Medy Roc, which I think was Mr Patarkatsishvili's house -- A. It's correct. ... Q. -- Mr Curtis came out to Cap d'Antibes for discussions with you and Mr Patarkatsishvili and I think also Mr Fomichev. A. And all together we have been at the Badri place, yes? Q. Well, I don't know which house this was in. Mr Jacobson has -- A. No, Medy Roc is Badri's house."
     *) May 14, 2008, Supreme Court of Gibraltar, 'Affidavit of Esther Meimoun': "My name is Esther Meimoun. I am an Israeli citizen ... 4. On May 10, 2008 I was called by Inna Gudavadze, who was previously the late Badri Patarkatsishvili's wife (who died on February 12th 2008 in London) ... 9. As I mentioned in my first statement, Joseph Kay is the father of my two sons... 13. I always knew that Joseph Kay has businesses by himself. it is correct that he also made a joint project with Badri Patarkatsishvili, and in some projects Badri Patarkatsishvili trusted him and gave him also the authority to represent him, but all of the projects, assets or properties mentioned in my first witness statement namely the Buddah Bar in New York, the Rustavi Metallurgical Plant in Georgia, the Fisher Island in Miami, Florida, and all real estate deals in Morocco or Spain actually are solely belonging to Joseph Kay. 14. After the sale of the real estate in France, the villa in Cap D‘Antibes called the Villa Medy Roc, 145 Bld. JF Kennedy, 06160 Antibes, that used to belong to both of them (the shares of the company were held for both of them by somebody else), Badri asked Joseph Kay who was in charge of the sale of the Villa and made a huge profit on that sale for both of them, to use the money earned from this sale for investment in the telecommunication company in Georgia. Therefore they became equal partners to the ownership of the telecommunication business in Georgia.""
     Berezovsky:
     *) 2001, Dmitri Glinski, 'The Tragedy of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy', pp. 499-500: "Noting that Berezovsky "likes to pay, but not with his own money," Korzhakov says that he "scares the 'money bags' with his ties to the president and forces them to pay particular sums for particular purposes. In this way they bought a mansion in Nice for [Tatyana] Dyachenko for 25 million francs [about $4 million]." The mansion was Chateau de la Garope [Garoupe] on the Cap d'Antibes. However, it was purchased not in the name of Dyachenko, but in that of a company. Who stands behind the company is not yet clear."
     *) August 12, 2012, The Telegraph, 'Berezovsky v Abramovich trial: How Boris Berezovsky lost a fortune': "Mr Berezovsky said he had bought two properties on the Cap D'Antibes, including Chateau Clocher [and] de la Garoupe, along with a yacht, jewelry for his partner Elena Gorbunova, and several newspapers."
437. -----------> According to the ATLAS dossier, Przedborski often resided in Costa Rica where he had a diplomatic passport and was close to the government. For some reason, Sergei Mikhailov, head of the Solntsevskaya mafia, traveled to Costa Rica and received a diplomatic passport from this country also. He and Mikhailov are known to have flown together to Costa Rica.
     *) November 16, 1995, La Nation Nacional, 'Chain of trouble' ('Cadena de líos') (Google translate - no edits): " The case of the Russian mobster Sergei Mikhailov, who was named honorary consul of Costa Rica on February 4, 1994, is one link in a chain of complaints against various officials of the diplomatic service of our country. ... In May this year, it was reported that Felix Przedborski, naturalized Costa Rican and honorary diplomat in Belgium, apparently participated in a lurid scandal kickbacks and mafia operations in that country; businesses linked to the alleged payment of kickbacks in the sale of Italian military helicopters on Belgium. This official remains in office. ... In January 1994 in Vek Serebrianiy restaurant for dinner met foreign diplomats, the wife of a foreign diplomat accredited to Israel, senior officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry and one of the leaders of the group of gangsters in the region of Solntsevo (Sergei Mikhailov) nicknamed Mikhas. The reason for the dinner was revealed a little later: in February the Government of Costa Rica Mikhas appointed Consul ad honorem in Moscow. It is known that Mikhailov was responsible for a series of martial arts specialists athletes who engaged in criminal conduct their work. This group has close contacts with the Russian diaspora in Israel, Austria and the United States.
     *) September 10, 2011, Rumafia.com, 'Solntsevskaya gang tougher and cleverer than Shabalovskaya': "Mikhas freely traveled around the world. He flew with Mogilevich to Costa Rica, where he bought the post of Honorary Consul of the country in Moscow for 350 thousand dollars. Then Solntsevskaya leader came to the U.S., where he met with Vyacheslav Ivankov, a thief in law who had settled in this country. As established by the FBI, Yaponchik and Mihas constantly were in touch almost weekly holding telephone conversations with each other."
     -----------> The "Nebula's" Xavier Magnee (see ATLAS dossier) was the lawyer of Solntsevskaya head Sergei Mikhailov.
     *) January 25, 1997, Le Soir, 'Former Belgian barrister, Master Xavier Magnee, comes to the rescue of the number one in the Russian mafia; giant of organized crime, Sergei Mikhailov, remains in jail' ('Sergeï Mikhaïlov, mafieux et homme d'affaires...'): "Arrested on October 15 at Geneva's Cointrin Airport, Mikhailov is charged with money laundering and conspiracy. ... Surprise: yesterday, during a closed hearing of the indictment it was his Belgian lawyer, Xavier Magnee, former barrister, who spoke to advocate the release of his client, alleging a violation of the Convention European Court of Human Rights. ... Both letters of request - Russian and Israeli [who didn't ask for his extradition] - at least demonstrate that Mr. Mikhailov is well known, at the global level, by police units fighting organized crime, which Mr. Magnee and others have attempted to disprove by advancing various documents of dubious origin."
     *) Magnee's bio is quite extreme: Magnee was actually a business partner of and lawyer for Roger Boas, head of ASCO, in that company's biggest and most controversial historical arms deal. In 1977 ASCO and two partner firms established Belgian Mechanical Fabrication (BMF) to coordinate a new contract that would supply the Belgian army with over a 1,000 M113 Armored Personal Carriers (APC). Boas was a board member. Xavier Magnee, who had arranged that the APCs could be build in Belgium by ASCO, was appointed chairman. Accusations arose that defense minister Paul vanden Boeynants, a close friend of Roger Boas and a later client of Magnee, was being "bribed" by BMF. Among the accusations was the claim that vanden Boeynants had been sent on a safari in South Africa with prostitutes delivered by Fortunato Israel, Boas' Jewish girlfriend who operated a European-wide network of call girls. Among those known to have been serviced by Israel's call girls are employees of Adnan Khashoggi, members of the Saudi royal family and Belgian aristocrats as the royal family. As the Pinon affair demonstrated, her services included children. Two ASCO directors were top level Israeli government advisor, Abraham Shavit (Nebula) and General Efraim Poran. ASCO and "Roger" featured in the Dutroux X-Dossiers as location where snuff films with children were shot and other hideous abuse went on. Xavier Magnee was also the lawyer of Dutroux for some time, spreading disinformation on the case. In the past Magnee represented Baron de Bonvoisin and other aristocrats accused of torturing and murdering children. Already in the 1970s Xavier Magnee and Felix Przedborski knew each other through membership in the Cercle des Nations, loaded with child abusing, CIA-connected aristrocrats.
     ------------------> The "Nebula's" Alfred Cahen once put Semion Mogilevich in touch with French intelligence. March 31, 2001, De Tijd, 'How Washintong made the Russian maffia' ('Hoe Washington de Russische maffia maakte'): "But according to [Robert] Friedman, Brandwein most certainly was associated with Semion Mogilevich, a.k.a. Brainy Don, one of the central figures in his book. The Russian resides in Hungarian Budapest, from where he heads his criminal enterprise consisting of prostitution, money laundering, murder, drug-, arms- and cigarette smuggling. The godfather does business with the Napolitan Camorra, the Japanese Yakuza and the Colombian drug lords. In the American FBI files Friedman was able to look, it is reported that Mogilevich made deals with western intelligence agencies. In exchange for information on rival criminal entrepreneurs, Mogilevich tried to keep friendly relations with those spies. That has been revealed in 1998 by the Belgian police detective Pierre Delilez. He also brought to light that Mogilevich sought contact with the French secret services through Belgian top diplomat Alfred Cahen. Curiously, since then Delilez has been put on non-active as an expert on the Russian mob."
438. The ATLAS dossier claims that the retired Mossad colonel has been training the Cali Cartel and the Contras. This is exactly what Colonel Yair Klein was doing in Costa Rica in the 1980s. He did this in the capacity of a retired citizen who headed the private military firm Hod HaHanit (Spearhead).
439. *) August 30, 1989, The Guardian, 'Israeli security men sell out to drug barons': "According to Israel Radio, Lieutenant-Colonel Yair Klein, the former army man at the centre of the row, conducted weapons training courses in Colombia as recently as four months ago. Col Klein and another ex-officer, Mr Amatzia Shuali, are under investigation, but say their firm, Hod HaHanit (Spearhead), is only the tip of a very large iceberg. If they have broken the law, they told police, than so have many others. Col Klein says that his work in Colombia was carried out with government approval and merely involved training farmers to defend themselves against attacks by leftwing guerrillas. He has denied any connection with the powerful and ruthless drug barons. According to Israeli press reports, a former paratroop officer is suspected of having helped the head of the Cali drug cartel plan the murder of his rival in Medellin. The assassination was to have been carried out by an explosives-laden remotely piloted drone."
     *) August 30, 1989, New York Times, 'Mercenaries Shown Training Drug Gangs': "A retired Israeli Army officer, Lieut. Col. Yair Klein, who has acknowledged training the Colombians and making the tape, said in a radio interview broadcast in Bogota today that he was training men to fight Communist guerrillas. But the Colombian police, in interviews and in a report made available today, said about a half-dozen Israelis and at least 11 British mercenaries were training paramilitary forces and assassins for the Medellin and Cali drug cartels. ... The police said they believed that hundreds of other killings had been carried out in the last year by gunmen trained by Israeli and British mercenaries."
     *) More articles on Col. Yair Klein in the 1001 Club membership/biographies list.
440. *) ISGP had the suspicions against Kerimov immediately upon filling in the biography and seeing no clear source of the oligarch's enormous wealth. Dagestan is a very volatile Muslim republic with a lot of terrorist attacks.
     *) April 12, 2011, India Times, 'Black money: Hasan Ali, Tapuria admit to links with Khashoggi': "Hasan Ali Khan and his close associate Kashinath Tapuria, both of whom are presently in judicial custody in connection with the Enforcement Directorate's probe into the black money trail, have admitted to their close links with Adnan Khashoggi, the notorious Saudi arms dealer. During his interrogation with the Enforcement Directorate, Khan, in fact, is learnt to have described Khashoggi as "a friend". Tapuria too is said to have confirmed his (Khan's) links with the Saudi arms dealer. As the Enforcement Directorate's probe into the black money trail gathers pace, a vast and extensive international network - comprising arms dealers, business tycoons, mafia and narco-peddlers, besides sundry politicians and bureaucrats - is being unraveled. Both Khashoggi and Suleiman Kerimov, the Russian businessman alleged to have a close nexus with the local mafia, used the skills, expertise and network of the Khan-Tapuria duo to divert funds in the global market. ... Both Khan and Tapuria are said to have earned commission worth $5-10 million from Khashoggi and Kerimov for moving their funds internationally."
441. See note 438.
442. *) August 5, 2005, Pravda.info, 'International consulting agency "Far West Ltd." has completed the restructuring': "Another 30% is equally owned by the original founders of the agency: Vladimir Filin, Anton Surikov and Lyudmila Rozkinoy..."
443. *) October 21, 2009, Daily Mail, 'The richest Rothschild of them all': "He [Nat Rothschild] has recently joined his father in a business venture, JNR [probably stands for Jacob Nat Rothschild], which invests in Russian companies. There is a plan to float it on the London Stock Exchange next year, with some valuations approaching £2billion, making Nat's share worth £300million."
     *) En.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3APalmerparteram/Atlantic_Partnership: Lord Jacob Rothschild and his son Nathaniel "Young Nate" Rothschild became major shareholders in Diligence LLC in 2006, through their vehicle JNR, which acquired Ambassador Richard Burt’s stake in the company." [refers to the below article, which ISGP can't access in full]
     *) December 8, 2006, Intelligenceonline.com, 'Rothschild to Buy Into Diligence?': "Financier Nathaniel [Nat] Rothschild from the British branch of the banking dynasty is seeking a stake in the private intelligence firm Diligence. (...) [ 240 words ] [4 euro]"
     *) February 18, 2007, The Independent, 'Michael Howard and spooks on brink of Rothschild funding deal': "Diligence, the corporate intelligence firm founded by former spies and chaired by the one-time Conservative leader Michael Howard, is close to striking a major investment deal with a member of the Rothschild banking dynasty. The company, thought to be valued at around £30m, is understood to be in talks with an investment business called JNR, run by Nathaniel Rothschild, son of Lord Jacob Rothschild. Under the proposed deal, Diligence's majority shareholder - a South American private equity firm - will sell part of its 60 per cent stake. It is also thought that group chairman Richard Burt, the former US Assistant Secretary of State and chief arms control negotiator in the first Bush administration, will sell his 12 per cent holding and then leave the company. Mr Howard is European chairman. Diligence declined to comment. However, sources close to the situation believe a deal could be struck within weeks. Diligence was founded in 2000 by Nick Day, a former MI5 spy who also served in the Special Boat Service, and ex-CIA agent Mike Baker, who no longer works for the company. Mr Howard joined on a part-time basis last year. He also sits on Diligence's advisory board beside Judge William Webster, a former director of the CIA and FBI, and Edward Mathias, a managing director of private equity group Carlyle, among others. Diligence describes itself as an "intelligence gathering and risk management" firm. Like its larger rival Kroll, it has built a reputation advising clients on a range of sensitive issues, such as investigating fraud and money laundering, vetting potential overseas partners and providing security. The business has grown rapidly since its inception, and now boasts offices around the world, including London, Washington, Moscow and Hong Kong. The new investment, should the Rothschild deal go ahead, will allow it to continue expanding its operations. It is particularly focused on growing its presence in Asia. However, the group is not without its controversial side. Clients are understood to have included Halliburton, US Vice-President Dick Cheney's former firm, while heavyweight Republican lobbying outfit Barbour Griffith & Rogers has invested in the business in the past. Diligence settled a dispute with accountancy giant KPMG out of court last year. The legal row centred on claims that Diligence staff had impersonated MI6 officers in order to steal information."
444. *) October 18, 2000, FLB.ru (Freelance Bureau), 'Солнцевская ОПГ: Славянские оргпреступные группировки в Москве' ('Solntsevskaya gang: Slavic organized crime group in Moscow'): "The organizers of the group are: Simeon Shorin ("Jew"), who is now responsible for the "bond" with law enforcement agencies. [and] Jamal Hachidze... Sergei Mikhailov ("Michas"): the main leader ... The leaders of the group: the Averin brothers and Eugene Lyustranov ("Lyustrik")."
     *) 2002, Jonathan Nitzan and ‎Shimshon Bichler, 'The Global Political Economy of Israel': "Many of Russia's new businessmen - including notorious mobsters Eduard Ivankov and Sergei Mikhailov, as well as bigger sharks, such as Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovitch, Lev Leviev and Vladimir Gusinsky [and Leonid Nevzlin, Michael Cherney, Vitaly Malkin, Vitaly Machitsky and Mikhail Mirilashvili] - have actually become Israeli citizens, at least according to their passports."
     *) November 25, 2011, Haaretz, 'How a serial criminal got help from an Israeli government minister': "Semion Mogilevich [key ally of Solntsevskaya], who holds Russian and Israeli citizenship and is high on the FBI's most-wanted list."
     *) Rumafia: "Mikhailov and [Viktor] Averin also have Israeli passports."
     *) See note 424 for links between Sergei Mikhailov and Semion Mogilevich with the equally Zionist "nebula" network of Felix Przedborski.
     *) May 28, 2000, Sun-Sentinel, 'Russian Mafiya Red-handed In Extensive Crime Ring': "[Robert I.] Friedman, an American of Russian-Jewish descent, is remarkably well-positioned to report on the Mafiya since most Mafiya members are themselves Russian Jews. This curious fact owes its origin to the efforts, during the Nixon administration, of Democratic Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson [archneocon; Back in the 1970s future neocons Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Douglas Feith and Frank Gaffney were all employed here. Richard Pipes was among his advisor; co-founder America-Israel Friendship League (AIFL); co-founder Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA); involved in the Jonathan Institute and conferences; involved with the American Security Council] to link trade concessions with Jewish emigration. "In the two-year period between 1972 and 1973 alone, more than 66,000 Russian Jews emigrated, compared to just 2,808 in 1969. ... Much as Fidel Castro would do several years later during the Mariel boatlift, the KGB took this opportunity to empty its jails of thousands of hard-core criminals." While the Italian Mafia has a singular link between Italy and America, the Russian Mafiya is more international. Ironically, in a Jewish transit camp near Rome, many Russian-Jewish career criminals met, exchanged information and then dispersed. "Once the mobsters reached their destinations, they could phone up their new friends for criminal advice, intelligence and additional contacts." Hence, they created the "Red Octopus ... a global organized crime monster." The Russians seem crazier in their violence than do the Italians. While the Mafia uses violence to punish enemies surgically, the Mafiya will kill the enemy, his wife, his children and his friends, both as a theatrical warning to competitors and for the sheer joy of bloody, tyrannical violence. In addition, while the Mafia focuses on a few criminal enterprises, the Mafiya will go after what is close at hand, whether it be smuggling, credit-card fraud, protection rackets or other illicit diversions. "
     *) November 16, 1995, La Nation Nacional, 'Chain of trouble' ('Cadena de líos') (Google translate - no edits): "In January 1994 Vek Serebrianiy met foreign diplomats at a restaurant for dinner: the wife of a foreign diplomat accredited to Israel, senior officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry and one of the leaders of the group of gangsters in the region of Solntsevo [Solntsevskaya] (Sergei Mikhailov) nicknamed Mikhas. "
445. *) For quite a few years now Nat Rothschild, Lord Mandelson, Canadian Zionist gold miner Peter Munk, a member of the elite 1001 Club; and oligarch Oleg Deripaska have been the closest of friends and business partners. Picture of the four in Russia. Mandelson is well known representative of Rothschild interests. As ISGP's Superclass Index shows, he has become among the most connected men in Great Britain. The connections of the other men can also be found here.
     *) Evgeny Novitsky was at various times a director, president and chairman of Vladimir Yevtushenkov's Sistema.
     *) May 13, 2013, The Guardian, 'Peter Mandelson joins board of Russian firm 'with organised crime links': "The oil-to-telecoms conglomerate was implicated in a leaked secret cable about criminal activity, sent in 2010 by the then US ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle. Sistema [linked to various Russian think tanks; a very elite company], which is majority owned by its billionaire chairman and co-founder, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, is linked to one of Russia's largest organised crime gangs, Solntsevo, according to the cable released by WikiLeaks. It is alleged that Evgeny Novitsky, the former president of Sistema and one of the current board members Lord Mandelson has been nominated to replace, is a member of Solntsevo. Reporting on information he had been given, Beyrle said Novitsky "controlled the Solntsevo criminal gang". If appointed Mandelson will join Roger Munnings, Britain's special representative for trade and investment between the UK and Russia, on the board of Sistema."
