9/11: The BCCI Connection

[Octafish]

Hey! Does this guy read DU? Oh, well. Don't avert your eyes — plagiarize, if it's for a good cause ... like protecting and defending the United States of America. What several DUers know, the rest should read. Your future depends on knowledge:

9/11: The BCCI Connection

by Chaim Kupferberg

EXCERPT...

In his landmark article, Chaim Kupferberg uses mostly mainstream sources to reconstruct the making of the Official 9/11 Legend.  Here, Kupferberg hypothesizes a covert global infrastructure behind the events of 9/11 - and lifts the veil to catch the lingering scent of BCCI.

With the above-stated hypothesis in mind, one should perhaps cast a discerning eye toward those manning the counter-terror posts in Los Angeles today - for an important element in John O'Neill's New York circle has recently relocated to the West Coast.  In particular, O'Neill's friend, John Miller, has left a lucrative job at ABC News in order to work under William Bratton in the Los Angeles counter-terror office.  Miller, some might recall, was one of the very few Americans to conduct a face-to-face interview with bin Laden before September 11.  Before he had come aboard as a correspondent for ABC News, Miller had worked under Bratton in the NYPD.  Bratton, through his acquaintance with O'Neill's friend Jerry Hauer, has also had intimate business dealings with Kroll Associates, the World Trade Center security firm which hired O'Neill.  

It is, in fact, security firms like Kroll Associates, Burns Security, Teg, Wackenhut, and their ilk that should garner our interest at least as much as the web of conservative think tanks that have welded in place the parameters of "mainstream" debate - for it is through these very firms that the former stars of law enforcement have gone through the revolving door into the lucrative private sector.  It is a world where former military types mix with various operatives of the CIA, FBI, DEA and any number of alphabet soup agencies charged with the security of our nation.  

Moreover, the top people in the private security sector have the authority, prestige, and, most importantly, the skill to carry out - successfully and below the radar - the kinds of domestic operations that have been pegged  as the province of shaggy al-Qaida operatives.  Who, after all, could best ensure that 19 terrorists would be able to make it aboard four separate flights without any real danger of detection?  And who, after all, would be best placed to ensure a complete and successful implosion of not just the two Twin Towers, but the neighboring building - 7 World Trade Center - which housed a bio-warfare "command and control bunker" under the direction of Jerry Hauer?  

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP311A.html

[SpiralHawk]

1. kick

on account of this is meat and potatoes. Read it and weep.

[Octafish]

2. A last kick for those interested in Treason.

From the article:

The real scandal of BCCI, however, was not simply that it was a worldwide Ponzi scheme defrauding its investors of billions - for that is the "limited", official version - but that, in the context of 9/11, it provides a glaring spotlight on the very networks most intimately connected with the corruption.  BCCI, the brainchild of British intelligence, was the ideal tool by which a supra-national network of compromised politicians and corrupt officials would "play ball", fattened up with a stream of capital furnished through the fruits of drugs, arms, and terrorism.  

[blm]

11. Many here won't acknowledge the import of BCCI, Octafish.

To admit its importance to 9-11 is to admit that Kerry is the one to best make the case against Bush and clean up the mess it caused in the world.

They won't admit it.

[Octafish]

14. That's my greatest dissapointment on DU.

I don't mind people supporting other candidates. Heck, I encourage people to support whomever they want — and, despite my own partisanship, I've stayed friends here in Motown with lots of people who support candidates other than JK.

What I don't understand is the idea that DUers — because of partisanship — would ignore this thread and what it means for our country and their future.

John Kerry represents our best chance to avoid four more years of Bush. Kerry knows the BFEE and what must be done to stop them. He also knows what to do to fix the problems they have created at home and around the world since November 22, 1963.

[gandalf]

21. What's the connection between Kerry and BCCI?

Not being an American citizen, I have missed the connection. Could you explain it?

