From Kerry's BCCI report:
For example, BCCI provided $10 million in grants in the late 1980's to finance an officially "private" science and technology institute named for Pakistani President Ishaq Khan, whose director, A. Qadir Khan, has been closely associated with Pakistan's efforts to build a nuclear bomb. The institute is believed by some experts to be the headquarters for Pakistan's efforts to build an Islamic bomb. In the same period, other BCCI officials were assisting Pakistanis in purchasing nuclear technologies paid for by Pakistani-front companies through BCCI-Canada.(94)
Paskistan's nuclear weapons:
Snip...
1990--Pakistani biography of top nuclear scientist (Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan and the Islamic Bomb), claims US showed `model' of Pakistani bomb to visiting Pakistani diplomat as part of unsuccessful nonproliferation effort.
1990--Defense & Foreign Affairs Weekly reports `US officials now believe that Pakistan has quite sufficient computing power in country to run all the modeling necessary to adequately verify the viability of the country's nuclear weapons technology.'
1990--Dr. A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan's bomb, receives `Man of the Nation Award.'
1990--Washington Post documents 3 recent efforts by Pakistan to acquire special arc-melting furnaces with nuclear and missile applications.
October 1990 -- President Bush announced that he could no longer provide Congress with Pressler Amendment certification that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear weapon. Economic and military aid was duly terminated, though the Bush administration continued to permit a limited number of commercial military sales to Pakistan. Pakistan handled the cutoff with little public rancor and committed itself to freezing the nuclear program in an attempt to placate the United States.
1991
1991 -- Pakistan proposed to India commencement of a multilateral conference on the nuclear proliferation in south Asia
1991--Wall Street Journal says Pakistan is buying nuclear-capable M-11 missile from China.
1991--Sen. Moynihan says in television interview, `Last July <1990> the Pakistanis machined 6 nuclear Pakistan warheads. And they've still got them.'
1991--Time quotes businessman, `BCCI is functioning as the owners' representative for Pakistan's nuclear-bomb project.'
1991--India and Pakistan enter agreement prohibiting attacks on each other's nuclear installations.
July 1991 - Reliable reports from Islamabad confirm that Pakistan had frozen production of HEU and halted the manufacturing of nuclear weapons components.
1992
1992--Pakistani foreign secretary publicly discusses Pakistan's possession of `cores' of nuclear devices.
Late 1992 -- The US Government determines that China had transferred items controlled under the international Missile Technology Control Regime to Pakistan.
December 1992 -- The US Government asked Pakistan to return eight US Navy frigates and a supply ship that had been leased to the Pakistan Navy, which accounted for more than half of Pakistan's major surface combatants.
01 December 1992 -- Senator Larry Pressler reportedly stated in a press interview that he had been told by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that Pakistan had assembled seven weapons and could air drop one in a matter of hours
.
1993
1993 -- Pakistan proposed to India creation of a missile-free zone in south Asia
25 August 1993 -- The United States imposed "Category Two" sanctions against certain Chinese and Pakistani entities that were involved in an M-11 missile-related transfer, which is prohibited under US law.
Late 1993 -- The Clinton Administration, citing what it considered to be asymmetrical treatment accorded to Pakistan and India over their respective nuclear programs, proposed revising the Pressler Amendment and certain "country-specific" sections of the Foreign Assistance Act. The administration argued that by the time nuclear nonproliferation provisions had been added to the Foreign Assistance Act, India had already acquired the capability to build nuclear weapons and thus Pakistan had borne the brunt of most United States sanctions.
1994
Early 1994 -- The Clinton Administration withdrew its proposal to revise the amendment because of strong criticism from a number of influential members of Congress, including Senator Pressler himself.
April 1994 - Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott visits Islamabad to propose a one-time sale of F-16 fighter aircraft to Pakistan. Delivery of the planes would be contingent on specific commitments from Pakistan regarding its nuclear program, including a verifiable cap on the production of fissile materials. Talbott states that there is "broad agreement" between the United States and Pakistan on the goal of "first capping, then reducing, and eventually eliminating weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles from South Asia."