     *) February 12, 2010, U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Cecret cable from U.S. ambassador to Russia John R. Beyrle (released through Wikileaks, the New York Times also made it available on its website): "1. (C) Summary: Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov remains a loyal member of United Russia, with a reputation for ensuring that the city has the resources it needs to function smoothly. Questions increasingly arise regarding Luzhkov's connections to the criminal world and the impact of these ties on governance. Luzhkov remains in a solid position due to his value as a consistent deliverer of votes for the ruling party. Unfortunately, the shadowy world of corrupt business practices under Luzhkov continues in Moscow, with corrupt officials requiring bribes from businesses attempting to operate in the city. End Summary. ... Luzhkov's national reputation as the man who governs the ungovernable, who cleans the streets, keeps the Metro running and maintains order in Europe's largest metropolis of almost 11 million people, earns him a certain amount of slack from government and party leaders. He oversaw what even United Russia insiders acknowledge was a dirty, compromised election for the Moscow City Duma in October, and yet received only a slap on the wrist from President Medvedev. 3. (C) Muscovites are increasingly questioning the standard operating procedures of their chief executive, a man who, as of 2007, they no longer directly elect. Luzhkov's connections to the criminal world and the impact that these ties have had on governance and development in Moscow are increasingly a matter of public discussion. ... Analysts identify a three-tiered structure in Moscow's criminal world. Luzhkov is at the top. The FSB, MVD, and militia are at the second level. Finally, ordinary criminals and corrupt inspectors are at the lowest level. ... 6. (C) XXXXXXXXXXXX, told us that Moscow's ethnic criminal groups do business and give paybacks. It is the federal headquarters of the parties, not the criminal groups, who decide who will participate in politics. XXXXXXXXXXXX argued that the political parties are the ones with the political clout; therefore, they have some power over these criminal groups. ... 7. (S) XXXXXXXXXXXX, told us that Luzhkov's wife, Yelena Baturina, definitely has links to the criminal world, and particularly to the Solntsevo criminal group (widely regarded by Russian law enforcement as one of the most powerful organized crime groups in Russia). According to the Internet article, "On the Moscow Group," Vladimir Yevtushenko, the head of the company Sistema, is married to Natalya Yevtushenko, Baturina's sister. Sistema was created with Moscow city government-owned shares, and Sistema initially focused on privatizing the capital's real estate and gas. Sistema's president, Yevgeny Novitsky, controlled the Solntsevo criminal gang. Today, Sistema has spun off into various companies, which implement projects that typically include 50 percent funding from the Moscow city government. 8. (S) According to XXXXXXXXXXXX, Luzhkov used criminal money to support his rise to power and has been involved with bribes and deals regarding lucrative construction contracts throughout Moscow. XXXXXXXXXXXX told us that Luzhkov's friends and associates (including recently deceased crime boss Vyacheslav Ivankov ["Yaponchik", Russian mob boss in the U.S., released as a counterweight to Chechen mob] and reputedly corrupt Duma Deputy Joseph Kobzon) are "bandits." He told us that he knew this because he formerly had contacts in these criminal groups, but many of his contacts have since been killed. XXXXXXXXXXXX said that the Moscow government has links to many different criminal groups and it regularly takes cash bribes from businesses. The people under Luzhkov maintain these criminal connections. ... 9. (S) XXXXXXXXXXXX told us everyone knows that Russia's laws do not work. The Moscow system is based on officials making money. The government bureaucrats, FSB, MVD, police, and prosecutor's offices all accept bribes. XXXXXXXXXXXX stated that everything depends on the Kremlin and he thought that Luzhkov, as well as many mayors and governors, pay off key insiders in the Kremlin. XXXXXXXXXXXX argued that the vertical works because people are paying bribes all the way to the top. He told us that people often witness officials going into the Kremlin with large suitcases and bodyguards, and he speculated that the suitcases are full of money. The governors collect money based on bribes, almost resembling a tax system, throughout their regions. XXXXXXXXXXXX described how there are parallel structures in the regions in which people are able to pay their leaders. For instance, the FSB, MVD, and militia all have distinct money collection systems. Further, XXXXXXXXXXXX told us that deputies generally have to buy their seats in the government. They need money to get to the top, but once they are there, their positions become quite lucrative money making opportunities. Bureaucrats in Moscow are notorious for doing all kinds of illegal business to get extra money. ... XXXXXXXXXXXX told us that Luzhkov has many enemies because his wife has the most lucrative business deals in Moscow and many people think Luzhkov has received too much money. The son of the head of the interior police, Vladimir Kolokotsev, told XXXXXXXXXXXX that Kolokotsev's number one job is to get Luzhkov out within a year. Kolokotsev was credited with removing long-standing Governor Yegor Stroyev from Orel. XXXXXXXXXXXX asserted that Luzhkov is "on his way out," although he acknowledged that the Kremlin has not identified a suitable replacement yet. ... 12. (C) According to many observers, the lawless criminal climate in Russia makes it difficult for businesses to survive without being defended by some type of protection. XXXXXXXXXXXX explained how bribes work in Moscow: a cafe owner pays the local police chief via cash through a courier. He needs to pay a certain negotiated amount over a certain profit. The high prices of goods in Moscow cover these hidden costs. Sometimes people receive "bad protection" in the sense that the "krysha" extorts an excessive amount of money. As a result, they cannot make enough of a profit to maintain their businesses. If people attempt to forego protection, they will instantly be shut down. For example, officials from the fire or sanitation service will appear at the business and invent a violation. According to XXXXXXXXXXXX, everyone has bought into the idea of protection in Moscow, so it has become a norm. In general, Muscovites have little freedom to speak out against corrupt activities and are afraid of their leaders. 13. (C) XXXXXXXXXXXX explained that Moscow business owners understand that it is best to get protection from the MVD and FSB (rather than organized crime groups) since they not only have more guns, resources, and power than criminal groups, but they are also protected by the law. For this reason, protection from criminal gangs is no longer so high in demand. Police and MVD collect money from small businesses while the FSB collects from big businesses. According to XXXXXXXXXXXX, the FSB "krysha" is allegedly the best protection. He told us that, while the MVD and FSB both have close links to Solntsevo, the FSB is the real "krysha" for Solntsevo. This system is not an incentive for smaller businesses and nobody is immune; even rich people who think they are protected get arrested. According to Transparency International's 2009 survey, bribery costs Russia USD 300 billion a year, or about 18 percent of its gross domestic product. ... 14. (S) Despite Medvedev's stated anti-corruption campaign, the extent of corruption in Moscow remains pervasive with Mayor Luzhkov at the top of the pyramid. Luzhkov oversees a system in which it appears that almost everyone at every level is involved in some form of corruption or criminal behavior. Putin and Medvedev's dilemma is deciding when Luzhkov becomes a bigger liability than asset."
446. *) For quite a few years now Nat Rothschild, Lord Mandelson, Canadian Zionist gold miner Peter Munk, a member of the elite 1001 Club; and oligarch Oleg Deripaska have been the closest of friends and business partners. Picture of the four in Russia. Mandelson is well known representative of Rothschild interests. As ISGP's Superclass Index shows, he has become among the most connected men in Great Britain. The connections of the other men can also be found here.
     *) February 11, 2012, Daily Mail, Defeat for Mandelson's billionaire as judge backs the Mail over story of Rothschild and the Russian oligarch': "Billionaire financier Nat Rothschild exposed his friend Peter Mandelson to accusations of a conflict of interest while the Labour peer was an EU trade commissioner, the High Court ruled yesterday. The Swiss-based hedge-fund manager had launched a libel battle against the Daily Mail over his trips to Moscow and Siberia with Lord (then Mr) Mandelson and a Russian oligarch. He claimed an article painted him as a ‘puppet-master’ willing to exploit his friendship with the former Labour spin doctor to impress his business associate, metals magnate Oleg Deripaska. But he lost the case, and photographs of him, Lord Mandelson and Deripaska at an aluminium smelting plant, were ruled by the judge, along with other evidence, to disprove Rothschild's claim that the visit has no business-related purpose."
447. *) October 10, 2008, Wall Street Journal, 'Russia's Deripaska Faces Western Investigations': "In the past, authorities in the U.S. have accused Mr. Deripaska of having ties to organized crime, which he has denied. In 2006, the Federal Bureau of Investigation persuaded the State Department to revoke a U.S. visa he had obtained, according to diplomatic and law-enforcement officials. ... Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, whose business is facing a squeeze amid the credit crisis, also is under investigation by U.S. and U.K. authorities in connection with a $57.5 million wire transfer last year, according to people familiar with the matter. ... The wire transfer being investigated in the U.S. and U.K. originated with a Russian company Mr. Deripaska controls, UC Rusal, passing through Barclays PLC offices in New York and London, according to emails, other documents and people with knowledge of the transaction. Some of the funds ended up with Deripaska consultants in Washington who, according to lawyers and government officials, are being investigated by the Justice Department and Manhattan district attorney for possible money laundering or other crimes. The transfer is one of dozens under scrutiny. ... Mr. Deripaska has been working with a small group of advisers in Washington and London who have helped him deal with inquiries and lawsuits over his alleged ties to organized crime, according to business records and interviews with people involved in the work. The advisers include Alexander Mirtchev and Thomas Ondeck, who operate a Washington consulting firm called GlobalOptions Management [with former CIA directors William Webster and James Woolsey on the board. Founded by CIA asset Neil Livingstone, once of the American Security Council]."
     *) October 24, 2008, Harper's magazine, 'Oleg Deripaska and the Buying of Washington: Controversial oligarch funds local think tanks': "Through his holding company, Basic Element, Deripaska is a major donor to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). According to the Council's website, Basic Element is a member of the "President's Circle," the second-highest corporate donor level. ... Basic Element has also offered "generous financial support" to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Back in December 2005, Deripaska gave a speech at Carnegie entitled "Restructuring Soviet Enterprises: Challenges and Solutions." His funding for the think tank soon followed. ... Deripaska has also bought himself a Harvard pedigree. Thanks to a contribution to the university, he serves as an International Council Member at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs [with Nat Rothschild and former CIA director John Deutch]."
448. *) See previous not for another report on Deripaska's mafia ties.
     *) April 6, 2004, Compromat.ru (original from Stringer-agency.ru), 'Последний бой?' ('The last fight?'): "In December 1999 an impressive company gathered at the Herots [hotel] in the Israeli city of Eilat. Present: Mr. [Michael] Cherney, Semion Mogilevich ... Vadim Rabinovich (denied entry into the United States and Great Britain - !), Oleg Deripaska, Oleg Taranov ([head of the Ukrainian] National Agency for the Management of State Property) and Andrey Derkach [member of parliament and son of the head of the security service of Ukraine, Leonid Derkach [under Kuchma]."
449. May 26, 1998, Village Voice, 'The Most Dangerous Mobster in the World According to the FBI and Israeli Intelligence, Semion Mogilevich Rules Over an Arms-Trafficking, Money-Laundering, Drug-Running, and Art-Smuggling 'Red Mafia': "In two posh villas outside the small town of Ricany, near Prague, one of the most dreaded mob families in the world savagely murders its terrified victims. The mob's young enforcers, trained by veterans of the Afghanistan war, are infamous for their extreme brutality. Their quarry, usually businessmen who have balked at extortion demands, are repeatedly stabbed and tortured, then mutilated before they are butchered. The carnage is so hideous that it has scared the daylights out of competing crime groups in the area. The torture chambers are run by what international police officials call the Red Mafia, a notorious Russian mob family that in only six years has become a nefarious global crime cartel. The enigmatic leader of the Red Mafia is a 52-year-old Ukrainian-born Jew named Semion Mogilevich."
450. 1999, BBC Panorama, 'The Billion Dollar Don': "[FBI special agent 1976-1998, Bob Levinson:] In May of 1995, the number 2 man in the most powerful gang, the Solntsevskaya organization, a man by the name of Victor Averin, was celebrating a birthday. Traditionally the birthdays are used as an excuse to get members of the group together, primarily the leaders, brigade leaders. And so a meeting was planned. We got wind of it. [Narrator:] The FBI saw Averin's birthday guest list as a who's still who of Russian organized crime. There was Sergei Mikhailov, alleged head of the notorious Solntsevskaya organization, a gang linked by the FBI to Mogilevich; Gafur Rakhimov, the most powerful gangster in Uzbekistan, allegedly a major trafficker of heroin into Europe; Jamal Khachidze, narcotics, Moscow; and Aleksander Sedov, reputedly one of the most vicious killers in Russia. ... But the one man who escaped the indignity. The one man the Czechs and FBI most wanted to have a chat with avoided being in the restaurant that night. By remarkable twist of faith, Mogilevich flew in for the party, but it appears that his plane arrived late. [Interviewer:] Were you intending to go to that party? [Semion Mogilevich:] Yes. By the time I arrived at the U Holubu [restaurant with over a dozen strippers present], everything was already in full swing. So I went to a neighboring hotel. [Narrator:] No one was ever charged. No criminal offense had been committed. But the message of the Czech police to the Russian brigade commanders was clear: get out and stay out.""
451. October 2, PR Newswire, 'Richard Perle to Receive 'Scoop' Jackson Award at Jerusalem Summit': "Richard Perle, a leading US strategist and past assistant Secretary of Defense under the Reagan Administration will receive the Annual Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson Award at the Inaugural Jerusalem Summit (Oct. 12-14), which will take place in Jerusalem. ... Joining RICHARD PERLE in Jerusalem will be fellow Americans DANIEL PIPES, ALAN KEYES, CAL THOMAS, FRANK GAFFNEY, JOHN BATCHELOR and MIKE EVANS. Israeli participants will include EHUD OLMERT, BENYAMIN NETANYAHU, UZI LANDAU, Rabbi BENI ELON, EFRAIM EITAM, URI LUPOLIANSKY and leading Knesset members, academics and businessmen. Organizers of The Jerusalem Summit are Israel's Government Ministry of Tourism, the Jerusalem Municipality, the Michael Cherney Foundation and the National Unity Coalition for Israel."
452. *) The reports about Michael Cherney's ties to organized crime are endless. Of course James Woolsey and John Deutch knew about them.
     *) April 6, 2004, Compromat.ru (original from Stringer-agency.ru), 'Последний бой?' ('The last fight?'): "In December 1999 an impressive company gathered at the Herots [hotel] in the Israeli city of Eilat. Present: Mr. [Michael] Cherney, Semion Mogilevich [head of the Solntsevskaya mafia] ... Vadim Rabinovich (denied entry into the United States and Great Britain - !) [suspected Solntsevskaya chief], Oleg Deripaska [billionaire oligarch and chief Rothschild partner in Russia], Oleg Taranov ([head of the Ukrainian] National Agency for the Management of State Property) and Andrey Derkach [member of parliament and son of the head of the security service of Ukraine, Leonid Derkach [under Kuchma]."
     *) January 16, 2003, Compromat.ru (original from Stringer-agency.ru), 'Михаил Черной: "Моим хобби, если можно так сказать, является помощь хорошим, честным людям."' ('Michael Cherney: "My hobby, so to speak, is to help good, honest people"'): "The first contacts with the criminal underworld Michael [Cherney] got in Uzbekistan. Along with his brother Leo, Michael created the first industrial cooperative in Uzbekistan. In this co-op Michael organized the production. In keeping their business, the brothers relied on the support of the criminal world of Tashkent. The money for the promotion of their business, the Cherney brothers acquired through links with the Uzbek criminal community, especially with Gafur Rakhimov [allied with Solntsevskaya; close since his youth with oligarch Alisher Usmanov] and Tofik Arifova. The questionable cooperative was used by criminal organizations to launder the proceeds of racketeering, prostitution, trafficking in arms and drugs. Also in Uzbekistan, Cherney met with Iskander Makhmudov, which is still considered his most reliable partner, along with Oleg Deripaska."
     *) August 7, 1996, Novaya Ezhednevnaya Gazeta (through Rumafia): "The names of Mikhail and Lev Chernoy [Cherney], as well as the criminal authority Alimzhan Tohtahunov (Tayvanchik) [Taiwanchik] are mentioned in spring 1996 telephone recording of the president of the National Sports Fund, Boris Fyodorov, with Boris Berezovsky, Valentin Yumashev and Tatyana Dyachenko [Yeltsin's daughter]. On the record, Mikhail Chernoy, his brother and Tayvanchik were mentioned as people who are closely connected with the criminal groups, as well as that they have contact with the former head of the Russian Federal Security Service, Mikhail Barsukov, and the former head of presidential security, [General] Aleksandr Korzhakov."
     *) April 18, 2007, No. 37, "Time and Money", www.zakon.co (through Rumafia): "In 1995, there was an attempt on Chernoy's [Michael Cherney's] life. KGB officers shadowed him for 3 months: his contacts were recorded, his movements were tracked, domestic and international calls were secretly wiretapped. With the completion of information gathering, the Russian customers, according to information in the media, decided to eliminate Chernoy physically. For this, a hired killer was chosen, who agreed to fulfill an order for 100 thousand dollars, but who later turned out to be a secret agent of the Israeli police. This prevented the attack on Chernoy and guaranteed the detention of the former security officials who participated in the preparation of his murder."
     *) May 6, 2007, www.rosbalt.ru (through Rumafia): "Chernoy [Cherney] was repeatedly suspected of the laundering criminal money and close links with international criminals by the law enforcement agencies in several European countries. ... Mikhail Chernoy is still not allowed to enter the UK, the USA, Switzerland, France and Bulgaria."
     *) November 1, 2000, Vedomosti, No. 203 (285) (through Rumafia): "In August 2000, Chernoy [Cherney] was expelled from Bulgaria with the deprivation of the right of residence on its territory and its entering in ten years period. National Security Service of Bulgaria concluded that Mikhail Chernoy is linked with international criminal organizations and that he threatens the national security of Bulgaria. After the events in Bulgaria, Chernoy was forced to cede "MobiTel" to Israeli businessman Lev Levaev. In October 2003, Chernoy attempted to visit a match of his football club "Levski", but the Bulgarian authorities denied the attempt of the owner of the club."
     *) May 22, 2009, Peoples.ru: "At the same time people from the inner circles of Chernoy [Cherney] were arrested – among them Oleg Chernomorets, the city council member of the resort town Eilat and Elena Sakir, the secretary of Chernoy. They were accused of organizing meetings of the Russian criminal leaders on the bank of the Red Sea."
     *) January 15, 2010, Vedomosti, No. 5: "In January 2010 the Court of Tel-Aviv passed a sentence to one of the participants of the case on illegal collection of information about Mikhail Chernoy [Cherney]. It was reported that personal information about the businessman received through wiretapping of Chernoy, was collected by the order of a citizen of Russia Alexei Drobashenko who during that period occupied one of the senior positions in the company of Oleg Deripaska. The press wrote that it was this information which formed the basis for the criminal case against Chernoy in Spain."
453. *) February 10, 2006, Far West director Natalia Roeva for Forum.msk.ru, 'Political Scientist Fritz Ermarth and businessman Adnan Khashoggi Do Not Own Agency Far West': "A. Davidovich: 1) Office - Bogota (Colombia), Director - A. Davidovich representatives - Caracas (Venezuela), Manaush (Brazil), La Paz (Bolivia). Direction for South-West Asia, the curator - R. Sh. Saidov: 2) Office - Istanbul (Turkey), Director - S. A. Suleymenov representatives - Yalta (Ukraine); 3) Office - Tehran (Iran), Director - R. Sh. Saidov representatives - Damascus (Syria), Beirut (Lebanon); 4) Office - Baghdad (Iraq), Director - S. A. Suleymenov; 5) Office - Bagram (Afghanistan), Director - S. A. Suleymenov representatives - Manas (Kyrgyzstan), Peshawar (Pakistan). "
     *) August 5, 2005, Pravda.info, 'International consulting agency "Far West Ltd." has completed the restructuring': "Now we have concentrated their activities in three missions: in Colombia (it is headed by Alfonso Davidovich), Afghanistan and Iraq (both offices headed by a member of the Board of Directors Valery Lunev)... [On investment projects:] We focused on two areas. The most important of them - West Asia: Persian Gulf countries, Turkey, North Cyprus. Our office in Dubai, headed by Ruslan Saidov ... "
454. *) Confirming black-on-white that Dick Cheney's KBR Halliburton was a the secretive founding partner of Far West took quite a while, despite being more than a few statements in that regard. It wasn't until seeing a the photocopy of a letter below that I was certain.