As for the interests of DUers: I have the impression that the investigation of 9/11 is not so much the focus of mainstream DU. More or less, always the same few people discuss in the 9/11 forum.

[blm]

24. Kerry investigated BCCI and IranContra

and also exposed the CIA drugrunning.

This is why BushInc. will do anything to assure that they not have to run against Kerry. They have been throwing everything at him for decades.

[gandalf]

26. Thanks. n/t

[BuckeFushe]

3. I cached the page, this guy should be looking over his shoulder

because someone is not happy that he's put so many of the puzzle pieces together. Maybe this is why Kean and the committie want Shrub to comply, they read this article. Mind-numbing detail.

[Octafish]

5. It's just the beginning...

...of the BFEE accounting. This is why ideas like "You can't handle the truth" are ingrained on the national psyche. Should the United States find itself headed by an honest President and its laws enforced by an honest Attorney General, the criminality of the Bush cabal will be exposed for what it is — Treason. Whether the national will is there to fight for its exposure is another thing, as is whether there are enough prison beds to house the traitors before trial.

[frank frankly]

4. angry angry and needing justice

this shall not pass!

words fail me today.

[Octafish]

6. It's a must-read. Here's more...

From the ~80-page Big Story:

There's Something About Omar:

Truth, Lies, and The Legend of 9/11

by Chaim Kupferberg

www.globalresearch.ca , 21  October 2003

It was almost an afterthought.  On March 1, 2003, the War On Terror had finally served up the alleged paymaster of 9/11 - a shadowy Saudi by the name of Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi.  Yet his arrest just happened to coincide with the capture of a much bigger fish - the reported 9/11 mastermind himself, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed - thus relegating Mustafa Ahmed to the footnote section of the "official" 9/11 Legend.  But there was another, more explosive side to this tale. Only seventeen months before, a former London schoolboy by the name of Omar Saeed Sheikh was first exposed as the 9/11 paymaster, acting under the authority of a Pakistani general who was in Washington D.C. on September 11, meeting with the very two lawmakers who would subsequently preside over the "official" 9/11 congressional inquiry.  Omar Saeed, as reported back then by CNN, was acting under the alias of...Mustafa Ahmed.  So where is Omar now?  Sitting in a Pakistani prison, awaiting his execution for the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl - while another man fills the shoes of his pseudonym.  What follows is a reconstruction of one of the most extensive disinformation campaigns in history, and the chronicle of a legend that may now shine a devastating spotlight on some of the cliques behind 9/11 and the FBI Director covering the paper trails.

"The hijackers left no paper trail," proclaimed FBI Director Robert Mueller on April 30, 2002.  "In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper...that mentioned any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot."  Yet in the weeks immediately following September 11, Mueller and his FBI had left the public  with a very different impression - an impression that conjured the vision of truckloads of paper documents pointing any number of ways to the culpability of Osama Bin Laden for the events of 9/11.  For one, there was the infamous handwritten "checklist" found not only in hijacker Mohamed Atta's abandoned luggage, but also in the car rented in hijacker al-Hazmi's name, discovered at Dulles Airport, and which included lofty Arabic prayers alongside last minute reminders to bring "knives, your will, IDs, your passport, all your papers."  But more importantly, the treasure trove in al-Hazmi's glove compartment yielded a paper trail that led all the way to London - and to the arrest of a potentially major suspect. 

On September 30, 2001, as reported in the Telegraph by David Bamber, British prosecutor Arvinda Sambir announced that authorities had arrested Lotfi Raissi, whose name was found in al-Hazmi's rental.  A further search of Raissi's apartment had yielded up a video clip starring Raissi with alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour - all in all, another circumstantial slam-dunk in the snowballing case against al-Qaida.  Or was it?  For by April of 2002 - when Mueller made his "paper trail" declaration - Raissi would go free for want of evidence.  

