.


Fury over Pentagon cell that briefed White House
on Iraq's 'imaginary' al-Qaeda links

"According to dramatic testimony contained in the [Senate intelligence
committee's review], Douglas Feith's cell undermined the credibility of CIA
judgments on Iraq's alleged al-Qa'eda links within the highest levels of the Bush
administration." The cell appears to have been set up by Mr Feith as an adjunct to
the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon intelligence-gathering operation
established in the wake of 9/11 with the authority of Paul Wolfowitz. Its focus
quickly became the al-Qa'eda-Saddam link."

By Julian Coman in Washington
(Filed: 7/11/04)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/11/wsept11.xml&sS
heet=/news/2004/07/11/ixnewstop.html

A Senior Pentagon policy maker created an unofficial "Iraqi intelligence
cell" in the summer of 2002 to circumvent the CIA and secretly brief the White
House on links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'eda, according to the Senate
intelligence committee.

The allegations about Douglas Feith, the number three at the Department of
Defence, are made in a supplementary annexe of the committee's review of the
intelligence leading to war in Iraq, released on Friday.

According to dramatic testimony contained in the annexe, Mr Feith's cell
undermined the credibility of CIA judgments on Iraq's alleged al-Qa'eda links
within the highest levels of the Bush administration.

The cell appears to have been set up by Mr Feith as an adjunct to the Office
of Special Plans, a Pentagon intelligence-gathering operation established in
the wake of 9/11 with the authority of Paul Wolfowitz. Its focus quickly became
the al-Qa'eda-Saddam link.

On occasion, without informing the then head of the CIA, George Tenet, the
group gave counter-briefings in the White House. Sen Jay Rockefeller, the most
senior Democrat on the committee, said that Mr Feith's cell may even have
undertaken "unlawful" intelligence-gathering initiatives.

The claims will lead to calls by Democrats for the resignation of Mr Feith,
the third-ranking civilian at the Department of Defence and a leading "neo-con"
hawk. "Tenet fell on his sword," said one Democrat official, "even though
it's clear that he was placed under tremendous pressure to come up with the
'right' intelligence product for the administration on Iraq.

"The testimony to the committee on Feith and other Pentagon officials shows
just what kind of pressure was being exerted. And when that didn't work, the
Pentagon was just coming up with its own answers and feeding them to the White
House. And on al-Qa'eda they got it all wrong."

Last night a senior Pentagon adviser confirmed that Mr Feith was being
targeted by senators unhappy that the administration has so far escaped censure for
its use of intelligence.

"There are senators who are clearly gunning for Douglas Feith now. This is
turning into a classic conspiracy investigation. They want to get Feith and see
if, through Feith, they can go up the ladder to even bigger fish."

Mr Feith's role is to be examined further in the second phase of the Senate
committee's investigations, which will deal with the Bush administration's use
of the intelligence it received. The report by the Republican-dominated
committee lambasted the CIA for intelligence failures while concluding that there
was no evidence that the Bush administration tried to coerce officials to adapt
their findings.

Yet the annexe - written by three leading Democratic senators - contains the
strongest evidence yet that Pentagon hardliners sought to sideline the CIA
during a drive to talk up a connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden.

After the September 11 attacks, tension had grown between Pentagon officials
and CIA agents, who suspected the Department of Defence of relying too heavily
on dubious testimony from Iraqi defectors in order to justify a war against
Iraq.

The CIA's investigation of links between Iraq and al-Qa'eda was almost the
only aspect of the agency's intelligence-gathering to escape severe censure in
the 511-page report. Sen Rockefeller, the senator for West Virginia, said: "Our
report found that the intelligence community's judgments were right on Iraq's
ties to terrorists. There was no evidence of the formal relationship, however
you want to describe it, between Iraq and al-Qa'eda, and no evidence that
existed of Iraq's complicity or assistance in al-Qa'eda's terrorist attacks."

Pentagon officials who appeared before the Senate committee testified that Mr
Feith and others believed that the CIA was not sufficiently aggressive in its
investigation of links between Saddam and al-Qa'eda. During the summer of
2002, administration hardliners believed that evidence of a connection between
Iraq and the terrorist organisation would provide a clinching argument for war.

After the publication in June 2002 of a cautious report by the CIA entitled
Iraq and al-Qa'eda: A Murky Relationship, Mr Feith passed on a written verdict
to the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, that the report should be read "for
content only - and CIA's interpretation should be ignored".

In August 2002, Mr Feith's cell gave a briefing to Mr Rumsfeld and his
deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, which included a stinging condemnation of the CIA's
intelligence assessment techniques.

In sharp contrast to the Senate intelligence committee's criticisms of
"over-reaching" and "exaggeration" by CIA agents, the Pentagon briefing criticised
the agency for requiring "juridical evidence" for its findings and for the
"consistent underestimation" of the possibility that Iraq and al-Qa'eda were
attempting to conceal their collaboration.

In another incident, Mr Feith's Pentagon cell postponed the publication of a
CIA assessment of Iraq's links to terrorism after a visit to CIA headquarters
at which "numerous objections" were made to a final draft.

In particular, Pentagon officials insisted that more should be made of an
alleged meeting between the September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi
official in Prague in April 2001. The CIA judged reports of the meeting not to be
credible, a verdict vindicated on Friday by the Senate committee report.

Most remarkably, on September 16, 2002, two days before the CIA was to
produce its postponed assessment, Mr Feith's cell went directly to the White House
and gave an alternative briefing to Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of
staff, and to the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's deputy.