     *) September 2, 2005, Pravda, 'Vladimir Filin: We are not left without annoying attention for a minute': "Who are our partners? That's a trade secret. I can say this: they are four private firms from three countries: Turkey, Russia and the United States involved including freight. One of these firms is a division [KBR] of a well-known American corporation [Halliburton]. This company is a co-founder of the agency."
     *) January 26, 2006, Compromat.ru (not visible here; most likely just leaked info, as claimed by Far West), 'Offices "Far West Ltd." closed in Switzerland': "A general meeting of the agency Far West, Ltd. (Cayman Islands). On 26.01.06 the distribution of bonus shares Far West Ltd: ... 5% - Kellogg, Brown & Root (US): share control A. V. Surikov... Dr. Fritz Ermarth (US): Share control A. V. Surikov..."
     *) November 27, 2006, Novyi Region, 'Украина пытается замять скандал вокруг продажи ракет Ирану? (ФОТО Документов)' ('Is Ukraine trying to hush up a scandal surrounding the sale of missiles to Iran? (Photo Documents)'). Background: In November 2006 Russian news agency Novyi Region published a previously secret letter of Alexander Turchinov, head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), to the Secretary of the National Security Council (NSC), Petr Poroshenko. The letter documented the corporations involved in the transfer of X-55 cruise missiles to Iran and China. Turchinov had received this information from Israel. Both Turchinov and Poroshenko were fired by Viktor Yushchenko, a tool of western elites, in September. A partial photocopy of the letter, dated by August 25, 2005, reads (photocopy included in the three-part article series) (translate from Russian): "Isofert Trading INC, Transchem International INC (Panama) [both owned by Moshe Kantor], EMM Arab Systems Ltd (Cyprus) were used for transactions with the Chinese. The company Far West Ltd. (Switzerland) provided, under the control of Diligence LLC (USA), the general management of this operation and the contacts with the Iranians through its branch office in Tehran. Тесhnocalty INC and SP-Trade INC, controlled by KBR INC (all from USA) were used for payments [to the Iranians]..."
     
455. *) The Estonia ferry sunk on the Baltic Sea in 1994. Officially the bow visor accidentally opened during rough weather, leading to the sinking of the ship. There is massive controversy over this conclusion, however, much of it still only available in Estonian and Swedish languages. The primary alternative theory is that Russian military hardware was illegally transported towards the West on this ship. After reports of an upcoming surprise customs inspection as soon as the ship would arrive in Sweden, it is suspected that the bow visor was opened and the hull breached with explosives, leading to the rapid sinking of the ship. Strangely, neither the deceased, nor the ship, which was only located at 60-80 meters deep, was salvaged. Instead, authorities came up with a plan to prohibit diving in the area and bury the ship in a concrete sarcophagus, reportedly costing $350 million. Massive protests halted this program midway. Just as peculiar, a group of crew members reported to have been saved, went missing and were reported dead several days later. This included off-duty Captain Avo Piht, who was wanted by Interpol for some time. Quite possibly Piht knew about the shipments. Summary.
     --) ISGP stumbled across the low-profile Estonia disaster in an interview transcript related to Far West, which is interesting, considering Far West has been implicated in looting and selling off large amounts of Russian arms in the early 1990s.
     *) Transcript of an audio recording between Far West directors Anton Surikov (AS), Vladimir Filin (VF), Alexei Likhvintsev (AL) and Sergei Petrov (S). The recording was made at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, Austria, on September 27, 2003. Petrov was murdered by this group in January 2004: "S. [Petrov] —Well, what about those leaks through [later Far West director] Baranov, the "Felix group," [seemingly a leaked KGB report exposed in 1997 by ZDF. It stated that drugs and osmium were smuggled on the Estonia. Russian Osmium was also mentioned in the Italian "cheque to cheque" investigation] the fabrication about the ferry "Estonia"? I must say, Anton, everyone is fed up with this. AS. [Surikov] —It was the message to them to leave us alone, not to [expletive] with us. They did [expletive] with us, didn't they? As soon as Pasha [Pavel Grachev] was fired [in 1996], they did [some Russian government faction]."
     --) On the Estonia disaster:
     *) Tripod (little better available in English, but seems accurate): "Rescued and disappeared Captain Avo Piht was seen helping passengers with life jackets during the sinking on deck 7. He rescued himself in a life raft together with Variety Dancer Hannely Veide and Hanka-Hannika Veide. Avo Piht was not on duty the night of the accident. According to the Finnish evening newspaper "Iltalehti" the boat had two captains, at least one of whom survived. In Swedish news, helicopter crew told the press that the Second, Captain Avo Piht just was rescued [reportedly seen in ambulance]. The news was sent in channel 4 news. Piht was also seen in ZDF news around 1.30 p.m. by several witnesses, among those Jannika Ade who used to work on M/V Estonia. On 28.09.94 in the morning the news of the Estonian Radio, Estonian TV, Finnish TV announce the rescue of A. Piht. A Swedish helicopter had rescued A. Piht. On 28.09.94 at 2.30 p.m. phoned Captain Erich Moik from MV Mare Balticum in Rostock , telling that Estonian sailors saw rescued A. Piht on ZDF news. In the evening of 28.09.94 E. Madisson phoned on Swedish phone number 666 60 56, from which was said that A. Piht was alive and rescued. The same news was repeated to L. Garder on 29.09.94. On 30.09.94 Chief of Security Department of the Swedish Department of Water Transportation, Mr. Bengt Erik Stenmark gives an interview to Reuter News Agency telling that commission, dealing with the catastrophe has talked to A. Piht. Mr. Stenmark has not refuted his claim. On 01.10.94 representative of "Estline", Mr. Yrjö Saarinen show a telefax dated from the 28:th of September, where A. Piht born in 1954 is on the list of the rescued. On 02.10.94 a message from reliable sources tell that from Sweden has arrived a fax to the Ministry of International Affairs telling that among other names of rescued are both A. Piht and A. Targama."
     --) KBR Halliburton subsidiary Rockwater hired for a condition survey. It appears the divers were also looking for something, breaking into specific huts.
     *) March 24, 2013, Supplement No. 503, 'Rockwater A/S: Condition Survey of the Vessel "Estonia" for the Swedish National Maritime Administration. Survey Report': "Rockwater A/S were contracted by the Swedish National Maritime Administration (NMA) to perform a condition survey of the stricken ferry "Estonia" in the Baltic Sea. … Rockwater and Smit Tak established a consortium to make best use of the combined experience of both companies. … The contract was awarded on the 24th of November [1994]."
     *) Estoniaferrydisaster.net/estonia%20final%20report/chapter27.htm: "He then worked his way to cabin 6230 which was the 2nd cabin from port side of the four luxury cabins in the fore part of deck 6 overlooking the foreship. According to the statement of purser Andres Vihmar of 15.05.96 - see Enclosure 14.195 - this cabin had been assigned to the master of the second crew, Captain Avo Piht [not the case]. In the alleyway in front of this cabin the diver found a body. The diver, obviously receiving instructions through his second earphone not audible on the available video, broke up the door and headed straight for a suitcase, which was open but - according to the diver - apparently nothing was missing (how could he know?) and the suitcase had a label with the name Alexander Vorodin [Aleksandr Voronin; he and his brother dealt in space technology]. The diver carried the suitcase out of the accommodation and it was apparently hoisted up to the diving platform. ... Consequently the Vorodins had been in cabin 6230 which is also confirmed by the presence of the suitcase of Alexander Vorodin in this cabin. The question is why did Andres Vihmar testify to the police that it was the cabin of Captain Avo Piht where the suitcase of Alexander Vorodin was found, who had the reputation of being a weapons smuggler, and was therefore so interesting to the criminal police of Stockholm."
     --) Rockwater as a subsidiary of KBR Halliburton:
     *) Bscdesigner.com (company website, 'Balanced Scorecard Helped Rockwater Take Customer Service to the Next Level): "In 1993, Rockwater was a global leader in underwater engineering and construction and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Brown & Root/Halliburton. The company’s service offerings included commercial diving, scour and erosion, underwater coatings and installation of marine structures, and their customer base was the oil companies whose deep-sea oil rigs they serviced on a regular basis."
     *) Interventiontechnology.com/?id=58 (company website, history, accessed: October 3, 2013): "1976: Wharton Williams (2W) began as a diving and construction company ... 1977: A joint venture was set up with 2W and Taylor Diving Salvage, TDS were already part of the Halliburton Group. ... 1988 Brown and Root bought out Wharton Williams [2W]. ... 1990: Rockwater was formally launched as 50% Smit and 50% 2W."
456. *) Marc Rich has been an illegal oil trader for decades, wanted in the United States until Clinton pardoned him on the advise of the Israelis.
     *) August 25, 2003, Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism, 'The Battle for PETROM': "We have discovered that on the 11th of March 2003, only a few days after the Matser scandal was published, the general manager of "Halliburton Company Germany Gmbh", Guenter Nolte, has left his position in Halliburton. Two days later he becomes CEO of another company: "Regal Petroleum PLC". This company belongs to the shady businessman Vasile Frank Timis [close to Marc Rich]. Timis holds double citizenship, Romanian and Australian, is behind the controversial affaire "Rosia Montana"-the biggest gold deposit of Europe, and was arrested twice for heroin dealings in Australia. ... The name of the "REGAL Petroleum" company is mentioned in a letter addressed in 1999 by the Russian giant company GAZPROM to the then Romanian prime minister, Mugur Isarescu. GAZPROM says in the letter that "REGAL Petroleum" works together with the Ukrainian organized crime groups that steal gas from GAZPROM pipelines and sell it afterwards to Romania."
     *) November 16, 2009, International Curentul (Romanian newspaper), 'Geoana's secret visit to Moscow - an attack on the national security of Romania' ('Vizita secreta a lui Mircea Geoana la Moscova - un atac la siguranta nationala a Romaniei') (rough Google translation): "Mark Rich, the real boss behind Frank Timis and Tender, Timis his partner were partners with Dick Cheney, the U.S. vice president, owner of Halliburton, which at one time associated with the above, trying to take over Petrom. ... Both Rich and Frank Timis (Hebrew origin as Rich) are deeply involved in oil and gas industry in Romania. But Russian space. Frank Timis began in 1996 oil business in Ukraine, and Rich was at one time the largest dealer of aluminum and oil from Russia. Here, now, Timis, by Regal Petroleum, has the most important gas reservoir in Romania, after the one owned by Romgaz."
457. *) Mikhail Fridman, founder and head of the Alfa Group, is among a tiny group of Russian elites invited to the global advisory panel of the CFR. Cheney has been a director of the CFR and continues to be a member.
     *) August 2, 2007, Stratfor Associates, 'Mikhail Fridman: Background Investigation': "Under the guidance of Richard Cheney ... Halliburton Company over the past five years has emerged as a corporate welfare hog, benefiting from at least $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans. ... Halliburton, which lobbied for the Ex-Im loan after the State Department initially asserted that the deal would run counter to the "national interest," will receive $292 million of those funds to refurbish a massive Siberian oil field owned by the Russian company, the Tyumen Oil Co., which is controlled by a conglomerate called the Alfa Group."
     *) August 2, 2007, Stratfor Associates, 'Mikhail Fridman: Background Investigation': "Like many of Russia's oligarchs, Fridman considers himself a Jew first and a Russian a distant second. ... Fridman is closely tied into the Muscovite Solntsevo (Solntsevskaya) Organization, one of Russia’s largest and most powerful organized crime associations, via funding from Alfa. ... Russian media have frequently tied many oligarchs to the Solsnetskaya organization, though a Russian prosecutor Stratfor spoke with said the evidence that Fridman and [Pyotr] Aven are involved with the group has been officially removed from all records. ... Specifically, Alfa Group is now involved in transporting drugs from Southeast Asia through Russia into Europe, laundering money of Colombian drug cartels, and bribing organs of justice in Russia in order to keep the entire operation below law enforcement's radar. Despite Fridman’s officially "clean" record so far as violence is concerned, he is believed to be at least partially responsible for many of the assassinations that plague Russian society, particularly regarding journalists.""
458. *) April 15, 2005, Globeinvestor.com, 'Big Sky Energy Corporation Announces Management Additions': "Big Sky Energy Corporation, (OTCBB:BSKO) (NASDAQ:BSKO) (the "Company") Announced today that Mr. Bruce H. Gaston [background at Chase Manhattan, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell] has been appointed as the Company’s Chief Financial Officer, replacing Mr. Tom Milne, who will remain a Director of the Corporation. In addition, Mr. Ruslan Z. Tsarni joins the management team as the new Vice President, Business Development & Corporate Secretary. ... Mr. Ruslan Tsarni, a U.S. citizen, has over 10 years of professional experience in oil and gas legislation and corporate law. Previously, Mr. Tsarni served as Corporate Counsel of Nelson Resources Limited Group, as well as Managing Director of several of its operating subsidiaries... From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Tsarni worked as Head of Legal Affairs of Golden Eagle Partners LLC [contractor of Halliburton and Ramco since early 1998] where he developed downstream and upstream oil and gas businesses in Kazakhstan and served as Managing Director of its wholly owned subsidiary Tobe LLP. From 1998 to 1999 Mr. Tsarni worked as Senior Associate with Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn providing legal advise to major multinational companies on different aspects of Kazakhstan legal issues on development of mineral resources, corporations, taxation, currency, customs, employment, banking, bankruptcy and trade marks. From 1994 to 1996, Mr. Tsarni served as a consultant for Financial Markets International LLC and Arthur Andersen LLP contracted by USAID for projects aimed to develop securities markets in Central Asia, where he trained corporate governance and corporate finance principals to state and private companies. "We are very pleased to have these respected individuals join our management team," stated Mr. Al Sehsuvaroglu [joined Halliburton in December 1978; Country Director, Kazakhstan with Kellogg Brown & Root [KBR] 2000-2001; today heads Halliburton's new business venture in the Caspian], President of the Company [president and CEO March 2005 - December 2006]. "Their extensive Kazakh experience will be of great assistance to our efforts to grow our business in Kazakhstan." Big Sky Energy Corporation is an international oil and gas exploration company..."
     *) April 15, 2005, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Was Boston Bombers ‘Uncle Ruslan’ with the CIA?': "According to a source who worked for many years as a journalist at Platts Oilgram News, a respected oil industry trade publication, good corporate governance was not a Big Sky priority. "Nelson [Nelson Resources], Big Sky, Ablyazov, Kulibayev and the rest were all on my watch list for intelligence connections and pay-offs of various kinds at Platts," stated the source, who requested anonymity."
459. November 27, 2006, Novyi Region, 'Украина пытается замять скандал вокруг продажи ракет Ирану? (ФОТО Документов)' ('Is Ukraine trying to hush up a scandal surrounding the sale of missiles to Iran? (Photo Documents)'). See note 431 for details.
460. The nuclear warheads is just a rumor, but it's a possibility. haven't seen Left. ru make up any stories, despite its pro-Putin bias. June 7, 2009, Left.ru, 'Sam Haider: "Saidov told me the whole story"': "After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's nuclear arsenals in its satellite states were dismantled and sent home, or destroyed. In the Ukraine, in 2001, some of this arsenal disappeared. Up to 20 nuclear-capable Kh-55 missiles -- with a 3000km range -- and four 200-kiloton nuclear warheads were stolen by a shadowy group of former Russian and Ukrainian intelligence and military officers. What happened to these weapons is the subject of international debate and much speculation. But one version of events, supported by documents obtained from the Ukrainian parliament and the investigations of the Haider family, is that they ended up in Iran and China. ... Sam said he has been told his father had close connections to Iran's secret service, that he was the go-between for the Iranians in gaining nuclear secrets from the Pakistani atomic engineer A.Q. Khan, and that in 1986-87, he oversaw shipments of special military equipment and technical co-operation to Iran from Russia. "The sale of the missiles, Far West's involvement in it and the links to the A.Q. Khan syndicate in Pakistan -- I believe that's what led to my father's murder," Sam said. ... [Vadim Stoltz:] . Nowell's article raises the stakes even higher, because it claims that the conspirators sold Iran and China not only the missiles but also – four 200-kiloton nuclear warheads designed for these missiles to carry. Just imagine that people, close to the highest level of power during Bush's presidency, had armed "those mullahs" in Tehranwith some of the most advanced nuclear weapons. If true, this is the end of the world, politically speaking. Obama can wipe out his most dangerous enemies with one strike—and I must add the most dangerous people for the American people and the rest of the world—he can wipe them out for good and begin a truly new chapter in US and world history."
461. *) There are many different sources reporting ties between Fritz Ermarth, Anton Surikov and Far West, but none of them are 100 percent authoritative, at least not by themselves.
     *) August 10, 2006, (as presented at the University of Melbourne), Peter Dale Scott, 'A Meta-Group Managing Drugs, Violence, and the State: The Meta-Group, West, and East / Part II': "1: In addition Surikov had had contacts with at least one senior CIA representative. See the Letter of Anton Surikov to Oleg Grechenevsky, discussed below: "I am personally acquainted with Mr. Ermarth as political scientist since 1996. It's well known by many people and we never hid this fact." Fritz Ermath did not retire from the CIA until 1998. Cf. Argumenty i Facty, 9/15/99, that the two men met in 1996 was indeed public knowledge. The Russian journal Commersant published a photo of the two men and others at the International Seminar on Global Security in Virginia, April, 1996."
     *) June 23, 2004, Vladimir Filin and Anton Surikov for Pravda.info, ' Большая зачистка' ('Much cleanup'): "In the 1990s, Russian issues involve very competent people. In the American embassy in Moscow intellectuals work as John Williams and Thomas Graham. At the CIA, the lead analyst for our country was Fritz Ermarth, probably the most competent in the West, an expert on the Russian elite."
     *) November 15, 2005, Ivan Demidov for Obkom (Ukraine), 'ПЛОДЫ РЕВОЛЮЦИИ: Кто выдавливает сок из «наколотых апельсинов»?' (translated from Russia: 'Fruit of the revolution: Who squeezes the juice from the "pinned oranges?"'): "Let's try to carefully read a curious document. ... Designated curator [manager] for the main contractor [KBR Halliburton]: Mr. F. Ermarth, former director of the CIA's Center for Strategic Studies."
     *) March 11, 2008, Left.nu, 'Наташа Барч, Антон Баумгартен, Рудольф Гаримов и Виктор Зайцев, Маккейн и Фарвест' ('Natasha Barch, Anton Baumgartner, Rudolf Garima and Victor Zaitsev, McCain and Farwest'): "[Natasha Barch:] In mid-March, a senior adviser to McCain's foreign policy, Robert Kagan, met with Russian leaders of Farwest in Brussels. Specifically, Kagan met with Filin, Surikov, Saidov and Roeva. The meeting was organized by Ermarth. These are the exact data obtained by Andrei [Petrov] from the Germans."
     *) August 5, 2005, Pravda.info, 'International consulting agency "Far West Ltd." has completed the restructuring': "These are the two state-owned companies of Venezuela and Iran (they have 25% and 20%) and two private military companies from the U.S. [Diligence, LLC] and South Africa [Meteoric Tactical Solutions] (they each have 5%), one U.S. citizen [Fritz Ermarth] (he has 5%) and two citizens of Saudi Arabia [Adnan Khashoggi and almost certainly another person close to Prince Turki, or Prince Turki himself] (they also 5%). These people are well-known and respected specialists."