As we will shortly see, Raissi was being set up to play his part in a prearranged drama, one in which a definitive money trail leading to al-Qaida would be announced just in time for the October 7, 2001 launch into Afghanistan.  Yet a brief, almost innocuous, article in the October 9 Times of India would lay havoc to this plan, necessitating a massive cover-up and a search for an alternative smoking gun that would unveil itself before a skeptical world audience on December 13, 2001 as the Official Bin Laden Videotape Confession.

CONTINUED...

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310A.html

[seemslikeadream]

7. So what happened to bob's thread?

Do threads just disappear now? Good stuff Octafish, I'm still reading.

Propaganda is most effectively countered by truth. In the aftermath of September 11, there is in fact, a relatively compact group of individuals who have both the means and the personal interest to "mainstream" the circumstantial evidence provided herein- namely the families of the victims of September 11. At present, many of these families are cynically being used in order to present a complacency theory behind 9/11, thereby unwittingly lending their imprimatur to the establishment of an over-arching police state apparatus - the manifestion of the "homeland security" blueprint which had actually preceded September 11 by several months. Yet it is my contention that if these families were made aware of the full extent of the various anomalies, coincidences, and well-timed set-ups - and that the interaction of these elements may only be explained within a complicity paradigm - then they may use their moral suasion and political capital in order to tear the veil off the herd mentality which keeps the truth well-hidden from the masses.

And we will get to that truth once we fully expose the garland of lies which decorates the Offical Legend of 9/11.

Chaim Kupferberg

[Octafish]

9. Dunno, SLaD. I checked several other forums...

... thinking it would make an excellent additon to 9-11/Terrorism or Articles/Editorials, but it's not there. You, Bob, blm, Must_Be_Free, RichM, 9215, MinstrelBoy, Eloriel, no_labels, Solomon and a whole bunch of other DUers could've written it.

[Octafish]

15. Need to name emad aisats ana and a whole bunch more...

For proof of how journalists write the first draft of history:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=610051

And there are a LOT of historians on DU, such as Stephanie, SkipFox, RainDog, SpiralHawk, sangha, and a whole bunch more, including a bunch of those here...

"George W Bush connection to the BCCI scandal ?"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=157573

[bobthedrummer]

13. I asked the Mods to delete it

as it was a dupe

[Minstrel Boy]

8. A kick for Global Research

great site and terrific magazine. (Canadian too, eh!)

[gandalf]

20. Only they should work on the structure and layout of their site

it looks somewhat confusing.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

10. If Kerry starts talking about 911

hell, maybe even *I'll* vote for him.

[Octafish]

12. If Kerry DOESN'T, I WON'T.

And that's the truth. The BCCI-9/11 connection is real. Furthermore, it is a matter of national security and a matter of upholding the US Constitution and keeping this a nation of laws, where all men and women are equal under the law, including the traitors in the White House.

WhoCountsTheVotes: I got to see Kerry up close at a function in Detroit and looked him straight in the eye. The guy is all there. He's the one Democrat in this thing who has a track record of going after the BFEE.

Almost alone in the government in going after these traitors, Kerry knows BCCI forwards and backwards. It's logical to assume he can connect the players to the present PNAC crowd. He has mentioned BCCI in a couple of the candidate forums, but he is yet to hang this stuff on them.

Why he hasn't is a mystery to me. If he's waiting until the general election, he may not be the guy to bring it up.

To be fair to Sen. Kerry. This article did not bring him up. So, I will:

(Mods: Government report -- Public Domain.)