1995
April 1995 -- Prime Minister Bhutto visits Washington.
September 1995 -- The Clinton Administration proposes revisions to the Pressler Amendment, citing the Amendment's roadblocks to cooperation with Pakistan's Government in areas such as combatting terrorism and furthering US commercial interests in Pakistan. Under the Brown Amendment, the US would not deliver the controversial F-16 aircraft or resume an official military supply relationship with Pakistan, but the President decided to sell the F-16 aircraft to other countries and return the proceeds to Pakistan.
1996
01 January 1996 -- India and Pakistan exchange lists of atomic installations which each side has pledged not to attack under an over seven-year-old confidence-building agreement.
January 1996 -- The Brown amendment was signed into law to relieve some of the pressures created by the Pressler sanctions, which had crippled parts of the Pakistani military, particularly the Air Force. The Brown amendment allowed nearly $370 million of previously embargoed arms and spare parts to be delivered to Pakistan. It also permited limited military assistance for the purposes of counter-terrorism, peacekeeping, anti-narcotics efforts, and some military training.
March 1996 -- Pakistan commissioned an unsafeguarded nuclear reactor, expected to become fully operational in the late 1990s, that will provide it with a capability to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
Late 1996 -- Pakistan's main nuclear weapons laboratory, the A.Q. Khan Laboratory in Kahuta, purchased 5,000 ring magnets from China. The ring magnets would allow Pakistan to effectively double its capacity to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons production.
03 October 1996 -- Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto called for the convening of a South Asia security conference that would deal with, among other things, Kashmir and the nuclear arms issue.
1997
04 July 1997 -- Pakistan confirms test-firing of new indigenous Hatf missile.
06 September 1997 -- Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif claims Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons, saying that: "Pakistan's nuclear capability is now an established fact. Whatever we have, we have a right to keep it...."
1998
28 May 1998: Pakistan detonates five nuclear devices. Pakistan claimed that the five nuclear tests measured up to 5.0 on the Richter scale, with a reported yield of up to 40 KT (equivalent TNT).
30 May 1998 Pakistan tested one more nuclear warheads, with a yield of 12 kilotons, bringing the total number of claimed tests to six.
more...Bush bragged about bringing A.Q. Khan to justice during the
debates:
BUSH: Libya has disarmed. The A.Q. Khan network has been brought to justice.
And, as well, we're pursuing a strategy of freedom around the world, because I understand free nations will reject terror. Free nations will answer the hopes and aspirations of their people. Free nations will help us achieve the peace we all want.
When in fact Musharraf pardoned Khan:
THE DEAL
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2004-03-08
Posted 2004-03-01
On February 4th, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is revered in Pakistan as the father of the country’s nuclear bomb, appeared on a state-run television network in Islamabad and confessed that he had been solely responsible for operating an international black market in nuclear-weapons materials. His confession was accepted by a stony-faced Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s President, who is a former Army general, and who dressed for the occasion in commando fatigues. The next day, on television again, Musharraf, who claimed to be shocked by Khan’s misdeeds, nonetheless pardoned him, citing his service to Pakistan (he called Khan “my hero”). Musharraf told the Times that he had received a specific accounting of Khan’s activities in Iran, North Korea, and Malaysia from the United States only last October. “If they knew earlier, they should have told us,” he said. “Maybe a lot of things would not have happened.”
more...Rice, ready with a lie:
Rice said Bush did not misspeak when he said that the network of Pakistan's A.Q. Khan -- the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program who was caught selling secrets on the global black market -- had been "brought to justice."
Khan is living in a villa and was pardoned this year by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. None of Khan's co-conspirators have been brought to trial.
Asked how that could be interpreted to mean Khan has been brought to justice, Rice said, "He has been brought to justice because he's out of business."