     *) January 26, 2006, Compromat.ru (not visible here; most likely just leaked info, as claimed by Far West), 'Offices "Far West Ltd." closed in Switzerland': "A general meeting of the agency Far West, Ltd. (Cayman Islands). On 26.01.06 the distribution of bonus shares Far West Ltd: ... 5% - Dr. Fritz Ermarth (US): Share control A. V. Surikov;..."
     *) Transcript of an audio recording between Far West directors Anton Surikov (AS), Vladimir Filin (VF), Alexei Likhvintsev (AL) and Sergei Petrov (S). The recording was made at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, Austria, on September 27, 2003 [possibly September 1999]. Petrov was murdered by this group in January 2004: "S. – Salute, Comrades Narcos! VF. – Salute, Serge! Do we keep making jokes, or do you have some business to talk about? S. ... AS.—I was thinking about this. Look, the Albanians get tribute from the KLA, a kind of tax. And the KLA is with the Americans. So in this case we'll have to do it through Fritz [Ermarth of the CIA]."
462. *) Ruslan Saidov is primarily named as Far West's contact with the Chechens, with Surikov also having been in this country (outside of Basayev)
     *) Undated, Left.ru, Third Barbarossa, by Anton Baumgarten (founder and chief editor of Marxist weekly Left Russia), outline (maybe not reliable, but much could be confirmed and nothing disproven): "Other owners behind 18 offshore companies, registered in Bahrain, that constitute FW, LTD [Far West, Ltd.] are family members of Turki al-Faisal and Adnan Khashoggi; Generals Vladimir Filin (covere name) and Alexei Likhvintsev (cover name), representing Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR); Brigadier-general Ruslan Saidov (cover name) and Hozh-Ahmed Nuhaev [Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev] from "The Istanbul Bureau" of Foreign Intelligence Service of the Republic Ichkeria (Chechnya), representing also Turkish General Staff and the Kadyrov's regiment under the command of Adam Demilhanov..."
     *) Undated, Left.ru, '"Orange Revolution Is in Store for Russia': "A Version: In 2003 the Turkish citizen Mehmet whose real name is Ruslan Saidov, persuaded the President of the Chechen Republic, Ahmed Kadyrov, that he could be of use with Kadyrov’s policy of "national reconciliation." Saidov took part in organizing Kadyrov’s visit to Saudi Arabia. There Kadyrov made an agreement with the head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Naif Ibn Abdel-Aziz, that the Arab militants under the Lieutenant Colonel Aziz ben Said ben Ali al Hamdi (alias Abu al Valid al-Hamadi), Prince Naif’s subordinate, would be removed from Chechnya by May 2004. The agreement stipulated that Kadyrov guaranteed safe passage to Abu al-Valid. Playing a double game and intending to set up both parties, Saidov (probably together with Abu al-Valid himself) gave this information to the CIA. Apparently the CIA was concerned that having left Chechnya the Arab militants would resurface in Iraq and join the terrorist group of the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarkawi that belongs to the al-Qaida network."
     *) Transcript of an audio recording between Far West directors Anton Surikov (AS), Vladimir Filin (VF), Alexei Likhvintsev (AL) and Sergei Petrov (S). The recording was made at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, Austria, on September 27, 2003 [possibly September 1999]. Petrov was murdered by this group in January 2004: "S.—Wait a moment, here it is. Tell me where did those two tons [of drugs] go from your installation near Shali [Chechen town]? To Abkhazia? Didn't you [kill Usman] Imaev [Usman Imaev. Under Dudaev Director of the Chechen National Bank, later Prosecutor General. Left politics after he was accused in ties with Russian secret services. Disappeared in 1996] because of this? L.—Don't say that. Usman [Imaev] disappeared two years later [in 1996]. You don't [expletive] know anything about how it really was. S.—And what about Sergachev, the Captain, who together with Anton [went] to the installation… AS.---In fact, Sergachev was later done in by the Chechens around Bamut. As to him being a fool and not in the know, it was me who solved the situation. By the way, it was not [expletive] easy. Pasha [Pavel Grachev, defense minister from 1992 to 1996] personally made the decision. Nobody was even thinking to evacuate anything from there. During the reconnaissance they found only twenty Chechens in that place. A platoon of spetsnaz could have done the job. Actually, Sergach proposed to do exactly this. But I insisted on the Air Force and they bombed the [expletive] out of that place, everything. S.—Everything? But Imaev was able to get the drugs out of there, didn't he? He had the time to. You, Anton, gave him three days. VF.—That's all bull talk, Serge."
     *) May 2, 2009, Andrei Petrov for Left.ru, 'Saidov's "Bagram Group" May Have Been Involved in Afghan Attacks Aimed at Steinmeier': "1992-93: Saidov, using the cover name Hungar [possibly the first name in his Turkish passport], took part in military operations in Abkhazia, along with Gary Aiba and Shamil Basayev. ... In May-June 1994, Saidov together with Usman Imaev and Khozh-Ahmed Nukhaev [head Chechen mafia and used to work for Dudayev], and under an agreement with Pavel Grachev and Dzhokhar Dudayev, organized twenty-two flights to airlift arms and ammunition via the Chechen airport Sheikh Mansur to the airport Aden in Yemen. [Sergei Petrov asked Filin and Surikov about this in a transcribed meeting]"
     *) December 17, 2004, Compromat.ru, 'Россию ждет оранжевая революция' ('Russia is waiting for the Orange Revolution'): "According to the operative dennym autumn 1997 Saidov arrived in Chechnya, where he met up with Basayev and Khattab. He was an instructor for commando training at the training center, "Said ibn Abu Vacas" under Serzhen-Yurt. In August 1999, he was a member of the illegal armed groups that invaded Dagestan. He was seriously wounded in the head. In September 1999, he was evacuated to Turkey for treatment, then to Switzerland." Surikov has also been named as a contact of Basayev.
463. *) January 19, 2004, Left.ru, 'Revelations of the Fugitive Kremlin Financier' (ex-Far West director Sergei Petrov interview - Petrov later associated with Putin's circle): "And later on it was Anton who groomed Basaev in Abkhazia as early as in 1992. Everyone knows about this. Even nowadays, last summer he called Basaev on the satellite phone in my presence. He sounded very friendly: "Shamil, dear brother, I hug you…" [What did they talk about?] - About some shadowy money dealings with the Libyans, and Adnan Khashoggi too. It's a famous Saudi, international arms merchant. They also have ties with Prince Turki, former boss of Saudi intelligence. Vladimir [Filin] and Alexei [Likhvintsev] made Anton responsible for political ties with Americans, Arabs, and our communists and oligarchs too."
     *) Transcript of an audio recording between Far West directors Anton Surikov (AS), Vladimir Filin (VF), Alexei Likhvintsev (AL) and Sergei Petrov (S). The recording was made at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, Austria, on September 27, 2003 [possibly September 1999]. Petrov was murdered by this group in January 2004: "AS. [Anton Surikov]—This is the problem. The [drug trafficking] arrangement is too complex and can [expletive] fail at some point. VF. [Vladimir Filin] —Nothing too [expletive] complex. Anyway, this must be negotiated with the [Saudi] sheiks and is for them to finalize with the Americans. In terms of guarantees, the scheme is as follows: Ruslan—the Saudis—the Americans—KLA—Salim. And the only one who can really make the decision there is [Prince] Turki [al Faisal, the resigned head of intelligence]. OK, enough, anyway, nothing else can be done. Anton, make contact with Turki and discuss everything in principle. Anyway, the Tatars won't do anything without OK from there."
     *) Undated, Left.ru, Third Barbarossa, by Anton Baumgarten (founder and chief editor of Marxist weekly Left Russia), outline (maybe not reliable, but much could be confirmed and nothing disproven): "Other owners behind 18 offshore companies, registered in Bahrain, that constitute FW, LTD [Far West, Ltd.] are family members of Turki al-Faisal and Adnan Khashoggi; Generals Vladimir Filin (covere name) and Alexei Likhvintsev (cover name), representing Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR); Brigadier-general Ruslan Saidov (cover name) and Hozh-Ahmed Nuhaev [Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev] from "The Istanbul Bureau" of Foreign Intelligence Service of the Republic Ichkeria (Chechnya), representing also Turkish General Staff and the Kadyrov's regiment under the command of Adam Demilhanov..."
     *) August 5, 2005, Pravda.info, 'International consulting agency "Far West Ltd." has completed the restructuring': "[Vladimir Filin:] 70% is owned by four businesses and three individuals who directly participate in the management... These are ... two citizens of Saudi Arabia [Adnan Khashoggi and almost certainly another person close to Prince Turki, or Prince Turki himself] (they also 5%). These people are well-known and respected specialists. U.S. shares (amounting to 10% of it) by proxy manages the member of the Board of Directors Anton Surikov..."
     *) January 26, 2006, Compromat.ru (not visible here; most likely just leaked info, as claimed by Far West), 'Offices "Far West Ltd." closed in Switzerland': "A general meeting of the agency Far West, Ltd. (Cayman Islands). On 26.01.06 the distribution of bonus shares Far West Ltd: ... 5% - Mr. Adnan Khashoggi (Saudi Arabia): stakes R. Sh. Saidov controls..."
     *) January 24, 2000, Novaya Gazeta, 'We Don't Talk To Terrorists. But We Help Them? A version of apartment explosions in Russia': "This did not happen in Paris, as some of the newspapers reported later, but on the villa of Adnan Khashoggi, Arabic millionaire, on the Mediterranean. This villa was under the supervision of the French intelligence services, which noticed some unusual actions there. Russiagate had begun and French intelligence organized the leakage of information. ... But the main participants of the negotiations remained silent. Anton Surikov [Far West], the former member of army special forces (if there are former members among them), who earlier had supervised brothers Basayev in Abkhazia, met Voloshin in France."
     *) December 17, 2004, Compromat.ru, 'Россию ждет оранжевая революция' ('Russia is waiting for the Orange Revolution'): "Since the mid 90's, [Ruslan] Saidov [of Far West] has developed strong ties with Saudi businessman A. Khashoggi, Prince Turki al-Faisal (then - the head of Saudi intelligence, now - Ambassador to the UK) and Prince Nayef. At the time of the terrorist attack on the Nord-Ost [theater - Moscow theater hostage crisis] in October 2002 Saidov and Prince Turki were together in Moscow."
464. August/November 2009, Natasha Barch and Vadim Stolz for Left.ru (a peculiar pro-Putin website, but never found it to make up facts), 'Obama and the Intelligence Cabal ': "I want to emphasize Saidov's ties not only to Saudi and Turkish intelligence, but also to Pakistan's ISI. According to our sources in Central Asia, last April Saidov brought to Tashkent Pakistani army chiefs, generals Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Ahmad Shuja Pasha, for an unannounced half day long visit. Kayani is the current Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistan Army and the former director of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Pasha is the current Director of the ISI. In Tashkent they met with defense minister Mirzaev and President Karimov. The meetings were highly confidential, with Saidov acting as interpreter. Soon after that visit, the ISI controlled gang of Mullо Abdullo (Abdullah Rakhimov) crossed from Afghanistan into eastern Tajikistan."
465. *) January 26, 2006, Compromat.ru (not visible here; most likely just leaked info, as claimed by Far West), 'Offices "Far West Ltd." closed in Switzerland': "A general meeting of the agency Far West, Ltd. (Cayman Islands). On 26.01.06 the distribution of bonus shares Far West Ltd: ... 5% - Al Haramain Foundation (Saudi Arabia): share control R. Sh. Saidov;... "
     *) February 10, 2006, Far West director Natalia Roeva for Forum.msk.ru, 'Political Scientist Fritz Ermarth and businessman Adnan Khashoggi Do Not Own Agency Far West': "On some open forums on the internet deliberately distorted information about the structure of ownership and control of the international agency Far West, LLC began to appear, pushed out of Israel. The apotheosis of this campaign was the publication of the anonymous article 'Offices "Far West Ltd." closed in Switzerland' by the CIA's U.S. site "Left.ru". ... To avoid misunderstandings, we give official information as of 10 February 2006 on the structure of ownership and control of the international agency Far West, LLC. I. The distribution of the share capital in Far West, LLC: ... 7) 5% - Al Haramain Kavkaz Ltd., CEO - R. Sh. Saidov; ... "
     *) Despite trying to hide some of its connections and forgetting to mention that Far West Ltd. was restructured into Far West, LLC in late january 2006, in the report above Far West most certainly did confirm its Al Haramain link and the fact that Saidov has been running it in the Caucasus. Maybe Roeva didn't realize the controversial nature of Al Haramain. Two reports on Al Haramain:
     *) October 30, 2009, un.org, 'QE.A.109.04. Al-Haramain & Al Masjed Al-Aqsa Charity Foundation': "Wa’el Hamza Julaidan, who provided financial and logistical support to Al-Qaida, maintained control over Al-Haramain & Al Masjed al-Aqsa. Julaidan was a member of Al-Haramain & Al-Aqsa’s board of directors, and he opened three bank accounts on behalf of the NGO between 1997 and 2001. As at 2003, Julaidan continued to have authority to handle two of Al-Haramain & Al Masjed al-Aqsa’s bank accounts as a signatory of its two Bosnian accounts. Al-Haramain & Al Masjed al-Aqsa Charity Foundation in Bosnia and Herzegovina was linked to the Saudi Arabia-based Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation which presented itself as a private, charitable and educational non-governmental organization. When viewed as a single entity, Al-Haramain was one of the principal NGOs active throughout the world providing support for the Al-Qaida network. Funding generally came from individual benefactors and special campaigns which targeted selected business entities around the world. The founder and former leader of Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, Aqeel Abdulaziz Aqeel al-Aqeel (QI.A.171.04), and the Al-Haramain branches in Bosnia and Herzegovina (QE.A.71.02), Somalia (QE.A.72.02), Indonesia (QE.A.103.04), Kenya (QE.A.105.04), Tanzania (QE.A.106.04), Pakistan (QE.A.104.04), Afghanistan (QE.A.110.04), Albania (QE.A.111.04), Bangladesh (QE.A.112.04), Ethiopia (QE.A.113.04), the Netherlands (QE.A.114.04), the Union of the Comoros (QE.A.116.04) and the United States of America (QE.A.117.04) have provided financial, material and/or technological support to the Al-Qaida network, including Jemaah Islamiyah (QE.J.92.02), Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya / AIAI (QE.A.2.01), the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (QE.A.3.01) and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (QE.L.118.05). These terrorist organizations received funding from Al-Haramain and used Al-Haramain as a front for fundraising and operational activities."
     *) February 11, 2009, CBS News, 'Al Qaeda Skimming Charity Money'': "Al-Haramain, based in Saudi Arabia, provides the clearest example of a charity that has stayed open despite repeated attempts to shut it down overseas, including fresh moves this past week by the Riyadh government. At its height, Al-Haramain raised $40 million to $50 million a year in contributions worldwide, the vast majority going to feed hungry Somali orphans, educate poor Indonesian students and help sick Kenyan children. U.S. officials have privately conceded that only a small percentage of the total was diverted and that few of those who worked for Al-Haramain knew money was being funneled to Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization. Still, the officials say money from Al-Haramain and other charities was -- and continues to be -- a major source of funds for al Qaeda. The latest move against Al-Haramain came Wednesday when Saudi officials, under U.S. pressure, moved to dissolve the charity and create a commission to filter all contributions raised inside the kingdom to support causes abroad. ... The United States has tried repeatedly to shut down Al-Haramain. In 2002, the U.S. government blacklisted Al-Haramain's Bosnian and Somali branches -- mandating the government to seize its assets and shut it down. A year later, the Saudi government, under U.S. pressure, demanded the charity close all its overseas branches. This January, Al-Haramain branches in Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania and Pakistan were put on U.S. and U.N. blacklists. Al-Haramain's acting director, Dabbas bin Mohammed al-Dabbasy, said in May that all the charity's overseas branches were closed. Yet in Kenya and Somalia the charity still appears to be running. U.S. investigators believe the group is using new names in Kenya, having simply shifted its funds to fresh bank accounts, the intelligence official said. The official declined to provide names for fear of tipping off Al-Haramain officials who may believe they are working undetected."
466. See note 416.
467. *) August/November 2009, Natasha Barch and Vadim Stolz for Left.ru (a peculiar pro-Putin website, but never found it to make up facts), 'Obama and the Intelligence Cabal ': "I want to emphasize Saidov's ties not only to Saudi and Turkish intelligence, but also to Pakistan's ISI. According to our sources in Central Asia, last April Saidov brought to Tashkent Pakistani army chiefs, generals Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Ahmad Shuja Pasha, for an unannounced half day long visit. Kayani is the current Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistan Army and the former director of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Pasha is the current Director of the ISI. In Tashkent they met with defense minister Mirzaev and President Karimov. The meetings were highly confidential, with Saidov acting as interpreter. Soon after that visit, the ISI controlled gang of Mullо Abdullo (Abdullah Rakhimov [Mullah Abdullo]) crossed from Afghanistan into eastern Tajikistan. viii About 200 fighters slipped into the mountainous Tavildara district where it is difficult for the government troops to catch up with them. We have information that Rasheed, Saidov, and Lunev stayed in Abdullo's base in Afghanistan right before the raid and that Lunev has been pretty much sitting on the Afghan-Tajik border since then. This can mean only one thing – Lunev supervises Abdullo's raid on behalf of the FarWest partners who had financed and prepared it. They know Abdullo since the civil war of 1992-3, when Filin, Saidov, and Lunev were on assignment in Tajikistan."
     *) July 20, 2009, Hindu.com, 'Islamist fighters on the Silk Road': "In his book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, noted Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid describes how the United States' Central Intelligence Agency, Britain's MI6 and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence drew up a provocative plan in 1986 to launch mujahideen attacks in the Soviet territory, presently within Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The task was given to the ISI’s favourite mujahideen leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Of course, the idea itself — the use of militant Islamists as a geopolitical tool to lacerate the "soft underbelly" of the Soviet Union — belonged to the U.S. National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Years later, in 1998, when a Le Nouvel Observateur interviewer asked him whether he regretted using political Islam as a natural ally, Brzezinski was unrepentant. He asked: "What is more important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" ... Against this backdrop, a steadily rising curve of Islamist activities is becoming visible in Central Asia. Armed attacks by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a group affiliated to the al-Qaeda, resumed since late May. There are reports that the Islamist commander of the Tajik civil war (1992-97), Mullah Abdullo, recently crossed the Afghan border into Tajikistan with some 300 followers and took shelter in Tavildara, which is situated in the Rasht Valley in the rugged Pamir Mountains, some 20 km from the Afghan border. Tavildara used to be the base of the Islamist fighters in the Tajik civil war. Abdullo had enjoyed the ISI’s backing. He never recognised the 1997 Peace Accord and instead took shelter in Kandahar where he was arrested in 2001 when the U.S. intervened in Afghanistan, but for some obscure reason he was allowed to disappear. Since then, he has been hiding with the Taliban leadership. In the past few months, Russian intelligence repeatedly warned of the imminence of a military conflict and insurgency in Central Asia."
468. *) December 17, 2004, Compromat.ru, 'Россию ждет оранжевая революция' ('Russia is waiting for the Orange Revolution'): "In December of 1996 A. Zawahiri was arrested in Dagestan for illegally crossing the border... When it happened, Saidov arrived in Makhachkala. There he organized an appeal to the authorities in support of Zawahiri, which was signed by 26 Muslim clerics and the deputy of the State Duma N. Hachilaev [Nadyr Khachiliev]. Saidov won a court decision that Zawahiri would be sentenced to a term of six months, which, subject to pre-trial detention, in fact expired."