BCCI, THE CIA AND FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE

Introduction

The relationships involving BCCI, the CIA, and members of the United States and foreign intelligence communities have been among the most perplexing aspects of understanding the rise and fall of BCCI. The CIA's and BCCI's mutual environments of secrecy have been one obvious obstacle. For many months, the CIA resisted providing information to the Subcommittee about its involvement with and knowledge of BCCI. Moreover, key players who might explain these relationships are unavailable. Some, including former CIA director William Casey, and BCCI customers and Iranian arms dealers Ben Banerjee and Cyrus Hashemi, are dead. Others, including most of BCCI's key insiders, remain held incommunicado in Abu Dhabi. While promising in public hearings to provide full cooperation to the Subcommittee, to date the Abu Dhabi government has refused to make any BCCI officers available for interview by the Subcommittee. Former BCCI chairman Agha Hasan Abedi remains severely incapacitated due to a heart attack. Finally, some persons in a position to know portions of the truth have denied having any memory of events in which they participated and of documents which they reviewed.

A baseline for assessing the BCCI-CIA story is the CIA's official record of its use of BCCI and its targeting of the bank, as set forth in several hundred CIA records created from 1982 through 1992. That record was, by and large, accurately represented by CIA acting director Richard Kerr in public testimony on October 25, 1991, supplemented by more detailed, classified testimony on October 31, 1991. Unfortunately, that record also contains ostensible gaps in knowledge on the part of the CIA about the activities of key contacts in the Middle East for U.S. intelligence -- including BCCI shareholders Kamal Adham and Abdul Raouf Khalil, and BCCI customer and Iran/Contra arms merchant Adnan Khashoggi -- which strain belief.

Outside the documentary record provided to the Subcommittee by the CIA, there is additional material, consisting of BCCI documents, testimony from BCCI officials and insiders, and extrinsic, circumstantial and historic information describing other substantial contacts between BCCI and the intelligence community. These include contacts between BCCI and:

** former U.S. intelligence officials, including a former head of the CIA;

** former and current foreign intelligence officials; and

** individuals engaged in covert operations on behalf of the United States government, including in the Iran/Contra affair.

In addition, the Subcommittee has received allegations of meetings between former CIA director William Casey and BCCI's head, Agha Hasan Abedi.

CIA officials have told the Subcommittee that the CIA as an institution has rules requiring the creation of written records on every activity engaged in by the Agency, and on all significant information reported to the Agency. In the summer of 1991, the CIA engaged in what its officials described as a "dumb" or "brute force" review of its documents, essentially reviewing all possible files for information on BCCI, rather than relying on knowledgeable individuals to select such information. The review located a substantial amount of material generated by the CIA throughout the 1980's, which was produced in July and August, 1991 for CIA internal reviews, in September and October for the Congressional intelligence oversight committees, and beginning in March, 1992, to the Subcommittee.

Unfortunately, there remains a wide disparity between the CIA's official account of critical relationships between BCCI and persons associated with the CIA, and the information available from other sources, including BCCI's own records. One is left with the choice of accepting the official record, which requires an assessment that the other contacts between BCCI and U.S. intelligence figures and operations are coincidental, or of assuming that the full story of BCCI's relationship to the United States has been intentionally veiled by critical players on both sides of that relationship.

CONTINUED... at the Federation of American Scientists archives:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm

[JackRiddler]

28. So why the hell doesn't he?

Kerry is THE man to do it - if he does it. He has the goods and he's waited for going on 20 years. When he does it, when he exposes BFEE, I am his boy. Until then, sorry: fuck him.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

I agree, and saying "I investigated Bush 15 years ago" doesn't cut it

If he has the goods, let him give the specifics IN PUBLIC. Bragging about his career doesn't do anything for us. I think he has the goods, why he won't do something about it, well, I have my theories.

[slaveplanet]

16. For a further angle

some non BCCI stuff that relates to this hypothesis.