Rice defended Bush's contention during the debate that 100,000 trained Iraqi security forces are on duty, a figure that has been disputed by some Democrats in Congress.
more...Published on Sunday, January 11, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times
Four generations of the dynasty have chased profits through cozy ties with Mideast leaders, spinning webs of conflicts of interestby Kevin Phillips
WASHINGTON - Dynasties in American politics are dangerous. We saw it with the Kennedys, we may well see it with the Clintons and we're certainly seeing it with the Bushes. Between now and the November election, it's crucial that Americans come to understand how four generations of the current president's family have embroiled the United States in the Middle East through CIA connections, arms shipments, rogue banks, inherited war policies and personal financial links.
Snip...
Eldest son George W. Bush made his first Middle East connection in the late 1970s with James Bath, a Texas businessmen who served as the North American representative for two rich Saudis (and Osama bin Laden relatives) - billionaire Salem bin Laden and banker and BCCI insider Khalid bin Mahfouz. Bath put $50,000 into Bush's 1979 Arbusto oil partnership, probably using Bin Laden-Bin Mahfouz funds.
In the late 1980s, after several failed oil ventures, the future 43rd president let the ailing oil business in which he was a major stockholder and chairman be bought out by another foreign-influenced operation, Harken Energy. The Wall Street Journal commented in 1991, "The mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding Harken Energy may prove nothing more than how ubiquitous the rogue bank's ties were. But the number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken - all since George W. Bush came on board - likewise raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son."
Other hints of cronyism came in 1990 when inexperienced Harken got a major contract to drill in the Persian Gulf for the government of Bahrain. Time magazine reporters Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, in their book "The Outlaw Bank," concluded "that Mahfouz, or other BCCI players, must have had a hand in steering the oil-drilling contract to the president's son." The web entangling the Bush presidencies was already being spun.
Second son Jeb Bush, now the governor of Florida, spent most of his time in the early and mid-1980s hobnobbing with ex-Cuban intelligence officers, Nicaraguan Contras and others plugged into the lucrative orbit of Miami-area front groups for the CIA. But he too had some Middle East connections. Two of his business associates, Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya and Camilo Padreda, both indicted for financial dealings, were longtime associates of Middle Eastern arms dealer, BCCI investor and Iran-Contra figure Adnan Khashoggi. Prosecutors dropped the case against the two, and a federal judge ordered Padreda's name expunged from the record. But a few years later Padreda, a former Miami-Dade County GOP treasurer, was convicted of fraud over a federally insured housing development that Jeb Bush had helped to facilitate. Jeb Bush also socialized with Adbur Sakhia, the Miami BCCI branch chief and later its top U.S. official.
Neil Bush, most famous for the scandal surrounding the corrupt practices of Colorado's Silverado Savings & Loan, where he served as a director during the 1980s, also picked plums from Persian Gulf orchards. In 1993, after his father left the White House, Neil went to Kuwait with his parents, brother Marvin and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III. When his father left, Neil stayed to lobby for business contracts, and after returning home evolved a set of lucrative relationships with Syrian-American businessman Jamal Daniel. One of their ventures, Ignite!, an educational software company, also included representatives of at least three ruling Persian Gulf families.
more...By TAREK AL-ISSAWI
Updated: 3:55 p.m. ET Nov 2, 2004
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The president of the United Arab Emirates, who oversaw the transformation of a cluster of tiny desert Persian Gulf sheikdoms into a leading oil and business hub with skyscrapers and sprawling shopping malls, has died. He was 86.
Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, one of the richest rulers in the world according to Forbes magazine, forged close ties with the United States and the West during his rule of the country, which is the world's ninth largest oil producer.
Snip...
He became the ruler of Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate, in 1966, four years after the emirate first began exporting the oil it had just discovered off its shores. At the time, Abu Dhabi city was a collection of huts clustered around the ruler's fort.
Snip...
Following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the Emirates were among several Arab countries pressured by Washington to reform their financial sectors, which had been linked to the funneling of funds to international terrorist groups like al-Qaida.
The Al Nahran family held more than three-quarters of the stock in the bank BCCI, which in the early 1990s was at the center of one of the world's biggest bank frauds. Severe losses in securities trading and phony loans and insider stock trades led to the collapse of the bank, which had offices in 69 nations. Twelve top executives from the bank were convicted and forced to pay some $9.13 billion in restitution to the Abu Dhabi government.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6390467">more...
Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2003-03-17
Posted 2003-03-10
At the peak of his deal-making activities, in the nineteen-seventies, the Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi brokered billions of dollars in arms and aircraft sales for the Saudi royal family, earning hundreds of millions in commissions and fees. Though never convicted of wrongdoing, he was repeatedly involved in disputes with federal prosecutors and with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in recent years he has been in litigation in Thailand and Los Angeles, among other places, concerning allegations of stock manipulation and fraud. During the Reagan Administration, Khashoggi was one of the middlemen between Oliver North, in the White House, and the mullahs in Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi subsequently claimed that he lost ten million dollars that he had put up to obtain embargoed weapons for Iran which were to be bartered (with Presidential approval) for American hostages. The scandals of those times seemed to feed off each other: a congressional investigation revealed that Khashoggi had borrowed much of the money for the weapons from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I.), whose collapse, in 1991, defrauded thousands of depositors and led to years of inquiry and litigation.
Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.
The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.
Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.
The letter mentioned the firm’s government connections prominently: “Three of Trireme’s Management Group members currently advise the U.S. Secretary of Defense by serving on the U.S. Defense Policy Board, and one of Trireme’s principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that Board.” The two other policy-board members associated with Trireme are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State (who is, in fact, only a member of Trireme’s advisory group and is not involved in its management), and Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle’s who handles matters in Trireme’s New York office. The letter said that forty-five million dollars had already been raised, including twenty million dollars from Boeing; the purpose, clearly, was to attract more investors, such as Khashoggi and Zuhair.
Perle served as a foreign-policy adviser in George W. Bush’s Presidential campaign—he had been an Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan—but he chose not to take a senior position in the Administration. In mid-2001, however, he accepted an offer from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to chair the Defense Policy Board, a then obscure group that had been created by the Defense Department in 1985. Its members (there are around thirty of them) may be outside the government, but they have access to classified information and to senior policymakers, and give advice not only on strategic policy but also on such matters as weapons procurement. Most of the board’s proceedings are confidential.
more... POSTED: 7:37 am CST February 24, 2006
HOUSTON -- A sheik from the United Arab Emirates contributed at least $1 million to the Bush Library Foundation, which established the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University in College Station.
Snip...
A political uproar has ensued over the deal, which the White House approved without congressional oversight. Dubai Ports World offered Thursday night to delay part of the takeover to give the Bush administration more time to convince lawmakers the deal poses no security risks.
The donations were made in the early 1990s for the library, which houses the papers of former President George Bush, the current president's father.
The list of donors names Sheik Zayed Bin Sultan al Nahyan and the people of the United Arab Emirates as one donor in the $1 million or more category.
http://www.sierratimes.com/06/02/25/Library.htm">more...
From 1974, when all Pakistani banks were nationalized, until 1991, all local banks were in the state sector. In 1991, as part of the government's general program of economic liberalization and the privatization of state enterprises, two small banks--the Muslim Commercial Bank and the Allied Bank--were privatized. In 1991 the government also instructed the State Bank of Pakistan to approve proposals for new private commercial banks. In early 1994, there were twenty-four commercial banks, including ten private banks that had opened since 1991, two privatized banks, and twelve banks that remained in the state sector. One of the new private banks, Mehran Bank, was closed down in early 1994 amidst allegations of massive fraud. The number of new private banks was expected to increase in 1994. In March 1993, the total assets of all Pakistani banks amounted to Rs1,090 billion. Pakistani banks had 119 foreign branches and operated joint banking ventures in Malaysia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Twenty-one foreign banks operated in Pakistan in 1994. They had sixty-one branches, most of which were located in Karachi. United States banks with branches in Pakistan included Citibank, Chase Manhattan Bank, American Express Bank, and Bank of America.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was an important foreign bank in Pakistan. The bank had many close links with the Pakistani political and commercial elite. It was founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a leading Pakistani banker. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's family company, Ittefaq Industries, was a major borrower. BCCI's international operations were run from London, but there were three important branches in Pakistan. Abedi resigned as president of BCCI in 1990, when the ruling Al Nuhayyan family of Abu Dhabi obtained a majority share in the company. BCCI collapsed in July 1991 when the Bank of England closed BCCI's operations amid allegations of massive losses, fraud, racketeering, and laundering of drug money. The Pakistani branches continued to operate for some time after BCCI had been closed elsewhere, and there were many allegations that Pakistani businessmen and politicians had profited from the bank's illegal activities. Abedi was later indicted in the United States for fraud and racketeering. In 1992 Pakistani operations of BCCI were amalgamated with Habib Bank.