     *) Zawahiri was indeed locked up in Dagestan on December 1, 1991. In April 1997 they were sentenced to six months in prison and got out the following month since they had already been locked up for five months. Duma member Nadyr Khachiliev was indeed among those who called for the release of Zawahiri and his associates. Zawahiri is still in hiding as of 2013, never having been caught by the U.S.
     *) March 11, 2008, Left.nu, 'Наташа Барч, Антон Баумгартен, Рудольф Гаримов и Виктор Зайцев, Маккейн и Фарвест' ('Natasha Barch, Anton Baumgartner, Rudolf Garima and Victor Zaitsev, McCain and Farwest'): "From another source we have received unverified information which suggests that Saidov, with Zawahiri, swindled Osama bin Laden in North Waziristan, possibly in the vicinity of Miramshah [Taliban stronghold in Pakistan]. There he seized Chechens and Saidov then handed them over to Americans (as at one point Raduev). Again, this is anecdotal, but it is indirectly confirmed in a recent interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Steve Coll. ... Finally, for no apparent reason [Coll] claims that Zawahiri is not with Osama and makes it clear that he [Zawahiri] can handle the management of Al-Qaeda without Osama. After that, the reader can only assume that Zawahiri probably would not mind to head the organization, and to help old friends at the CIA, and his beloved. ... [Anton Baumgartner:] And the [potential?] role of Saidov in the capture of Osama. Recall that in 1997 Zawahiri escaped from a Dagestani prison only because of Saidov. By the way, the Americans had an interest in that. They needed Al-Qaeda in the Balkans and the Caucasus."
     *) As for Waziristan, this correlates with the following report: November 1, 2004, Counterpunch, 'How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and Blew It': "Kabir Mohabbat is a 48-year businessman in Houston, Texas. [and long time intermediary between the U.S. government and the Taliban] ... In December Mohabbat was in Pakistan following with wry amusement the assault on Osama bin Laden’s supposed mountain redoubt in Tora Bora, in the mountains bordering Pakistan. At the time he said, he informed US embassy officials the attack was a waste of time. Taliban leaders had told him that Bin Laden was nowhere near Tora Bora but in Waziristan. Knowing that the US was monitoring his cell phone traffic, Osama had sent a decoy to Tora Bora. From the documents he’s supplied us and from his detailed account we regard Kabir Mohabbat’s story as credible and are glad to make public his story of the truly incredible failure of the Bush administration to accept the Taliban’s offer to eliminate Bin Laden."
469. The next endnote describes the CIA-KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army, dominated by Albanians) link as seen from the perspective of (drug trafficking) Far West directors. In this note the CIA connection to the Albania-dominated Kosovo is demonstrated through Mabetex (firm controversially renovated Yeltsin's Kremlin and other government buildings for $1 billion dollars) founder and owner Behgjet Pacolli, president of Kosovo February-April 2011 and prime minister since then - a position he switched with Hashim Thaci, formerly of the KLA and an ally of Osama bin Laden. Pacolli was involed in bribing former Finnish prime minister and Kosovo UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari. Like Thaci, he is considered a top player in the Albanian mafia.
     ---- Pacolli's links to the CIA are easiest seen through the Southeast Europe Economic Development Foundation an the Alliance for a New Kosovo.
     *) October 2006, Alliance for a New Kosovo newsletter, p. 4: "Mr. Pacolli is the founder of the Southeast Europe Economic Development Foundation [in 2006 in the U.S.; dissolved; headed by Samuel Hoskinson] and of the Alliance for a New Kosovo."
     ------ Now a bio of Samuel Hoskinson, a former visitor of Le Cercle, where he discussed the strategies of Zbigniew Brzezinski, and a founder of CIA-firm Jefferson Waterman International:
     *) October 10, 2006, Riverside-Brookfield Landmark, 'From our house to the White House RB Class of '56 grad Hoskinson rubbed elbows with three presidents': "Sam [Samuel] Hoskinson ... was hired by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as an analyst. Kissinger who served as the National Security Director in the first term of the presidency of Richard Nixon, hired Hoskinson to work as South Asia and Middle Eastern analyst for the National Security Council. ... When Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974, Hoskinson stayed on at the National Security Council and worked under Brent Scowcroft during the Ford Administration and under Zbigniew Brzezinski during the first years of the Carter Administration. ... He was recruited by former Secretary of the Treasury George Schultz to work as manager for international corporate strategy for the Bechtel Corporation, so he moved to San Francisco. ... In 1994 Hoskinson got together with a few friends and founded Jefferson Waterman International a D.C.-based consulting firm that assists corporate and foreign governments in public and governmental relations. Hoskinson maintains an active involvement in foreign policy issues. He serves as the president of the Southeast Europe Economic Development Foundation and of the Alliance for a New Kosovo."
     ----- Now look at the officers of the Alliance for a New Kosovo (the international friends of the Kosovo party with almost the same name):
     *) Alliance for a New Kosovo website (newkosovo.org/board.htm) (accessed: Feb. 27, 2006): "Officers: President: Samuel Hoskinson [JWI; CIA; State] ... Executive Director: Kempton Jenkins [JWI; State]. ... Janusz Bugajski, Director of the CSIS Eastern Europe Project [Radio Free Europe, USAID, DOD, IRI] ... Hon. Frank Carlucci [top level CIA elite] ... Robert Carr [U.S. Congress] ... Hon. Fred F. Fielding, Esq., former Counsel to the President of the United States ... Lt. General Robert Gard (U.S. Army-retired), former President National Defense University .... Ambassador William Ryerson, former U.S. Ambassador to Albania ... Ambassador Walter Stadtler, former European Advisor, USUN; Vice President, National Defense University..." June 2006, Alliance for a New Kosovo newsletter, p. 3: "The Alliance for a New Kosovo Board of Advisors ... Hon. Helmut Sonnenfeldt, former Counsellor to the U.S. Department of State..."
     ----- Those who doubt Jefferson Waterman International is a CIA firm:
     *) *) Jefferson Waterman International website (jwidc.com), 'Profiles' (accessed: October 10, 2013): "Click to learn more about: Charles E. Waterman, Chief Executive Officer [CIA/Foreign Service veteran in Kuwait, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia; the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East; vice chair CIA's National Intelligence Council; director Africa Petroleum]; Samuel Wyman, Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer [31 year CIA operations officer who lived and worked in Egypt, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria and Spain]; Ambassador Jackson McDonald (Ret.), President [ambassador to Guinea and Gambia; foreign service officer in Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Paris and Moscow; foreign policy advisor to the commander of U.S. Cyber Command]; Samuel M. Hoskinson, Executive Vice President [CIA analyst; national security staffer to Kissinger, Scowcroft and Brzezinski; vice chair National Intelligence Council; manager at Bechtel; CFO and director Africa Petroleum; visitor Le Cercle where he praised Brzezinski] ... Crosshatch International, LLC — Security and Intelligence [of JWI]: Joseph W. Augustyn, President [Decades long CIA veteran: deputy associate director for Homeland Security of the CIA, director CIA's National Resettlement Operations Center, chief of staff to the CIA's deputy director of operations, deputy division chief CIA's East Asia Division; CSIS consultant; Booz Allen Hamilton consultant; co-founder in 2003 of the National Counterterrorism Center and senior advisor and counsel to its first director from 2003 to 2005, John Brennan] ... Larry Sanchez [CIA veteran who spent years overseas in the former Soviet Union, South Asia, and the Middle East; together with the CIA's David Cohen he set up and ran the NYPD's post-9/11 intelligence unit 2001-2010; security consultant in the Persian Gulf region] ... JWI Board: Thomas R. DiBenedetto, Chairman [president A.S. Roma; former banker at Allen & Co., Salomon Brothers and Morgan Stanley]; Samuel Wyman, Vice Chairman; Daniel C. Arnold [CIA station chief in Thailand until 1979; named as part of Ted Shackley's CIA opium export ring; continued as a secretive consultant to Thai businesses after officially retiring from the CIA in 1979 and maintained government relations here; indications he kept involved in drug trafficking business in Thailand; reportedly CIA station chief in Washington, D.C. in the early 1980s; joined American Security Council board in the 1980s]; Joseph W. Augustyn; Samuel Hoskinson; Fuad Kawar [Saudi Arabia; defense, security, aerospace, and telecommunications specialist]; Charles Waterman; Ken Yates [government PR specialist stationed all over Eurasia in the past 30 years]."
     *) Jefferson Waterman International website (jwidc.com), 'Profiles' (accessed: December 1, 1998): "Guy Mayer, Chairman of the Board [head of the Paris JWI office; marketing expert; L'Oréal]; Charles E. Waterman, Chief Executive Officer; Ann B. Wrobleski, Chief Operating Officer [special projects director for Nancy Reagan, and was recognized by the Washington Post as the "architect" of Ms. Reagan's successful "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign; assistant secretary and deputy assistant secretary of international narcotics matters; president Reagan designated her to serve as the U.S. representative on the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of the United Nation; lead U.S. negotiator to the 1987 UN International Conference on Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking and the 1988 UN Convention Against Illegal Drug Trafficking]; Samuel M. Hoskinson, Executive Vice President; Samuel H. Wyman, Executive Vice President; Daniel C. Arnold [CIA officer accused of large scale drug trafficking], Member of the Board; John E. Bircher III, Senior Vice President; Thomas R. DiBenedetto, Member of the Board; Robert L. Downen, Senior Vice President; Fuad J. Kawar, Member of the Board; Mindy Schrader Kim, Director of Communications [East Asian affairs PR specialist; program officer Korea Society; has lived in Korea, Hong Kong and Japan]; David A. Merkel, Vice President; Daniel J. O'Neill, Senior Vice President [Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana for two years; member of the Washington International Trade Association, and is active with the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S.-China Business Council, the Business Coalition for U.S.-China trade, and the Emergency Committee on American Trade]; Kenneth A. Yates, Senior Vice President."
470. *) December 15, 2010, Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies, 'Hashim Thaci, Kosovo's Organ Trafficking Boss': "They – our government – knew the KLA were criminals running the drug, slave, and weapons rackets throughout Europe. They knew the KLA was supported by Osama bin Laden (with whom Thaci met personally in Tirana in 1998 to plan the jihad in Kosovo, according to the former head of Albanian intelligence), the Iranians, the Saudis, the Turks, and other supporters of an Islamic re-re-conquest of the Balkans."
     *) 2007 (estimate), Andrei Petrov and Valentin Zorin for Left.ru, 'Academician Anton Surikov Confirms Professor Peter Dale Scott's "Prishtina Dash" Hypothesis': "Moreover, it is clear that Filin had been not only acquainted with Thaci and Haradinaj but must have had some leverage with them in order to obtain such extraordinary guarantees at the moment when these KLA leaders were themselves caught by surprise. As we know now, Filin's own relations with the KLA operatives and business fronts dated back to 1990-93, when he and Alexei Likhvintsev, future co-owner of Far West, Ltd, were on a special and very sensitive assignment in East Germany to sell the property of the Western Group of the Soviet Army. It was then that the first shipments of Afghan heroin were moved to Europe through the Ministry of Defense installations and sold to Kosovo Albanian drug dealers. It has been also reported that another member of Filin's group, Yakov Kosman, served as financial adviser to Hashim Thaci in 1997-2000."
     *) February 9, 2006, Anton Surikov for Forum.msk.ru, 'The United States government is seriously concerned about the safety of a CIA analyst' ('Правительство Соединенных Штатов серьезно озабочено безопасностью аналитика ЦРУ'): " So, V. I. Filin [chairman of Far West], who was in Belgrade, learning about the nomination of peacekeepers in the neighborhood of Pristina [airport]. He was with Colonel V. S. Kovalchukom and without weapons at their own risk traveled to Kosovo, where they arrived a few hours before the paratroopers. During this time they had contact with warlords UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA]) and personally received assurances from Hashim Thaci and Ramush Haradinaj that there will be no Albanian provocations against Russian peacekeepers. By the way, for 4 years not a single major provocation by the UCK happened. There were only minor incidents which in any similar situation would be inevitable."
     *) Transcript of an audio recording between Far West directors Anton Surikov (AS), Vladimir Filin (VF), Alexei Likhvintsev (AL) and Sergei Petrov (S). The recording was made at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, Austria, on September 27, 2003 [possibly September 1999]. Petrov was murdered by this group in January 2004: "[Anton Surikov:] Look, the Albanians get tribute from the KLA, a kind of tax. And the KLA is with the Americans. So in this case [for our drug trafficking schemes] we'll have to do it through Fritz [Ermarth, of the CIA]"
     *) January 19, 2004, Left.ru, 'Revelations of the Fugitive Kremlin Financier': "[former Far West director Sergei Petrov, who seemingly became close to [the opposing] Putin's circle] in Kosovo they [Far West] flew as late as last summer."
     *) November 15, 2005, Ivan Demidov for Obkom (Ukraine), 'ПЛОДЫ РЕВОЛЮЦИИ: Кто выдавливает сок из «наколотых апельсинов»?' (translated from Russia: 'Fruit of the revolution: Who squeezes the juice from the "pinned oranges?"'): "[Far West did] plunder the arsenals of Soviet Forces in Germany and sold weapons to the Kosovo Albanians."
471. November 13, 2012, liveinternet.ru, 'Raider cartel is acting on behalf of the President of Russia Part 1': "Soon [Far West director Yaacov] Kosman brought here six persons which came from Austria with Turkish passports. The guests were: Cveba (called guilty by Tbilisi authorities for genocide during Georgia-Abkhazia conflict), Igor Yusufov, Salman (leader or Dagestan group "Forest Brothers") and Valery Galiev (the head of several Osetin killers groups located in Moscow). What is of interest that Galiev is Yusufov's business partner for all "dirty" work. All guests spent three weeks on villa. Soon it was fixed how Kosman and Cveba went to Nice airport to meet two persons. Regarding documents one of the visitors was Sultan Sosnaliev, during the Georgian-Abkhazian war he was Secretary of Defence of Abkhazia. Other one who landed from Suhumi was [Far West director] Anton Surikov. During Abkhazian war he was Sunoliev's subordinate, had to deal with sabotage organization and made friendship with Shamil Basaev (commander of Chechnya battalion)."
472. *) March 11, 2008, Left.nu, 'Наташа Барч, Антон Баумгартен, Рудольф Гаримов и Виктор Зайцев, Маккейн и Фарвест' ('Natasha Barch, Anton Baumgartner, Rudolf Garima and Victor Zaitsev, McCain and Farwest'): "[Natasha Barch:] In mid-March, a senior adviser to McCain's foreign policy, Robert Kagan, met with Russian leaders of Farwest in Brussels. Specifically, Kagan met with Filin, Surikov, Saidov and Roeva. The meeting was organized by Ermarth. These are the exact data obtained by Andrei [Petrov] from the Germans."
     *) August/November 2009, Natasha Barch and Vadim Stolz for Left.ru, 'Obama and the Intelligence Cabal ': "[Vadim Stolz:] The names of Fiona Hill, Fritz Ermarth, Robert Gates, and James Woolsey come first to my mind [as those in contact with Surikov]. We have unverified information that Dr. Hill, CIA's National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia, has been meeting with Surikov, Filin, and Saidov in Washington. Ermarth is their long-time political and business partner and, of course, their main channel to the Intelligence Cabal in the United States, including Ermarth's close associates -- former directors of the CIA Robert Gates and James Woolsey. The political views, associations, and past record of these individuals strongly suggest less than friendly feelings to the President who wishes to normalize U.S.-Russian relations and the DCI who supports this policy. ... Filin openly writes about their plans to "eliminate" pro-Russian politicians and intelligentsia in Ukraine. And he does so while meeting with Vice-President Biden in the White House and conferencing with the defense minister Gates and Fritz Ermarth. ... It's not only Filin and the Ukrainians. Saidov, Surikov and Rasheed also met with Biden last August [2008]."
     *) August 26, 2009, Natasha Barch and Vadim Stolz for Left.ru, 'From the Arctic Sea to the Titanic?': "Before this US administration, their "Dear Leader" was Vice-President Cheney and his office. Their partners in the US were and still are Fritz Ermarth and Robert Gates. Filin and his partners hoped that McCain and Palin would win the presidency and in the spring of 2008 they developed relations (through Ermarth) with Robert Kagan and Randy Scheunemann, McCain's senior advisor on international affairs."
     *) Transcript of a recorded conversation between businessman Gennady Nikolaevich (GN) and Sergei Petrov (S), September 29, 2003, Hotel Noga Hilton, Geneva (left.ru/burtsev/ops/hilton_en.phtml) (Nikolaevich was mentioned in Petrov's earlier conversation with Far West leadership as a person who wanted to know more about Far West's business, together with "Igor", possibly Igor Sechin. Petrov handed the tape of this meeting to Nikolaevich, who, Left.ru speculates, is Gennady Nikolaevich Timchenko, oil businessman close to Vladimir Putin whose fortune rose from $2.5 billion in 2008 to $14 billion in 2013) (Left.ru translation of compromat.ru/main/surikov/narko.htm, for which it was probably responsible in the first place): "Let's not, Sergei. Don't get offended, but there is much else in this. There is a system working there, you are strangers to it, you even turned your back on them. And then we are not in Moscow, after all. You've said Surikov was also a CIA man. It looks very much so. When did you meet [with them]? The day before yesterday. And already yesterday I was [followed?] by them. In short, I don't [expletive] need any problems with the Americans here. Don't drag me into this shit. God forbid the President [Putin] learning through them. What will happen then! So let everything go as it is, understood? S.—As you wish. Only in this case talk to Igor, because he gave me this assignment. GN.—I will for sure. And what are they up to regarding [Yuri] Luzhkov, what about the Mayor's Office?"
473. Some time before his untimely death in 2009, Anton Surikov was photographed with Shabtai Shavit, Mossad head from 1989 to 1996, at a conference near Moscow for Russian and Israeli intelligence veterans.
474. December 5, 2008, CATO Institute, 'Private Shill Contractors': "Diligence LLC set up shop in Baghdad in July 2003 to provide security for reconstruction projects. It was founded by William Webster, the only man to head both the CIA and the FBI. Mike Baker, its CEO, spent 14 years at the CIA as a covert field operations officer specializing in counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency operations. Whitley Bruner, its chief operating officer in Baghdad, was once the CIA station chief in Iraq. Shortly before the U.S. invasion, he directed a covert operation for the Bush administration to persuade high-ranking generals loyal to Saddam Hussein to cooperate with U.S. forces. Although that management team sounds formidable, it is the Diligence directors and advisers who are the real power in the firm. Richard Burt, the chairman, was a U.S. ambassador to Germany and a key adviser to the Carlyle Group, the Washington private equity fund with a string of former senior officials and for whom the first President George Bush has worked for the past seven years. Ed Rogers, Diligence’s vice chairman, was one of Bush 41’s top assistants when he was president. Among Diligence’s senior advisers are John Major, the former British prime minister and chairman of Carlyle Europe; Ed Mathias, Carlyle’s managing director; and Lord Charles Powell, a former foreign policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher. For a brief time ArmorGroup International had Stephen Kappes, a former deputy director of the CIA’s clandestine Directorate for Operations, working as its Washington vice president of global strategy; in November 2005 it named him chief operating officer. Kappes was named deputy director of the CIA in May 2006."
475. *) Without the photocopy of the document that can be found in note 431, we would have had to take Left.ru's word on it that Diligence was a partner firm of Far West. Luckely we don't have to. Do notice that Baumgarten's claims about the partners of Far West correspond very closely with descriptions given by Far West directors in a Pravda article. Not been able to confirm the British mercenary firm ties.