Some of the Middle Eastern business connections of Marvin Bush—the President’s younger brother. Marvin Bush’s position on the boards of Stratesec and HCC. The former held electronic security contracts for the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines. The latter was a major insurance underwriter for the World Trade Center. (Dulles International Airport was the departure point for the plane that attacked the Pentagon and one of the aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center was a United Airlines flight.) The parent corporation of Stratesec was the Kuwaiti-American Corporation, a firm that linked the Bush family with members of the Kuwaiti family. One of the central questions arisng in connection with the Bush family relationship with this nexus concerns the possible use of these connections for intelligence gathering or operational manipulation in connection with the attacks. Could this relationship have had any bearing on the hiring of former FBI agent John O’Neill—who was killed at Ground Zero on his first day as director of the WTC? O’Neill’s investigation had been actively frustrated by corporate interests linked to Saudi Arabia; his team barred from continuing their work in Yemen by Bush’s State Department. He (O’Neill) allegedly had a briefcase stolen from his possession in the summer of 2001 containing funding and personnel assignments for all counterintelligence and counter-terror operations in the New York area. As will be seen below, Wirt D. Walker III was the managing director of the Kuwaiti-American Corporation and deeply involved with Stratesec. Walker is also a member of the Bush family. Interestingly (and perhaps significantly), Walker is also chairman and CEO of Aviation General, a Tulsa (Oklahoma) aviation firm. Among Aviation General’s links are business connections in the Middle East (Egypt in particular) and flight schools in Florida. Again, the question arises as to possible connections with the events of 9/11.
Marvin Bush’s failure to properly list his directorships of HCC and Stratesec on SEC proxy filings; presidential uncle Jonathan Bush’s links to Saudi bank accounts tangential to the milieu of 9/11; Jonathan Bush crony William Donaldson’s accession to being head of the SEC.

Might the Marvin Bush connection to Stratesec and HCC have had any bearing on the apparent short-selling of airline and insurance stocks in the run-up to the investigation? Obviously, this is “Food For Thought and Grounds for Further Research”—it is indeterminate, at this point in time. In light of the fact that both Jeb Bush and his brother Neill helped their father’s efforts in connection with covert support for the Contras this would not re altogether surprising. “George W. Bush’s brother was on the board of directors of a company providing electronic security for the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines, according to public records. The company was backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for years to the Bush family. The security firm, formerly named Securacom and now named Stratesec, is in Sterling, VA. Its CEO, Barry McDaniel, said the company had a ‘completion contract’ to handle some of the security at the World Trade Center ‘up to the day the buildings fell down.’ It also had a three-year contract to maintain electronic security systems at Dulles Airport, according to a Dulles contracting official. Securacom/Stratesec also handled some security for United Airlines in the 1990’s, according to McDaniel, but it had been completed before his arriving on the board in 1998.” (“Bush-linked Company Handled Security for the WTC, Dulles and United” by Margie Burns; Prince George’s Journal ; 2/4/2003; p. 1; accessed at Common Dreams News Center’s web site: www.commondreams.org/views03/0204-06.htm .)

  Noting Stratesec’s contracts for security at the Los Alamos laboratory, it is also interesting to speculate on the Wen Ho Lee case and a major security scandal at the lab that helped to destabilize the Clinton administration and discredit the Energy Department under Bill Richardson. “McDaniel confirmed that the company has security contracts with the Department of Defense, including the U.S. Army, but did not detail the nature of the work, citing security concerns. It has an ongoing line with the General Services Administration—meaning that its bids for contracts are noncompetitive—and also did security work for the Los Alamos laboratory before 1998.”

“Marvin P. Bush, the president’s youngest brother, was a director at Stratesec from 1993 to fiscal year 2000. But the White House has not publicly disclosed Bush connections in any of its responses to 9/11, nor has it mentioned that another Bush-linked business had done security work for the facilities attacked. Marvin Bush has not responded to telephone calls and e-mails for comment. KuwAm has been linked to the Bush family financially since the Gulf War. One of its principals and a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, Mishal Yousef Saud al Sabah, served on the board of Stratesec.”