more…Alsaud,
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal , 44 , inherited and growing
Track This Person
Source: Kingdom Holding Co.
Net Worth: $20 bil -
Country: Saudi Arabia
Marital Status: married , 2 children
Menlo College, BA/BS
Syracuse University
The man: High-energy investor who searches out undervalued stocks saw some of them become even less valuable this year. The fortune: Prices plummeted on Internet picks Priceline.com and Amazon.com as well as holdings like Motorola and Compaq. Lucky for him, these are small pieces of a big pie. The biggest slice, his 3.9% of Citigroup, accounts for half his fortune and was up 12% since last year. Passions: Long walks near his weekend desert retreat; watching CNBC.
Kingdom Holding Company is a private holding company, incorporated in Saudi Arabia, and is one of the largest Saudi companies. It is owned by Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz, and is headquartered in the city of Riyadh.
Snip…
Probably its best know international investments include (or have included):
Amazon
AOL/Time Warner
Apple Computers
Boeing
Canary Wharf
Citigroup
Coca Cola
Compaq
Disneyland Paris
eBay
Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts
Ford
George V Hotel, Paris
Gillette
McDonald's
News Corporation
PepsiCo
Procter & Gamble
Walt Disney
Prince Alwaleed, Chairman of the Kingdom Holding Company and a member of the Saudi Royal Family and one of the world's leading philanthropists, supports many educational and humanitarian initiatives. He recently donated $20 million to the Louvre in support of its collection of Islamic art and created the first Centers for American Studies and Research in the Arab World at the American University of Beirut and the American University in Cairo. He has also made donations to President George H.W. Bush Sr., Scholarship fund established by Phillips Academy, the Carter Center for Peace and Health Programs in Africa, and given substantial aid to the Tsunami victims.
Note: Articles listed under "Middle East Studies in the News" provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique.
OCTOBER 16, 2006
NEWS & INSIGHTS
The President's brother Neil is making hay from school reformAcross the country, some teachers complain that President George W. Bush's makeover of public education promotes "teaching to the test." The President's younger brother Neil takes a different tack: He's selling to the test. The No Child Left Behind Act compels schools to prove students' mastery of certain facts by means of standardized exams. Pressure to perform has energized the $1.9 billion-a-year instructional software industry.
Now, after five years of development and backing by investors like Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and onetime junk-bond king Michael R. Milken, Neil Bush aims to roll his high-tech teacher's helpers into classrooms nationwide. He calls them "curriculum on wheels," or COWs. The $3,800 purple plug-and-play computer/projectors display lively videos and cartoons: the XYZ Affair of the late 1790s as operetta, the 1828 Tariff of Abominations as horror flick. The device plays songs that are supposed to aid the memorization of the 22 rivers of Texas or other facts that might crop up in state tests of "essential knowledge."
Bush's Ignite! Inc. has sold 1,700 COWs since 2005, mainly in Texas, where Bush lives and his brother was once governor. In August, Houston's school board authorized expenditures of up to $200,000 for COWs. The company expects 2006 revenue of $5 million. Says Bush about the impact of his name: "I'm not saying it hasn't opened any doors. It may have helped with some sales." (In September, the U.S. Education Dept.'s inspector general accused the agency of improperly favoring at least five publishers, including The McGraw-Hill Companies, which owns BusinessWeek. A company spokesman says: "Our reading programs have been successful in advancing student achievement for decades; that's why educators hold them in such high regard.")
more...Letter to the President on Saudi Arabia's Alleged Money LaunderingAuthor:
John F. Kerry
May 21, 2003
Foreign Affairs
Senator John Kerry, D-Mass.