     *) Undated, Left.ru, Third Barbarossa, by Anton Baumgarten (founder and chief editor of Marxist weekly Left Russia), outline (maybe not reliable, but much could be confirmed and nothing disproven): "This company serves as a front for an alliance of secret services of several countries, represented by mercenary private intelligence and military companies, as well as individuals. They include Diligence, LLC, KBR, and New Bridge Strategies [same CEO as Diligence, the CIA's Mike Baker] for the CIA and DIA; "Erinys International," [elite; of SAS and co-founder Delta Force Alastair Morrison] "Meteoric Tactical Solution [of South Africa]," [and] "Aegis Defence Services" [chair: Lord Inge of Pilgrims; CEO: Tim Spicer of Le Cercle] for MI6 and Defence Intelligence Service (UK). Other owners behind 18 offshore companies, registered in Bahrain, that constitute FW, LTD are family members of Turki al-Faisal and Adnan Khashoggi; Generals Vladimir Filin (covere name) and Alexei Likhvintsev (cover name), representing Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR); Brigadier-general Ruslan Saidov (cover name) and Hozh-Ahmed Nuhaev [Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev] from "The Istanbul Bureau" of Foreign Intelligence Service of the Republic Ichkeria (Chechnya), representing also Turkish General Staff and the Kadyrov's regiment under the command of Adam Demilhanov; Colonel Valery Lunev (cover name), representing Victor Sheiman, secretary of the Belorussian State Security Council, and the Belorussian KGB; Colonel Valery Lunev (cover name), representing Victor Sheiman, secretary of the Belorussian State Security Council, and the Belorussian KGB."
     *) August 5, 2005, Pravda.info (controlled by Far West), 'Международное консалтинговое агентство "FarWest Ltd" завершило реструктуризацию' ('International consulting agency "Far West Ltd." has completed the restructuring'): "On August 3rd in Istanbul, under the chairmanship of Vladimir Filin, president of the reputable international consulting agency Far West, Ltd., a meeting of the Board of Directors was held, at which Yakov Kosman was elected the new executive director of the firm. His first interview in his new position he gave to Anna Kolchak [Anton Surikov]. - Yakov Abramovich [Kosman], at a meeting of the Board of Directors, was the ownership structure of the agency made public for the first time? - Such was the condition of our American and British partners in light of changes in their domestic laws. However, we haven't made any secret of it [debatable, as Kosman doesn't release any names in this article also]. Once, in 2002, after we drastically changed the structure of the property, the ratio of bonus shares is as follows: 70% is owned by four businesses and three individuals... These are the two state-owned companies of Venezuela [Petroleos de Venezuela SA] and Iran [National Iranian Oil Company] (they have 25% and 20%) and two private military companies from the U.S. [Diligence, LLC] and South Africa [Meteoric Tactical Solutions] (they each have 5%), one U.S. citizen [Fritz Ermarth] (he has 5%) and two citizens of Saudi Arabia [Adnan Khashoggi and almost certainly another person close to Prince Turki, or Prince Turki himself] (they also 5%). These people are well-known and respected specialists. U.S. shares (amounting to 10% of it) are managed by proxy through board member Anton Surikov; Venezuelan shares (25%): Board Member Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa; Iran shares (20%): board member Audrius Butkevicius; South African shares (5% ): board member Alex Likhvintsev; Saudi shares (amounting to 10% of it): board member Ruslan Saidov. Another 30% is equally owned by the original founders of the agency: Vladimir Filin, Anton Surikov and Lyudmila Rozkinoy, shares of which the proxy manages Alex Likhvintsev."
476. See notes 431, 436 and 437 for details.
477. April 20, 2009, Anton Surikov for Pravda.info, 'Находящееся у власти в Москве организованное сообщество готово к самым радикальным решениям' ('Those in power in Moscow's organized community are ready for the most radical solutions').
478. November 8, 2011, Pravda, 'Anton Surikov: USA used the terrorist attack of September 11th to set up a strong infrastructure of its military presence in the former USSR'. See specific quote later in the article.
479. *) The following information is accurate.
     *) June 8, 1998, Valery Lunev (of Far West), '"Bradtke" go to oil' (translated from Russian): "Who is a 45-year-old native of Uzbekistan Alisher Usmanov Usmanov? Investigators and prosecutors, he is well known since the days of "stagnation", when in August 1980 he was sentenced to eight years in prison Military Tribunal of the Turkestan Military District on set of three articles of the Criminal Code of Uzbekistan. However, a fully appointed term in prison Usmanov not served as March 26, 1986 was conditionally released early because of "sincere regret" and "good behavior". After leaving the "hospitable" wall zone, a 33-year-old Alisher Usmanov at first felt some discomfort associated with the fact that the "sidekick" was started shamelessly exploit Uzbek competent in the field of specific financial transactions. The scheme here was this: Usmanov "introduced" to the Board of Directors of the "First Russian independent bank," which soon gave large loans to one of the "interested" company, dispose of them in a very peculiar way. The company bought the currency and translated it somewhere abroad where traces consistently lost money. Usmanov has gradually become more independent and grown a close relationship among the "powers that be". Today, among its main contact listed as the head of "Rosvooruzheniye" Eugene Ananev, the former head of the Ministry of Energy, who now works in the leadership of Gazprom, Pyotr Rodionov and Yeltsin's press secretary Sergei Yastrzhembsky, on whose apartment Usmanov even lived for a while until you got your own apartment. Very supportive of Mr. Usmanov were some influential persons, as Soskovets and Viktor Chernomyrdin. Yet the native element Usmanov, where he feels completely his own, - a few other people. As they say, a "great sympathy" refers to the "smart Uzbeks" Solntsevskaya gang leader Sergei Mikhailov, nicknamed "Michas", now languishing in a Swiss dungeon. It is worth mentioning here and Vyacheslav Ivankov, better known as "Jap" and serving time in the U.S., as well as "Taiwanchik" [Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov; associate of Mikhail Chernoy] authority countryman "Gafoor" controlling drug trafficking in the countries of Eastern Europe, tillage Brooklyn gang in New York City and the leaders of the "Chechen community, "which enumerate a long list does not make sense. Suffice it to mention only previously convicted the former treasurer of Dudayev, now the president of the international company "common Caucasian home" Hodzhahmeda Nukhaev, known in the criminal world by the nickname "Hoja". One of the most important components of success Usmanov is, according to investigators, "outline" efesbeshnoy the roof. " Allegedly, thanks in part to her Alisher Usmanov became the founder and director of a number of commercial structures. For example, the steel industry is actively working financial-industrial group "AtomRudMet", "financial brain" which is Usmanov. He also directs the Company "Interfinservis", was previously the deputy chairman of the "Mapo-bank" and the deputy general director of the joint venture "Intercross", the founders of which - individuals, including the "authorities." As Vice-President of the Uzbek-Belgian joint venture "VITA", he was a member of the "First Commercial Bank" and was deputy. Chairman of the Board of the aforementioned "Russian First Independent Bank." By the way, it is curious that both banks have started to work at the end of May 1992 with a difference of one day, and then "drowned" almost simultaneously with a lot of money customers. Today, however, high-risk operations, Alisher Usmanov, who finished a solid position, no longer holds. In general, the situation has changed. Many individuals who have a strong position in the legal business, organized crime used to "launder" money and their investments in major projects, such as oil and gas structures or export of arms. Recently-controlled Usmanov and Ananyev "MAPO-Bank" things are not going very well. His financial situation was complicated by an indirect confirmation of which are non-payment of wages, dismissal of more than two hundred employees and formal care themselves Usmanov and Anan. It is said that they had problems with the payment of debts "authoritative" partners. Thus, the claims Solntsevskaya "business" is estimated at $ 30 million, allegedly used to buy EMC Oskol. Perhaps, with the help of the rich "Rosvoorruzheniya" where Ananev works director general, be able to agree?"
480. September 14, 2004, Far West chairman Vladimir Filin to Pravda.info, 'Александр Нагорный: Наркобароны из ЦРУ и МИ-6' ('Drug lords of the CIA and MI- 6'): "-Yes, they are in ideal situation for this. They control the Bagram airfield [where Far West is also located and has been build by their partner, KBR] from where the Air Force transport planes fly to a U.S. military base in Germany. In the last two years this base became the largest transit hub for moving Afghan heroin to other US bases and installations in Europe. Much of it goes to Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia. From there the Kosovo Albanian mafia moves heroin back to Germany and other EU countries. ... Drug traffickers enjoy relative safety on military bases. There is no serious control there. German police cannot work there. However, outside of military bases German law-enforcement is in effect. True, any police can be bought. But the level of corruption in Germany is not as high as, say, in Russia. This is why it is more convenient for Americans to establish distribution centers in other places. I believe that, in time, such centers will move to their military installations in Poznan, Poland, and also in Romania and Bulgaria. Poland is already a EU member. Romania and Bulgaria are expected to be in 2007. Corruption in these countries is almost as high as in Russia. ... About 15-20 tons of heroin a year [is brought to Europe by America]. When Poznan become open, I think it could rise to 50, even 70 tons. Behind this business are the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). Actually, this is what they did already in Indochina in the 1960s-70s and in Central America in the 1980s. ... In the first place [the reason is] personal enrichment. Second, special services make huge amounts of money out of drug trafficking. They can spend this money at their own discretion, without the knowledge of the Congress and even the U.S. president. Finally, with this money secret services can solve certain political problems. For example, they can enter into mutually profitable agreements with Afghan warlords, who give "protection" to drug business in their fiefdoms. This also gives secret services powerful influence on Kosovo Albanian diaspora in Europe, which is more than one million strong. It is a kind of "fifth column" of the United States in "the old Europe." ... The new American route for drug trafficking creates an alternative to the old ones, which included transit through Russia. The new route is no longer controlled from inside Russia, but by other forces. So the smaller drug traffic through Russia is, the weaker is the drug mafia, which has contacts with external forces. ... Well, how should I put it? In 1994 the Talibs came from Pakistan to Afghanistan and took control of the southern part of the country. In 1996 they entered Kabul and two years later came to Kunduz. Ahmad Shah Masud was left just with Panjshir and a small territory on the border with Tajikistan. In Tajikistan itself, after the civil war power went to the Kuliab clan. They totally depended on Russia, on our 201st Division. Masud also depended on Russia. We sent him advisors and shipments. His aviation was based in Kuliab. In other words, Masud and Tajiks completely depended on Russia's support. Our influence was dominant. True, already back then the British entered into the picture, represented by Aga Khan IV Foundation. But that had only local significance. As to "special merchandise," mainly it always went--and for now continues to go--to Europe via Iran and Turkey. No more than 15 percent ever passed through Tajikistan. ... Tendencies, not names are important. Before 2000, Russia was not a significant user of heroin. Its population was too poor and heroin was expensive. Besides, there was no tradition of using heroin. So the main part of "special merchandise"--25-30 tons a year--went to Kosovo Albanians in Europe. You see, it's not that simple to traffic drugs from Afghanistan to Tajikistan, from there to Russia and from Russia to Europe, former Yugoslavia. It took a serious organization with much power and good protection. [You mean special services and the army?] Why necessarily the army? Aga Khan IV Foundation always did this as well. And then not the entire army was involved in this. ... Oil prices went up [after 2002]. Russia was getting easy money and a large internal market was created. It's easier to get "special merchandise" from Tajikistan to Russia than to move it from Russia to Europe. Monopoly and centralization does not help here. On the contrary, more effective is decentralization, a cell structure based on the multitude of predominantly small and middle-size ethnic societies, Tajik, for example. Besides the Tajik, this business attracted the government circles of Turkmenistan. The country is well located for this: the Caspian Sea, Astrakhan, and Azerbaijan. Afghan heroin comes to Azerbaijan from Iran as well. It used to come from Turkey too before last spring when they closed Batum. I believe it won't stay closed for long. In the end, all this heroin reaches Russia. Our Azeri diaspora is two million strong, the Tajik one million. There are also Gypsies, the worst of them all. In short, there exists a ready retail network for drugs. Nor do they have problems with laundering drug money in Russia. The Moscow construction business alone can take care of this! Approximately in 2002 British MI-6 and DIS (British military intelligence) took control of this drug business. They control it indirectly, of course, but very effectively. In the end of 2001 the British came to the Kanduz province. It's their zone in Afghanistan. Within the multinational forces they are responsible for drugs control in the entire Afghanistan, not just in their zone in the north. To be more precise, officially they are supposed to fight poppy cultivation. Not the Americans, but the British are responsible for that. They began by flooding with drugs their own country. The use of heroin in Britain went up 1,5 times within one year. And four fifth of all heroin was trafficked through Tajikistan. After that they decided that it was enough for Britain and turned to the Russian market. They recruited big narcobarons, who were prominent statesmen of Tajikistan and had influence with the Tajik diaspora in Russia. This gave them an established retail network, ties with corrupt elements in police, FSB, and the customs. Besides, they had old ties with some Russians in Tajikistan, in the military and the border service, who are having financial problems after our troops withdrew from Bosnia and Kosovo. Not that they became poor, but before they did not have to count their money and now they do. In other words, these people cannot resist when their old partners in the Tajik elite approach them with "business" proposals. This is a typical commercial recruiting through intermediaries, a traditional British method. Yes, indirectly they control about 70 percent of both whole and retail sales of heroin. They do this through Tajik and Russian citizens, recruited on a commercial basis. ... This situation cannot be changed radically by controlling the shipments of acetic anhydride to Asian countries. Nor the recent arrest of Gafur "Gray-haired" will solve all problems. [One of the closest associates of Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov and the former head of the Presidential Guard, General Gafur Mirzoyev was arrested in August 2004. At the time of his arrest Mirzoyev was the head of Tajik Drug Control Agency] There must be real struggle against corruption of customs officials and in the law-enforcement agencies. But with the present Russian administration these are pure dreams. However, I believe it is possible to scale down air and rail cargo transportation from Tajikistan, which will be also in the interests of our law-enforcement services. This would make harder large wholesale deliveries. Also something must be done with migration, both legal and not. This would be a blow to the network of drug dealers. In general, we need to cut down the traffic of Afghan heroin to our country by any means possible. ... Anyway, one has to fight this. We need to study the experience of other countries. There is one point of view--though I strongly disagree with it--that if heroin traffic is stopped, at least temporarily, it will be replaced by cocaine. That happened in the United States in the 1970s-80s after they had left Indochina. Cocaine is, of course, a poison, but heroin is much worse. ... In the first place, heroin is more harmful to health. Secondly, cocaine is more expensive and therefore less accessible. Thirdly, there is no Colombian diaspora in Russia, and in Colombia there are not enough representatives of those organizations that "control" Russian seaports. Colombia is not a Petersburg. It's a dangerous country for FSB agents, there is a war going on, you can be kidnapped or killed. In short, the [Colombian] connection is fragmented and less vulnerable to the US and British influence. Finally, we have only few seaports that ships from Latin America can call. In contrast, our borders with Central Asia and the Trans-Caucasus are immense. So it is easy to monitor and control [cocaine traffic]. Of course, I do not. It would be great to shield ourselves from all drugs. I just don't know how this can be done."
481. See note 388 for the newspaper article.
482. *) Anton Surikov was deeply involved in the "Other Russia" movement, an anti-Putin coalition, through the Institute of Globalization Studies (IPROG) think tank.
     *) Transcript of an audio recording between Far West directors Anton Surikov (AS), Vladimir Filin (VF), Alexei Likhvintsev (AL) and Sergei Petrov (S). The recording was made at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, Austria, on September 27, 2003 [possibly September 1999]. Petrov, by then a representative of people close to Putin, was murdered by this group in January 2004: "S. – Salute, Comrades Narcos! VF. – Salute, Serge! Do we keep making jokes, or do you have some business to talk about? ... S.—Ziuganov shitted in his pants, saying "they will kill me. Surikov threatened me through Prokhanov, told me to triple my bodyguards." So he asked them to do this by themselves, as if he had nothing to do with this. AS.—I see. S.—But this is not the only problem. You continue to play games with Yukos. AS.—No games. With Kondaurov I have old relations. As for Khodorkovsky, Nevzlin and all their gang, I don't give a shit about these thieves. S.—Well… I was told to tell you that Khodorkovsky will be in the slammer shortly. The question has been decided. Same with [Yukos-Moscow president Vasily] Shakhnovsky and [Bank Menatep/Yukos shareholder Vladimir] Dubov. Voloshin will be removed before the elections. [Vladislav] Surkov [employee and friend of Berezovsky, Mikhail Fridman and Khodorkovsky in the 1990s; important assistant to Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev] will follow him. AS.—I’m kinda sorry for Surkov. One shouldn't be that rough with poets. AL.—And who will replace them? S.—Either Patrushev, or Kozak; perhaps, Victor Ivanov or Medvedev, but it's unlikely. AL.—And why is the President [Putin] against Khodorkovsky? S.—Well, you know, it's personal. AL.—I thought he was personal against Nevzlin. S.—Well, Khodorkovsky too. He is now like Berezovsky to them. Another complaint against you concerns [former Putin friend and disgraced oligarch Sergei] Pugachev [called "Putin's banker"] . As early as back in February. VF.—I don’t understand. AS.—Volodya [Vladimir [Putin]], this is what happened. First, last summer [2002 - Anton wrote about this, implicating his Far West partners] Ziuganov went to bed with Berezovsky. Vedmanov [banker of communist presidential candidate member Ziuganov] sold Berezovsky a resort, sort of sold him. They agreed that Bereza [Berezovsky] gives him three and a half [million?], then they are finding another buyer and Vidmanov takes the difference. When they found a buyer who was giving five [million?], Bereza soaked Vedmanov and took everything. VF.—Good for Bereza! But what Pugachev has to do with this? Why the [expletive] are you telling me this? AS.—Because as soon as [Viktor] Vidmanov [banker of communist presidential candidate member Ziuganov] received those three and a half [from Berezovsky], they summoned Khodor(kovsky) over the wall [Kremlin - but by whom?] and ordered him to get together with the Bolsheviks [Ziuganov]. Then Khinchagoshvili delicately told Ziuga(anov) not to sleep with Bereza [Berezovsky]. In short, Yukos gave ten [million?], and Kondaurov and I began demanding from Ziu(ganov) to take care of the electoral compaign, give "Pravda" to Tolya [Anatoly Baranov, was to be made head of Pravda], and so on. Prokhanov [Alexander Prokhanov of Zavtra, a raging antisemite who doesn't believe the Cold War is over] helped us. And then this bitch went to Khinchagoshvili again and also to Abramov [steel oligarch Alexander Abramov, a partner of Abramovitz and advisor to Putin] and sort of asked them for another sponsor. They found him "Mezhprom." [Mezhprombank, owned by Putin banker Sergei Pugachyov] Began testing the waters. They just did not realize at first and by habit went to [Valentin] Kuptsov [communist party treasurer said to really run the party, instead of Zyuganov]. And then Ziu(ganov) again sent Vidmanov [his banker] to Bereza [Berezovsky]. You must remember, Alexey [AL]. AL.—Is it when he went to London through Denmark? AS.—Right, like a [expletive] guerrilla, the old fool, he will be 70 soon. Bereza [Berezovsky] sold him at once, before he even returned. Papa got angry, Pugachev jumped aside at once. Later he again tried through Kuptsov, but those were small things, like putting Semyon [on the ballot]. VF.—What do we have to do with this? I don't [expletive] understand. S.—Come on, don't pretend. Bereza [Berezovsky] had nothing to do with this. It’s you, Anton, set up… AS.—[Expletive] no, it was Bereza [Berezovsky] and Stas Belkovsky [Stanislav Belkovsky, close to Berezovsky; ran a campaign against Khodorkovsky on Kremlin orders; reportedly close to Igor Sechin and has been undermining Putin's authority since 2007]. I was not connected to this. S.—As you wish, just keep in mind: they will continue squashing Yukos and the communists. You have been warned. VF.—We're for Papa, for expropriating all bloodsuckers and dividing the dough fairly, do you understand? S.—I understood you long ago. OK, it's time for me to go."