  As will be seen below, Wirt D. Walker III was the managing director of the Kuwaiti-American Corporation and deeply involved with Stratesec. Walker is also a member of the Bush family. “The managing director at KuwAm, Wirt D. Walker III, was also a principal at Stratesec and Walker, Marvin Bush and al Sabah are listed in SEC filings as significant shareholders in both companies during that period. Marvin Bush’s last year on the board at Stratesec coincided with his first year on the board of HCC Insurance, formerly Houston Casualty Co., one of the insurance carriers for the WTC. He left the HCC board in November 2002."

Interestingly (and perhaps significantly), Walker is also chairman and CEO of Aviation General, a Tulsa (Oklahoma) aviation firm. Among Aviation General’s links are business connections in the Middle East (Egypt in particular) and flight schools in Florida. Again, the question arises as to possible connections with the events of 9/11.“But none of these connections has been looked at during the extensive investigations since 9/11. McDaniel says principals and other personnel at Stratesec have not been questioned or debriefed by the FBI or other investigators. Walker declined to answer the same question regarding KuwAm, referring to the public record. Walker is also chairman and CEO of Aviation General, a Tulsa, Okla.-based aviation company with two subsidiaries. SEC filings also show al Sabah as a principal and shareholder in Aviation General, which was recently delisted by the Nasdaq. Stratesec was delisted by the American Stock Exchange in October 2002.”

[Octafish]

17. Great info, slaveplanet! ¡Muchisimas gracias!

It's odd those Bushes keep popping up whenever there's a chance for money to be made off of war, disaster and death.

Here's a nice backgrounder on Marvin and the Bush Organized Crime Family from a GOOGLE cache. Hmmm. ChoicePoint. Where have I heard that name before? Purged Florida voter rolls?

It’s a shell game

In recent years the problem has been excerbated by the ‘gutting’ of the government through wholesale deregulation and privatisation, which has enabled those with the ‘right’ connections to gain access to vast gobs of money in the form of subsidies and lucrative contracts (eg Marvin Bush’s Ignite corporation, or the Kuwaiti Harken Oil deals, Choicepoint’s Homeland Security contracts and the software company it uses, Sybase Inc which has Bush family connections). The effect has been to turn various and sundry government agencies into hollow shells. Companies can then effectively write themselves blank cheques or simply ignore the toothless edicts issued by the regulators (eg the SEC over the Silverado S&L scandal).

WAY CONTINUED...

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:oQUPBK9-MlQJ:www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-015.html+marvin+bush+%2B+bcci&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

EDIT: Found active link:

http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-015.html

[Karenina]

18. Kick!

:kick:

[Tansy_Gold]

19. kicking for selfish reasons

I have limited computer time right now and I want to come back and download ALL this stuff.

[blm]

31. kick for selfish reasons

cuz I want everyone to know the truth about BushInc.

[seemslikeadream]

22. A little bit about Tom Kean

He remains extremely popular today, though few of his former constituents remember anything he did while in office.

This fact, as much as anything else, is what led President Bush to name Kean the head of the panel investigating September 11. Henry Kissinger, Bush's original choice, was far too high profile. Though Kissinger has not held an offical government position since the end of the Ford administration, he remains the very essence of 21st century celebrity, with a face, voice and checkered past that is burned into the memory of nearly every American.

On the surface, Kean is everything Kissinger is not. Surface is all that really matters, of course, since Bush shows little interest in going any deeper than that in his 9/11 probe. The administration waited well over a year to begin convening its investigation, and it has placed prohibitive and arcane strictures on the commission, such as requiring that any criminal subpoenas must be approved by six of the ten members. And when the time came to appoint a committee chair, a want war criminal was Bush's first choise: a man who will no longer leave the country for fear of being whisked off to the Mague, Milosevic-style.

Kean is a director at Aramark, a food-services corporation with business interests in Saudia Arabia. Kean is also a director at Amerada Hess, a petroleum company whose green and white gas stations are a familar sight in the New York metropolitian area. The Hess family is business partners in Hess-Delta, an oil exploration and development joint venture incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Little is known about Delta-Hess's interests besides its investments in the Caspian Sea region, Azerbaijan, and other former Soviet republics. What is known is that Hess's partner in this joint venture is Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia, a company with some extremely suspicious executives.