May 21, 2003
Dear Mr. President:
I am writing to request that you instruct the Secretary of the Treasury to identify Saudi Arabia as a primary money laundering concern under the authority provided in Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act (P.L. 107-56).
I also request that U.S. financial institutions be required to provide enhanced scrutiny of financial transactions from Saudi Arabia, with particular focus on international charity organizations in Saudi Arabia. Specifically, the Department of Treasury should immediately issue regulations requiring U.S. financial institutions to impose enhanced due diligence on financial transactions involving Saudi Arabian financial institutions, charities and high net-worth individuals to determine whether any transactions pose an unacceptable risk of being related to the finance of terrorism. I believe this will help ensure that funds designated to assist al-Qaida, Hizballah, Hamas or other international terrorist groups do not originate from or pass through Saudi Arabian financial institutions on their way to the United States. It will also help persuade the Saudi Arabian government to crack down on the flow of funds from their country to international terrorist organizations.
Saudi Arabia is a growing financial center in the Gulf Region of the Middle East and should be credited for its increased vigilance in the fight against money laundering since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The Saudi Arabian government has frozen accounts of individuals and organizations in response to information provided by the United States and is currently considering a proposal to develop specific laws dealing with money laundering offenses.
I remain concerned that a number of charity organizations headquartered within in Saudi Arabia and with operations and office around the world are being used as conduits to provide funds for terrorist organizations. There has been a series of published reports alleging Saudi Arabian charities and individual Saudi Arabians have been providing funds to organizations both in the United States and elsewhere which have direct links to terrorist organizations. Last year, an independent task force sponsored by the Council of Foreign Relations released a report on terrorist financing focusing on the connection between Saudi Arabia and al-Qa’ida which stated “... it is worth stating clearly and unambiguously what official U.S. government spokespersons have not: For years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia have been the most important source of funds for al-Qa’ida; and for years, Saudi officials have turned a blind eye to the problem.”
As long as al-Qa’ida retains access to a viable financial network, it remains a lethal threat to the United States. That is why I believe the United States must take any and all necessary measures to stop Saudi Arabian charity organizations from providing any additional funds to international terrorist organizations -- such as al-Qa’ida, Hamas and Hizballah – that could be used to attack either the United States or United States interests abroad.
While the Saudi Arabian government has introduced some controls to limit the transfer of funds to terrorist organizations, I am concerned that their efforts have not gone far enough to stop international terrorist organizations from receiving funding to carry out attacks against the United States or United States’ interests around the world. The tragic bombing in Riyadh this month demonstrates the lethal ability of terrorists to operate within Saudi Arabia and raises serious concerns over the Saudi government’s ability to incapacitate terrorist networks.
The Department of State reports through the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report that some funds from Saudi Arabian charities have been channeled to terrorist organizations. For this reason, your Administration has classified Saudi Arabia as a country to be monitored for potential money laundering.
The United States has the largest and most accessible economic marketplace in the world. Foreign financial institutions and jurisdictions must have unfettered access to markets to effectively work within the international economic system. In 2000, I introduced legislation that became Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act to provide the federal government with the authority to leverage the power of United States financial markets to encourage countries like Saudi Arabia to reform and enforce their counter-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing laws. As you are aware, it provides measures that are graduated, discretionary, and targeted, focusing on international transactions involving criminal proceeds, while allowing legitimate international commerce to continue unimpeded.
If we are to lead the world in the fight against terror and increase the security of the American people, we must effectively use our own laws to cut off the flow of laundered funds from terrorist groups through the international financial system. The measured use of Section 311 authority against Saudi Arabia provides the United States an opportunity to demonstrate leadership in the fight against international terrorism and money laundering.
I believe the U.S. must press for action by other nations against those Saudi persons and institutions about which there is substantial reason to believe have supported terrorism. This can be done immediately within the framework of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). I urge you to discuss this issue in your upcoming meetings with the European Union, the G-8, and other multilateral forums. Thank you in advance for your consideration of my request.
Sincerely,
John F. Kerry
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