483. January 24, 2000, Boris Kagarlitsky for Novaya Gazeta, 'We Don't Talk To Terrorists. But We Help Them? A version of apartment explosions in Russia'. A few etails in note 440.
484. July 15, 2006, Left.ru, 'Kagarlitsky's Appointed Director of IPROG on Surikov's Request' (gives no source for Surikov's response, possibly from somewhere in the Russian media]: "[Surikov's response to the article:] In the beginning of 2000 Mr. Kagarlitsky visited me on his own initiative to talk about the alleged conspiracy between Mr. Basaev and the Kremlin in the summer of 1999. He asked me several questions. I responded at length to those questions that related to me personally and to the political situation in general. As to several of his central questions, I did not give him any answers at all... By the way, I have no intention to answer these questions in the future as well. I read Mr. Kagarlitsky's article of January 24, 2000 in Novaya Gazeta only after it had been published. I was neither thrilled nor disturbed by it. Back then I did not think it was of great importance. This publication did not affect my relations with Mr. Kagarlitsky at all. I just want to emphasize that I did not initiate his publication nor was I his main source of information for it."
485. October 1995, Anton Surikov paper, published by the Institute for Defense Studies (INOBIS), founded by his father Victor Surikov and a political mentor, former defense minister Yuri Maslyukov: "US, UK, and German economic and intelligence penetration into Azerbaijan is in full swing. ... [We should be] taking practical steps, including also steps of force, should it be necessary, to stop any oil production activity of foreign companies in the former Soviet part of the Caspian Sea until its legal status is determined; -preventing Turkey's territorial tie with the main part of Azerbaijan territory; and exerting pressure on the regime in Baku [Azerbaijan]... Another aspect of the West's Caspian policy is the attempt to cut Russia off from the Transcaucasus by encouraging separatism in the North Caucasus, above all in Chechnya. In particular, there are projects for establishing an anti-Russian Confederation of Mountain [Gorskiy] Peoples made up of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia and Adygea. It is presumed this formation will gain direct access to the Black Sea and to Turkey through the territory of Abkhazia. Plans for assisting separatism in Tatarstan and Bashkiria for the purpose of actually cutting off from central Russia regions of the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East rich energy sources are being considered in the long term. "Strategy for the neutralization of external threats: ... Taking practical steps, including steps of force, should it be necessary, to stop any oil production activity of foreign companies in the former Soviet part of the Caspian. - Preventing Turkey's territorial tie with the main part of Azerbaijan territory; and exerting pressure on the regime in Baku; - E.g., by creating threats of a fragmentation of Azerbaijan..." [refers to the upcoming oligarchs as "new Russians" in various locations]"
486. See note 445 for details.
487. See note 445 for details.
488. Transcript of an audio recording between Far West directors Anton Surikov (AS), Vladimir Filin (VF), Alexei Likhvintsev (AL) and Sergei Petrov (S). The recording was made at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna, Austria, on September 27, 2003 [possibly September 1999]. Petrov, who had become close to Putin's circle, was murdered by this group in January 2004.
489. historycommons.org: "May 1996: Saudis and Al-Qaeda Allegedly Strike a Secret Deal. French intelligence secretly monitors a meeting of Saudi billionaires at the Hotel Royale Monceau in Paris this month with the financial representative of al-Qaeda. "The Saudis, including a key Saudi prince joined by Muslim and non-Muslim gun traffickers, [meet] to determine who would pay how much to Osama. This [is] not so much an act of support but of protection—a payoff to keep the mad bomber away from Saudi Arabia." [Palast, 2002, pp. 100] Participants also agree that bin Laden should be rewarded for promoting Wahhabism (an austere form of Islam that requires literal interpretation of the Koran) in Chechnya, Kashmir, Bosnia, and other places. [Fifth Estate, 10/29/2003 pdf file] This extends an alleged secret deal first made between the Saudi government and bin Laden in 1991. Later, 9/11 victims’ relatives will rely on the "nonpublished French intelligence report" of this meeting in their lawsuit against important Saudis. [Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 8/16/2002] According to French counterterrorism expert Jean-Charles Brisard and/or reporter Greg Palast, there are about 20 people at the meeting, including Saudi intelligence head Prince Turki al-Faisal, an unnamed brother of bin Laden and an unnamed representative from the Saudi Defense Ministry. [Fifth Estate, 10/29/2003 pdf file; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 10/29/2003] Palast claims that Saudi businessman Abdullah Taha Bakhsh attends the meeting. Bakhsh also saved Bush Jr.‘s Harken Oil from bankruptcy around 1990. Palast claims the notorious Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi also attends the meeting. [Democracy Now!, 3/4/2003; Santa Fe New Mexican, 3/20/2003] In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner, Slate has claimed that Khashoggi is a "shadowy international arms merchant" who is "connected to every scandal of the past 40 years." Amongst other things, he was a major investor in BCCI and a key player in the Iran-Contra affair. [Slate, 12/4/00, Slate, 11/14/01, Slate, 3/12/03] [Slate, 12/4/2000; Slate, 11/14/2001; Slate, 3/12/2003] Palast, noting that the French monitored the meeting, asks, "Since US intelligence was thus likely informed, the question becomes why didn’t the government immediately move against the Saudis?" [Palast, 2002, pp. 100] Entity Tags: Adnan Khashoggi, Abdullah Bakhsh, Al-Qaeda, France, Greg Palast, Turki al-Faisal."
490. *) Wikipedia provides most information with good sources.
     en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Mohamed
     *) historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a1195yemeniassassins: " Context of 'November 1995: Saudi Intelligence Said to Sponsor Assassination Attempt on Bin Laden' ... February 4-5, 1994 and Shortly Afterwards: Bin Laden Almost Assassinated; Ali Mohamed [CIA] Trains His Bodyguards. ... August 1995: Bin Laden Criticizes Saudi Royals, Threatens Attacks on US Forces in Saudi Arabia..."
491. See note 442.
492. *) September 9, 2011, Daily Kos, 'Florida al-Qaeda fugitive Esam Ghazzawi linked to BCCI and two dead Saudi Princes': "This follows up my posting yesterday, which commented on the Miami Herald report that the FBI had covered up the escape of a Saudi financier who had hosted Mohamed Atta at his Florida villa in the months leading up to the 9/11 attacks. Esam Ghazzawi, his daughter, Anoud, and her husband, Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii suddenly disappeared on August 30, 2001, leaving behind a million dollar, fully furnished Sarasota home, several automobiles, and their personal belongings. For ten years, the FBI withheld information from Congressional investigators and the public that Ghazzami has been visited by Atta and another hijacker, and phone records showed numerous calls to other figures involved in the 9/11 attack. It turns out after some checking that in the 1990s Ghazzawi held BCCI funds for a Saudi Prince who died on July 24, 2001. The deceased younger brother, Prince Ahmed bin Salman, died almost exactly a year later of a "heart attack" at age 41 after he was reportedly identified as one of the largest moneymen behind the 9/11 attack. The two dead princes were the sons of the co-director of Saudi intelligence. No wonder that Ghazzawi left his mansion in such a hurry. Ghazzawi linked to BCCI and two dead Saudi Princes: Background checking since yesterday’s news account reveals evidence that Ghazzawi, who was on US government watch-lists along with his daughter and son-in-law, has a long history of association with Saudi financiers linked to terrorism and major global bank frauds in the 1980s and 1990s. He now lives openly in Jeddah and owns the posh Orient Restaurant in Khobar, KSA. Most intriguingly, he is mentioned in a 1997 London court document as having held funds for Prince Fahd bin Salman, a member of the Saudi Royal family who died suddenly at the age of 46 on July 24, 2001. Prince Fahd's father Salman is the governor of Riyadh and brother of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. The eldest of four brothers, and born in 1955, Prince Fahd acted as deputy governor of Riyadh's Eastern Region during the Gulf War of 1991. Little has ever been written about the death of Fahd, but his involvement with BCCI was noted several years earlier in connection with a law suit in London. PRINCE FAHD BIN SALMAN'S DUBIOUS BANKING PRACTICES: Private Eye reports: "Prince Fahd bin Salman, eldest son of ... Prince Salman, the governor of Riyadh ... a court case brought by the BCCI liquidators over the little matter of $397,000 owed to the rogue bank. Since 1994 the liquidators had been seeking repayment of this money under a guarantee given by the prince for the overdraft of an offshore company, Colchest Corporation N.V. In an unusual response, Prince Fahd sought to offset against this debt money held at another BCCI branch in the name of one Esam Ghazzawi, claiming that this was his money. The court of appeal rejected this suggestion on the basis that it was unclear who owned what in the Ghazzawi accounts. Prince Fahd’s death five weeks before Ghazzami suddenly fled his Sarasota home, barely 6 weeks before 9/11 might not in itself be more than coincidence. However, the unfolding story takes a particularly sinister turn when one realizes that Faud’s younger brother, Prince Ahmed bin Salman died almost exactly a year later (November 17, 1958 – July 22, 2002), and his death has been labeled the first of a series of post-9/11 U.S. targeted killings of prominent figures identified as having had leading roles in the attacks. In his 2003 book Why America Slept, author Gerald Posner writes that Prince Ahmed bin Salman had had ties to al-Qaeda and had advance knowledge of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. [as well as Prince Turki and other Saudis]..."
     *) February 18, 2012, The Telegraph, 'London-based oil executive linked to 9/11 hijackers': "A Saudi Arabian accused of associating with several of the September 11 hijackers and who disappeared from his home in the United States a few weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, is in London working for his country’s state oil company. Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud left three cars at their luxurious home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida — one of them new — and flew to Saudi Arabia in August 2001. The refrigerator was full of food; furniture and clothing were left behind; and the swimming pool water was still circulating. Security records of cars passing through a checkpoint at the Prestancia gated community indicated that Mr al-Hijji’s home, 4224 Escondito Circle, had been visited a number of times by Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 19-strong hijack team, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in 2001. The logs also indicated that Marwan Al-Shehhi, who crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower, and Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, had visited the house. All three men had trained to fly at Venice Airport, which is 19 miles from Sarasota. A US counter-terrorist agent told The Daily Telegraph: "The registration numbers of vehicles that had passed through the Prestancia community’s north gate in the months before 9/11, coupled with the identification documents shown by incoming drivers on request, showed that Mohamed Atta and several of his fellow hijackers, and another Saudi suspect still at large, had visited 4224 Escondito Circle." The suspect was Adnan Shukrijumah, an al-Qaeda operative who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, with a $5 million bounty on his head.A decade after the world’s worst terrorist attack, which claimed the lives of 3,000 people, Mr al-Hijji is resident in London, working for the European subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company. Described as a career counsellor, he is based in the offices of Aramco Overseas Company UK Limited and lives in an expensive flat in central London. In email correspondence with the Telegraph, Mr al-Hijji strongly denied any involvement in the plot, writing: "I have neither relation nor association with any of those bad people/criminals and the awful crime they did. 9/11 is a crime against the USA and all humankind and I’m very saddened and oppressed by these false allegations. "I love the USA. My kids were born there, I went to college and university there, I spent a good portion of my life there and I love it." Mr al-Hijji’s account is supported by the FBI, which has stated: "At no time did the FBI develop evidence that connected the family members to any of the 9/11 hijackers … and there was no connection found to the 9/11 plot.’’ Bob Graham, a former US senator who, in addition to co-chairing the congressional inquiry into 9/11, was chairman of the US senate intelligence committee at the time, disputes the FBI denials. He has long believed that there was Saudi support for the 19 terrorists, 15 of whom were subjects of the kingdom. He cites two secret documents to which he has recently had access. The first document, Graham says, is "not consistent with the public statements of the FBI that there was no connection between the 9/11 hijackers and the Saudis at the Sarasota home. Both documents indicate that the investigation was not the robust inquiry claimed by the FBI." Mr al-Hijji, 38, moved with his family to Britain in 2003, setting up home in a rented four-bedroom detached house in the Southampton suburb of Totton. His stay there appears to have been uneventful. The al-Hijjis’ abrupt departure from Sarasota aroused the suspicion of their next-door neighbour, Patrick Gallagher. He emailed the FBI within two days of 9/11 to report the disappearance of the couple and their young children. Reports released recently by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement refer to the "suspicious manner and timing" of the family’s departure. One document states: "In mid-August 2001 the above subjects purchased a new vehicle and renewed the registration on several other vehicles. On Aug 27 2001 a moving truck appeared and moved the subjects out of the house. Left behind were the vehicles and numerous personal belongings, including food, medicine, bills, baby clothing etc." The document goes on to state that Mr al-Hijji and Esam Ghazzawi, his father-in-law and the owner of the Escondito Circle house, had been "on the FBI watch list" prior to 9/11. Mr al-Hijji described the allegations against him as "just cheap talk" and denied having abandoned his home in undue haste, explaining: "No, no, no. Absolutely not true. We were trying to secure the [Aramco] job. It was a good opportunity." He said his wife and children followed him out to Saudi Arabia a few weeks after he left. She and his American-born mother-in-law had been questioned by the FBI when they returned to the United States to settle the family’s affairs. But he was not questioned when he returned to America for a two-month period in 2005."
493. *) The International Citizens' Inquiry Into 9/11 was held on several occasions in 2004. Speakers included Barrie Zwicker, Webster Tarpley, Michael Ruppert and others. Thierry Meyssan. Much of the conference revolved around the bogus no-plane theories at the Pentagon, of course. Questions were raised when John Gray, author of 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus', was included as a keynote speaker.
     *) 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, '9/11s big dirty secret: Trafficking with the Taliban': "And keeping it that way seems to be a primary objective both of the 9/11 Commission, as well as a disinformation campaign funded, amazingly, by Saudi Arabian billionaire arms peddler Adnan Khashoggi, who was recently discovered to have been behind dubious funding of the Toronto "9/11 inquiry." His donation was washed through one of his employees, author John Gray (Men are from Venus; Women are from Mars). Khashoggi's involvement in the International 9/11 Inquiry was discovered through the efforts of two of the most-respected researchers in attendance, Canadian economist Michel Chossudovsky and German author Mathias Broeckers. "That a conference of investigators probing to learn the truth about the 9/11 attack could be funded by the very people supposedly being investigated came to me as quite a surprise," Broeckers told us. "My suspicions were aroused when the keynote speech was given by 'relationship guru' John Gray. In a conference on 9/11, what does "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" have to teach us about the identities of those responsible for murdering 3000 human beings?" "Someone told me, "I believe he donated money to the Inquiry," Broeckers said. Fey author John Gray's business is actually owned by Adnan Khashoggi. Gray is being sued with Khashoggi in a financial scam they allegedly participated in involving Khashoggi's Genesis Intermedia. Is anybody discerning a pattern here? Hadn't anybody involved with the Toronto 9/11 Inquiry known? Well of course they had… "Michel Chossudovsky (www.globalresearch.ca) told me he'd learned of the International 9//11 Inquiry’s shady financing two weeks before the conference," said Broeckers. "He demanded that the organizers dump Gray. They told him not to spread 'bad vibrations.'" "To say that John Gray is in business with Adnan Khashoggi doesn't portray the relationship in quite the right light," stated another observer, asking to remain anonymous. "Khashoggi owns John Gray. He bought his whole Mars-Venus shtick, his company, and now Gray works for him." This explains Gray's interest in the 9/11 inquiry. Adnan Khashoggi must have told him "Terrorists Are From Jupiter." But why would a Saudi billionaire want to fund an inquiry into 9/11? Wouldn't that be the last thing he'd want?"
     *) October 13, 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Cointelpro 9.11 pt III: Khashoggi, Cults, Cover-ups & Mars & Venus Doing Lunch': "Any quick look at the Saudi arms dealer shows his notoriety stems from more than just singing too loud in church, or mosque, or whatever temple roof he and Imelda Marco [Imelda Marcos, daughter of Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, a country once important it's hidden gold reserves] huddle underneath together with their personal guru [Chandraswami, a spiritual advisor to Narasimha Rao, Indian prime minister 1991-1996; Sultan of Brunei, Sheikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa of Bahrain, actress Elizabeth Taylor,British PM Margaret Thatcher and business men Adnan Khashoggi and Tiny Rowland]. Even Khashoggi’s guru has CIA connections, we learned: the vastly rich swami has been under official suspicion in the assassination of Indian Premier Rajiv Ghandi, and was even arrested by Indian police for currency fraud. ... Add to that the recently declassified American intelligence report from 1991 listing the top 100 drug traffickers and associates. It included lawyers, right-wing paramilitary fighters, a Peruvian rebel commander, a Colombian singer, a pre-dead Pablo Escobar, a pre-jailbird Manuel Noriega... and Adnan Khashoggi. ... Well now. No wonder denials of impropriety in accepting money from Khashoggi's business partner John Gray were so quick from so-called 9.11 "Truth Movement" principals. "I asked John personally about what connection, if any, he has or had with Adnan Khashoggi," said Toronto talk host Barrie Zwicker. "John satisfied me that he is aware of the anti-life nature of Khashoggi's activities, that he has not associated with him..." ... John Gray’s financing of infomercials touting Zwicker’s new  9-11 documentary were vastly more entertaining that  Ruppert’s thoughts on cancer cures, anyway."
494. *) October 13, 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Cointelpro 9.11 pt III: Khashoggi, Cults, Cover-ups & Mars & Venus Doing Lunch': ""I asked John [Gray] personally about what connection, if any, he has or had with Adnan Khashoggi," said Toronto talk host Barrie Zwicker [9/11 researcher and conference organizer]. "John satisfied me that he is aware of the anti-life nature of Khashoggi's activities, that he has not associated with him..." ... John Gray's financing of infomercials touting Zwicker's new 9-11 documentary were vastly more entertaining that Ruppert's thoughts on cancer cures, anyway.""
     *) John Gray's back cover review of Soheir Khashoggi's 1996 book 'Mirage' (Soheir is the sister of Adnan): "Khashoggi has written a truly compelling novel that boldly illuminates the different roles men and women play in the Middle East versus the West. Her characters act as windows to two sharply contrasted cultures, bringing them to life as only someone who has lived and felt them deeply could."
     *) April 1, 2010, Bloomberg News, 'Saudi Financier Khashoggi Settles With SEC Over Seller of 'Ab-Twisters'': "Saudi Financier Adnan Khashoggi and former GenesisIntermedia Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ramy El- Batrawi settled a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit accusing them of orchestrating a stock fraud scheme. ... GenesisIntermedia is a defunct Van Nuys, California-based telemarketing company that sold the "Ab-Twister" exercise device and [John Gray's] "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" relationship products through infomercials. Trading in GenesisIntermedia was halted in September 2001 after the shares plunged 65 percent."
495. October 13, 2004, Daniel Hopsicker, 'Cointelpro 9.11 pt III: Khashoggi, Cults, Cover-ups & Mars & Venus Doing Lunch': "From their base in Tampa Florida, Khashoggi and El Batrawi controlled a network of companies, all using the word "Genesis" in their name. The number of Khashoggi-owned Genesis companies we've found keeps growing. There is, or was, Genesis Aviation, Inc., Genesis Aviation II, Genesis Diversified Investments, Genesis Studio and Production Corp., Genesis Media Group, Genesis Properties, Genesis Intermedia; GenesisIntermedia.com.; Genesis Delaware; Genesis Florida… The list, it do go on. And on." … And then there's the Genesis Communications Network. There’s actually two of them, seemingly unrelated, but they're so extremely similar in the fraud department to each other and to "Saudi Genesis" that the relationship appears strongly familial. We're still uncertain as to how close they all are; kissing cousins, at the very least. The first GCN is a so-called "patriot" network hosting Alex Jones and Dave Van Kliest, the, ah, the individual fronting for the latest See the Flash extravaganza, advertisements for which are spamming the Internet at a rate that must be causing concern among conservationists of our digital landscape of '1's and ' 0's.' [David] Von Kleist is our pick for Disinfotainer of the Year… an especial honor, considering that there was some fierce competition. Of course, "See the Flash Dave" from the powerhour, like Alex Jones, is part of the GENESIS Communications Network."