Two of Kean's Hess-Delta business partners-Mohammed Hussein al Amoudi and Khalid bin Mahfouz-have been under investigation as far back as 1999 for suspected ties to Al Qaeda (Boston Herald,12/11/2001). Both men have numerous overlapping oil interest in Saudi Arabia, one of which is Delta. Both men are accused by name in a $1 trillion lawsuit, filed on behalf of families of the victims of September 11, as alleged financiers of Al Qaeda.

Khalid bin Mahfouz, head of Saudi Arabia's powerful National Commercial BAnk, has led a storied and very public career in fraud. He was implicated in the BCCI banking scandal during the early 1990s when the Bank of Commerce and Creditr International robbed depositors of $10 billion. He eventually paid a $225 million settlement to escape prosecution. In the mid-1990s, he was caught in a citizenship-for sale scandel, in which he courted investors for business ventures in Ireland, in exchange for Irish passports and huge tax exemptions.

Shortly thereafter, it appears that bin Mahfouz made the jump from white-collar criminal into terrorist sugar daddy. In 1999, he was reportedly placed under house arrest by the Saudi government on suspicion of supporting terrorism. An audit of his National Commerce Bank discovered that $2 billion dollars had gone missing.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/wtc/analysis/2003/0117boss.htm

[gandalf]

23. Conclusion?

Probably you wrote this because you think that his personal ties will impact his behavior while chairing the commission. Do you think that not much will be the result of the commission's work?

Given this background of Kean, I am a little bit surprised that the commission really seems to try to investigate and even might subpoena the FAA. But perhaps even that is a show to satisfy the more sceptical people.

[burythehatchet]

25. Its all an act

[JackRiddler]

29. kick

you can always hope otherwise... anyone can suddenly go back on their conditioning, though I wouldn't bet.

[Octafish]

27. Kean's extracurricular activities featured in CounterPunch

Kean Insight

Bush, bin Laden, BCCI and the 9/11 Commission

by CHRIS FLOYD

EXCERPT (from some dynamite stuff)...

One of Delta's biggest backers is the aforesaid Mahfouz, a Saudi wheeler-dealer who has bankrolled some of most dubious players on the world scene: Abu Nidal, Manuel Noreiga, Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush. Mahfouz was also a front for the bin Laden family, funneling their vast wealth through American cut-outs in a bid to gain power and influence in the United States.

One of those cut-outs was Mahfouz factotum James Bath, a partner in George W.'s early oil venture, Arbusto. Bath has admitted serving as a pass-through for secret Saudi money. Years later, when Bush's maladroit business skills were about to sink another of his companies, Harken Energy, the firm was saved by a $25 million investment from a Swiss bank--a subsidiary of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BBCI), partly owned by the beneficent Mahfouz.

What was BCCI? Only "one of the largest criminal enterprises in history," according to the U.S. Senate. What did BCCI do? "It engaged in pandemic bribery of officials in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas," says journalist Christopher Bryon, who first exposed the operation. "It laundered money on a global scale, intimidated witnesses and law officers, engaged in extortion and blackmail. It supplied the financing for illegal arms trafficking and global terrorism. It financed and facilitated income tax evasion, smuggling and prostitution." Sort of an early version of the Bush Regime, then.

BCCI's bipartisan corruption first permeated the Carter Administration, then came to full flower in the Reagan-Bush years. The CIA uncovered the bank's criminal activities in 1981--no great feat, considering how many of its own foreign "associates" were involved, including the head of Saudi intelligence, Kamal Adham, brother-in-law of King Faisal. But instead of stopping the drug-runners and terrorists, the agency decided to join them, using BCCI's secret channels to finance "black ops" all over the world.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd01312003.html

[DUreader]

30. kick