496. November 8, 2011, Pravda, 'Anton Surikov: USA used the terrorist attack of September 11th to set up a strong infrastructure of its military presence in the former USSR'. See specific quote later in the article.
497. October 17, 2002, New York Times, 'Threats and responses: the money trail; [CFR] Report Says Saudis Fail to Crack Down on Charities That Finance Terrorists'.
498. waynemadsenreport.com/intelwhispers/intel.htm (accessed: Augsut 29, 2008): "Hank Greenberg has had a long time relationship with Henry Kissinger [correct], the partner of Richard Perle in Trireme Partners [correct], the firm that, according to Seymour Hersh, attempted to negotiate deals with Saudi Arabia using Saudi billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi as an intermediary. [correct] Greenberg and Khashoggi, according to CIA sources, have long had an interest in exploiting the oil and natural gas reserves of Uzbekistan and the construction of pipelines across the Uralskaya region of Russia. [unique to Wayne Madsen, but most likely correct as Greenberg, Kissinger and their clique have extensive interests in Russia]"
499. February 15, 2002, CFR, 'Launch of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies with Vice President Dick Cheney'.
500. October 2002, CFR, 'Task Force Report: Terrorist Financing': "Overview: After an initially robust attempt to curtail financing for international terrorism, the Bush administration’s current efforts are strategically inadequate to assure the sustained results needed to protect U.S. security. This is the core finding of a bipartisan commission chaired by Maurice R. Greenberg, chairman and chief executive officer of AIG ... Task Force Members: ... David Cohen ... Maurice Sonnenberg ... William Webster..."
501. February 29, 2012, New York Times, 'Saudi Arabia May Be Tied to 9/11, 2 Ex-Senators Say'.
502. Ibid.
503. September 21, 2010, Jeremy R. Hammond for Information Clearing House, 'Pakistan will always support the Taliban': Newly Disclosed Documents Shed More Light on Early Taliban Offers, Pakistan Role': "U.S. government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and recently posted on the website of the George Washington University National Security Archive shed some additional light on talks with the Taliban prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including with regard to the repeated Taliban offers to hand over Osama bin Laden, and the role of Pakistan before and after the attacks.[1] ... Officials described the U.S. decision to reject Taliban offers as a missed opportunity. Former CIA station chief Milt Bearden told the Post, "We never heard what they were trying to say…. We had no common language. Ours was, ‘Give up bin Laden.’ They were saying, ‘Do something to help us give him up.’" Bearden added, "I have no doubts they wanted to get rid of him. He was a pain in the neck," but this "never clicked" with U.S. officials. Michael Malinowski, a State Department official involved in the talks, acknowledged, "I would say, ‘Hey, give up bin Laden,’ and they would say, ‘No…. Show us the evidence’", a request U.S. officials deemed unreasonable.[3] According to the BBC, the Taliban later even warned the U.S. that bin Laden was going to launch an attack on American soil. Former Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil said his warnings, issued because of concerns that the U.S. would react by waging war against Afghanistan, had been ignored. A U.S. official did not deny that such warnings were issued, but told BBC rather that it was dismissed because "We were hearing a lot of that kind of stuff".[4] ... The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef responded that "the Taliban do not see Americans as their enemies and that there are no threats to Americans coming from the Taliban. Nontheless, said Zaeef, ‘We will do our best to follow up and stop’ any threat." With regard to bin Laden, "Zaeef emphasized that the Taliban’s relationship with UBL [Usama/Osama bin Laden] and others is based not on enmity against the United States, but on ‘culture.’"[7] ... Rejecting the Taliban offers to have bin Laden handed over, the U.S. instead pursued a policy of regime change well prior to the 9/11 attacks. Jane’s Information Group reported in March 2001 that "India is believed to have joined Russia, the USA and Iran in a concerted front against Afghanistan’s Taliban regime", which included support for Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, including "information and logistic support" from Washington.[8] Former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik told the BBC that he had been told by senior U.S. officials in July 2001 at a U.N.-sponsored summit in Berlin that military action would be taken against the Taliban by the middle of October. Preparations had already been coordinated with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Russia. Naik also "said it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban."[9 [ George Arney, "US ‘planned attack on Taleban’", BBC News, September 18, 2001 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm>]]A newly released document dated August 30, 2001 shows that Pakistan was continuing to urge the U.S. "to maintain open channels to the Taliban." Pakistani officials denied that their support for the Taliban included military assistance. When asked "why Pakistan supports the Taliban", an official replied, "We don’t support but inter-act with the Taliban". Pressed further on why Pakistan continued "to give the Taliban international diplomatic support and to press the USG [United States Government] to engage with the Taliban?" the Pakistanis "reiterated that the Taliban are the effective rulers of at least 90 percent of Afghanistan, that they enjoy significant popular support because they ended the banditry and anarchy that once bedeviled the country, and that the instant success of the opium poppy production ban underscored … the reality and effectiveness of Taliban authority." If it wasn’t for "external support" for the Northern Alliance, it "would collapse in a matter of days."[10] ... The BBC reported on the Pakistani talks with the Taliban, noting that the Taliban were "demanding proof of his involvement in the terror attacks on the US" before they would consider handing over Osama bin Laden, who issued a statement saying, "The US is pointing the finger at me but I categorically state that I have not done this".[14] CNN similarly reported that the Taliban was "refusing to hand over bin Laden without proof or evidence that he was involved" in the 9/11 attacks. Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef said "that deporting him without proof would amount to an ‘insult to Islam.’" But, he added, "We are ready to cooperate if we are shown evidence." ... The U.S. war against Afghanistan commenced on October 7, and the Taliban again repeated offers to negotiate handing over bin Laden. Taliban deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir announced that "If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved" and the U.S. stopped its bombing, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country". President George W. Bush rejected the offer as "non-negotiable"... The threshold of evidence required for waging a war is apparently much lower than that to issue an indictment in a court of law. As a direct consequence of the war, Afghanistan once again became far and away the world’s leading producer of opium and heroin; it indeed returned to a state of warlordism, chaos, and violence, just as the U.S. had been warned; many more Afghan civilians have been killed than Americans who died on 9/11, and Osama bin Laden was never captured."
504. November 1, 2004, Counterpunch, 'How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and Blew It': "Kabir Mohabbat is a 48-year businessman in Houston, Texas. Born in Paktia province in southern Afghanistan, he’s from the Jaji clan (from which also came Afghanistan’s last king). Educated at St Louis University, he spent much of the 1980s supervising foreign relations for the Afghan mujahiddeen, where he developed extensive contacts with the US foreign policy establishment, also with senior members of the Taliban. After the eviction of the Soviets, Mohabbat returned to the United States to develop an export business with Afghanistan and became a US citizen. Figuring in his extensive dealings with the Taliban in the late 1990s was much investment of time and effort for a contract to develop the proposed oil pipeline through northern Afghanistan. In a lengthy interview and in a memorandum Kabir Mohabbat has given us a detailed account and documentation to buttress his charge that the Bush administration could have had Osama bin Laden and his senior staff either delivered to the US or to allies as prisoners, or killed at their Afghan base. As a search of the data base shows, portions of Mohabbat’s role have been the subject of a number of news reports, including a CBS news story by Alan Pizzey aired September 25, 2001. This is the first he has made public the full story. By the end of 1999 US sanctions and near-world-wide political ostracism were costing the Taliban dearly and they had come to see Osama bin Laden and his training camps as, in Mohabbat’s words, "just a damn liability". Mohabbat says the Taliban leadership had also been informed in the clearest possible terms by a US diplomat that if any US citizen was harmed as a consequence of an Al Qaeda action, the US would hold the Taliban responsible and target Mullah Omar and the Taliban leaders. In the summer of 2000, on one of his regular trips to Afghanistan, Mohabbat had a summit session with the Taliban high command in Kandahar. They asked him to arrange a meeting with appropriate officials in the European Union, to broker a way in which they could hand over Osama bin Laden . Mohabbat recommended they send bin Laden to the World Criminal Court in the Hague. Shortly thereafter, in August of 2000, Mohabbat set up a meeting at the Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt between a delegation from the Taliban and Reiner Weiland of the EU. The Taliban envoys repeated the offer to deport bin Laden. Weiland told them he would take the proposal to Elmar Brok, foreign relations director for the European Union. According to Mohabbat, Brok then informed the US Ambassador to Germany of the offer. At this point the US State Department called Mohabbat and said the government wanted to retain his services, even before his official period on the payroll, which lasted from November of 2000 to late September, 2001, by which time he tells us he had been paid $115,000. On the morning of October 12, 2000, Mohabbat was in Washington DC, preparing for an 11am meeting at the State Department , when he got a call from State, telling him to turn on the tv and then come right over. The USS Cole had just been bombed. Mohabbat had a session with the head of State’s South East Asia desk and with officials from the NSC. They told him the US was going to "bomb the hell out of Afghanistan". "Give me three weeks," Mohabbat answered, "and I will deliver Osama to your doorstep." They gave him a month. Mohabbat went to Kandahar and communicated the news of imminent bombing to the Taliban. They asked him to set up a meeting with US officials to arrange the circumstances of their handover of Osama. On November 2, 2000, less than a week before the US election, Mohabbat arranged a face-to-face meeting, in that same Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt, between Taliban leaders and a US government team. After a rocky start on the first day of the Frankfurt session, Mohabbat says the Taliban realized the gravity of US threats and outlined various ways bin Laden could be dealt with. He could be turned over to the EU, killed by the Taliban, or made available as a target for Cruise missiles. In the end, Mohabbat says, the Taliban promised the "unconditional surrender of bin Laden" . "We all agreed," Mohabbat tells CounterPunch, "the best way was to gather Osama and all his lieutenants in one location and the US would send one or two Cruise missiles." Up to that time Osama had been living on the outskirts of Kandahar. At some time shortly after the Frankfurt meeting, the Taliban moved Osama and placed him and his retinue under house arrest at Daronta, thirty miles from Kabul. In the wake of the 2000 election Mohabbat traveled to Islamabad and met with William Milam, US ambassador to Pakistan and the person designated by the Clinton administration to deal with the Taliban on the fate of bin Laden. Milam told Mohabbat that it was a done deal but that the actual handover of bin Laden would have to be handled by the incoming Bush administration. On November 23, 2000, Mohabbat got a call from the NSC saying they wanted to put him officially on the payroll as the US government’s contact man for the Taliban. He agreed. A few weeks later an official from the newly installed Bush NSC asked him to continue in the same role and shortly thereafter he was given a letter from the administration (Mohabbat tells us he has a copy), apologizing to the Taliban for not having dealt with bin Laden, explaining that the new government was still setting in, and asking for a meeting in February 2001. The Bush administration sent Mohabbat back, carrying kindred tidings of delay and regret to the Taliban three more times in 2001, the last in September after the 9/11 attack. Each time he was asked to communicate similar regrets about the failure to act on the plan agreed to in Frankfurt. This procrastination became a standing joke with the Taliban, Mohabbat tells CounterPunch "They made an offer to me that if the US didn’t have fuel for the Cruise missiles to attack Osama in Daronta, where he was under house arrest, they would pay for it." Kabir Mohabbat’s final trip to Afghanistan on the US government payroll took place on September 3, 2001. On September 11 Mohabbat acted as translator for some of the Taliban leadership in Kabul as they watched tv coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Four days later the US State Department asked Mohabbat to set up a meeting with the Taliban. Mohabbat says the Taliban were flown to Quetta in two C-130s. There they agreed to the three demands sought by the US team: 1. Immediate handover of bin Laden; 2. Extradition of foreigners in Al Qaeda who were wanted in their home countries; 3. shut-down of bin Laden’s bases and training camps. Mohabbat says the Taliban agreed to all three demands. This meeting in Quetta was reported in carefully vague terms by Pizzey on September 25, where Mohabbat was mentioned by name. He tells us that the Bush administration was far more exercised by this story than by any other event in the whole delayed and ultimately abandoned schedule of killing Osama. On October 18, Mohabbat tells us, he was invited to the US embassy in Islamabad and told that "there was light at the end of the tunnel for him", which translated into an invitation to occupy the role later assigned to Karzai. Mohabbat declined, saying he had no desire for the role of puppet and probable fall guy. A few days later the Pizzey story was aired and Mohabbat drew the ire of the Bush administration where he already had an enemy in the form of Zalmay Khalilzad, appointed on September 22 as the US special envoy to Afghanistan. After giving him a dressing down, US officials told Mohabbat the game had changed, and he should tell the Taliban the new terms: surrender or be killed. Mohabbat declined to be the bearer of this news and went off the US government payroll. Towards the end of that same month of October, 2001 Mohabbat was successfully negotiating with the Taliban for the release of Heather Mercer (acting in a private capacity at the request of her father) when the Taliban once again said they would hand over Osama Bin Laden unconditionally. Mohabbat tells us he relayed the offer to David Donahue, the US consulate general in Islamabad. He was told, in his words,that "the train had moved". Shortly thereafter the US bombing of Afghanistan began. In December Mohabbat was in Pakistan following with wry amusement the assault on Osama bin Laden’s supposed mountain redoubt in Tora Bora, in the mountains bordering Pakistan. At the time he said, he informed US embassy officials the attack was a waste of time. Taliban leaders had told him that Bin Laden was nowhere near Tora Bora but in Waziristan. Knowing that the US was monitoring his cell phone traffic, Osama had sent a decoy to Tora Bora. From the documents he’s supplied us and from his detailed account we regard Kabir Mohabbat’s story as credible and are glad to make public his story of the truly incredible failure of the Bush administration to accept the Taliban’s offer to eliminate Bin Laden. As a consequence of this failure more than 3,000 Americans and thousands of Afghans died. Mohabbat himself narrowly escaped death on two occasions when Al Qaeda, apprised of his role, tried to kill him. In Kabul in February, 2001, a bomb was detonated in his hotel in Kabul. Later that year, in July, a hand grenade thrown in his room in a hotel in Kandahar failed to explode. He told his story to the 9/11 Commission (whose main concern, he tells us, was that he not divulge his testimony to anyone else), also to the 9/11 Families who were pursuing a lawsuit based on the assumption of US intelligence blunders by the FBI and CIA. He says his statements were not much use to the families since his judgment was, and still remains, that it was not intelligence failures that allowed the 9/11 attacks, but criminal negligence by the Bush administration."
505. *) This is actually very old news, with already immediately after 9/11 claims along these lines being made. It took a decade for the mainstream to catch up on this fact, which was only confirmed when Osama bin Laden was found in Pakistan, close to an army base.
     *) June 13, 2010, BBC, 'Pakistani agents 'funding and training Afghan Taliban'': "Pakistani intelligence gives funding, training and sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban on a scale much larger than previously thought, a report says. Taliban field commanders interviewed for the report suggested that ISI intelligence agents even attend Taliban supreme council meetings. Support for the Afghan Taliban was "official ISI policy", the London School of Economics (LSE) authors suggest. Pakistan's military denied the claims. A spokesman said the allegations were "rubbish" and part of a malicious campaign against the country's military and security agencies. The LSE report comes at the end of one of the deadliest weeks for Nato troops in Afghanistan, with more than 30 soldiers killed. 'Double game' Links between the Taliban and Pakistan's intelligence service have long been suspected, but the report's author - Harvard analyst Matt Waldman - says there is real evidence of extensive co-operation between the two. "This goes far beyond just limited, or occasional support," he said. "This is very significant levels of support being provided by the ISI. "We're also saying this is official policy of that agency, and we're saying that it is very extensive. It is both at an operational level, and at a strategic level, right at the senior leadership of the Taliban movement." Mr Waldman spoke to nine Taliban field commanders in Afghanistan earlier this year. Some alleged that ISI agents had even attended meetings of the Taliban's top leadership council, the so-called Quetta shura. They claim that by backing the insurgents Pakistan's security service is trying to undermine Indian influence in Afghanistan. "These accounts were corroborated by former Taliban ministers, a Western analyst and a senior UN official based in Kabul, who said the Taliban largely depend on funding from the ISI and groups in Gulf countries," the report said. With US troops due to begin leaving next year, Pakistan and other regional players are increasingly seeking ways to assert their influence in Afghanistan, analysts say. Pakistan has long been accused of using the Taliban to further its foreign policy interests in the country. The ISI first became involved in funding and training militants in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979. Since 2001, however, it has been a key US ally, receiving billions of dollars in aid in return for helping fight al-Qaeda "Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude," the report says. 'No proof' But Islamabad says it is working with its international partners in hunting down the Taliban. And the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, says there is no proof of a link between the ISI and the Afghan Taliban. "I have no proof that Pakistan is supporting the Taliban," he told the BBC, "or that the ISI is providing money to them... or other support to provide weapons." Even so, Pakistan's role in Afghanistan is viewed as critical. Last week Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh resigned, saying he had become an obstacle to plans to talk to the Taliban. Mr Saleh told Reuters news agency a day after quitting that the ISI was "part of the landscape of destruction" in Afghanistan and accused Pakistan of sheltering Taliban leaders in safe houses. Pakistan has always denied such claims and points to arrests and military offensives against the militants on its side of the border. Nevertheless, parts of the tribal north-west of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan remain strongholds for the militants. The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says there is a growing understanding that military action alone will not be enough to bring peace in Afghanistan. "Without a change in Pakistani behaviour it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency," the report concludes."
     *) February 1, 2012, Time magazine, 'Pakistan Still Propping Up the Taliban, Alleges Secret NATO Report': "According to the BBC, the report notes, "Pakistan's manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabated….Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI [Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence agency] headquarters in Islamabad." ... The report, based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters and civilians, comes at a sensitive time for Pakistan Afghan relations. Kabul has long accused Islamabad of supporting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Relations between the two countries, on hold since the September assassination of Afghan peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani, which many Afghans blame on the Pakistani intelligence services, were only just beginning to thaw. ... Back in the 1990s, Pakistan's intelligence agencies helped fund and train the Taliban at the beginning of Afghanistan's civil war. When the Taliban finally took Kabul in 1996, Pakistan was one of only three nations to recognize them as the lawful government of Afghanistan. Pakistan continued to militarily assist the Taliban in its quest to take over the entire country until the events of Sept. 11, 2001 forced a reversal. Many Afghans believe that the about-face was superficial, and that Pakistan wants nothing more than a weakened neighbor to use as a hedge against its archrival India. "That is a myth that needs to be broken," said Khar. "I am calling it a myth because I don't think its has been true for the past ten-plus years." Myth or not, most of the captives interviewed in the NATO report take it as truth. "Pakistan knows everything. They control everything," said one senior al-Qaeda detainee. "I can't [expletive] on a tree in Kunar without them watching.""
506. September 22, 2006, BBC news, 'US 'threatened to bomb' Pakistan': "The US threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" unless it joined the fight against al-Qaeda, President Pervez Musharraf has said. General Musharraf said the warning was delivered by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Pakistan's intelligence director. "I think it was a very rude remark," Gen Musharraf told CBS television."
507. See note 441 for details.
508. September 18, 2001, BBC news, 'US 'planned attack on Taleban'': "A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin. Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar. The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place - possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah. Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place. He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby. Mr Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest. He said that he was in no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks. And he said it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban."
509. June 25, 2004, World Security Network, 'Exclusive WSN Interview with Georgi Arbatov: "Do not ignore the deficits of the system Putin! Russia needs new thinking and grass roots democracy!"'.