The briefing contained the section alleging "fundamental problems" with CIA
intelligence-gathering. It also gave a detailed breakdown of the alleged
meeting between Atta and an Iraqi agent.

The following week, senior Bush officials made confident statements on the
existence of a link between Saddam and al-Qa'eda. Mr Tenet would learn of the
secret briefing only in March 2004.

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Chinese produce new type of subBy Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published July 16, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
China's naval buildup has produced a new type of attack submarine that U.S. intelligence did not know was under construction, according to U.S. defense and intelligence officials.
The submarine was spotted several weeks ago for the first time and has been designated by the Pentagon as the first Yuan-class of submarine.
A photograph of the completed submarine in the water at China's Wuhan shipyard was posted on a Chinese Internet site this week and confirmed by a defense official as the new submarine. Wuhan is located inland, some 420 miles west of Shanghai.
One official said the new submarine was a "technical surprise" to U.S. intelligence, which was unaware that Beijing was building a new non-nuclear powered attack submarine. U.S. intelligence agencies have few details about the new submarine but believe it is diesel-powered rather than nuclear-powered, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The new boat, which appears to be a combination of indigenous Chinese hardware and Russian weapons, suggests that China is building up its submarine forces in preparation for a conflict over Taiwan, defense analysts say.
"China has decided submarines are its first-line warships now, their best shot at beating carriers," said Sid Trevethan, an Alaska-based specialist on the Chinese military. "And China is right."
"One has to marvel at the enormity of the investment by the People's Liberation Army in submarines," said Richard Fisher, a specialist on the Chinese military.
China also is building two nuclear-powered submarines -- one Type 093, believed to be based on the Russian Victor-III class and armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles, and a Type 094 attack submarine, which the Pentagon believes has a finished hull and will be ready for deployment next year.
According to Mr. Trevethan, China currently has a force of 57 deployed submarines, including one Xia-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine, five Han submarines, four Kilos, seven Songs, 18 Mings and 22 Soviet-designed Romeos. Beijing also has eight more Kilos on order with Russia.
Disclosure of the new submarine comes as the United States is trying to sell eight diesel submarines to Taiwan, which Beijing views as a breakaway province. Taiwan currently has just two World War II-era Guppy-class submarines and two 1980s Dutch submarines.
Mr. Fisher, an analyst with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said that despite the imbalance of power on the Taiwan Strait in favor of Beijing, the Bush administration has been slow to sell the submarines it offered Taiwan in April 2001.
"It is simply appalling that the United States cannot get its act together to organize the production of eight new submarines for Taiwan," Mr. Fisher said.
U.S. defense officials have said delays with the Taiwan submarine deal are the result of the Taipei government's budget problems.
Chinese leaders told National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice last week that China would "not sit idly by" as Taiwan moved toward formal independence, and President Hu Jintao denounced U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan.
But Miss Rice said the United States will go ahead with its Taiwan arms sales plan because of China's missile buildup opposite the island.
A Pentagon report made public in May stated that China is changing its warship forces from a coastal defense force to one employing "active offshore defense."
"This change in operations requires newer, more modern warships and submarines capable of operating at greater distances from China's coast for longer periods," the report said, noting that submarine construction is a top priority.
Mr. Fisher said the Chinese submarine buildup should prompt the Pentagon to step up U.S. anti-submarine warfare capabilities, which he said are "at an historic low" because of cutbacks in specialized ships and aircraft.
The Navy should consider building its own diesel attack submarine to be able to "effectively duke it out with the new tidal wave of Chinese subs, that if left unchecked, may soon dominate the Asian littoral regions," Mr. Fisher said.
The Pentagon is also building up U.S. naval forces in the Pacific, with the addition of up to six attack submarines in Guam and the possible deployment of an aircraft carrier battle group to Hawaii in the coming months.

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Exclusive: Breaking 9-11 scandal
Feds knew about 9-11 bribery conspiracy before attacks

by Tom Flocco

ORLANDO, FL -- Tuesday, July 13, 2004 Posted 1:30 PM EDT -- TomFlocco.com -- Homeland Security whistleblower Mary Schneider is naming names, revealing that former FBI Director Louis Freeh, Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and numerous U.S. senators and congressmen knew before the September 11 attacks that U.S. immigration officials were bribed by an illegal Moroccan Muslim allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden’s half-brother. This according to Schneider, who was told about the illegal alien's ties to terrorism by outside informant Bonnie Sharrit.

Khalil bin Laden was allowed to leave the country after 9-11 via a documented 140-person multi-flight Saudi airlift through the auspices of the White House who declined to hold Khalid as a material witness despite his suspicious connections to the Tri-Border frontier region of Brazil--known for evidence of terrorism--but also Khalil's inquiries to informant Bonnie Sharrit about bringing in Arabs from Saudi Arabia and Brazil to attend a Florida flight school.

The Sharrit’s informant daughter Christine later revealed that a Muslim named Lyazid Abad had previously lived with alleged hijacker Mohamed Atta--a fact not lost on the Department of Defense Criminal Investigation Division (DOD-CID) who questioned Christine Sharrit--Abad’s wife--immediately after 9-11, indicating U.S. officials knew about Abad’s and Atta’s movements prior to the attacks. But the government now wants Lyazid Abad immediately deported from the U.S. and away from a potential grand jury.



According to records from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida--but also our phone calls to the Board of Immigration Appeals and the Immigration Court public affairs office--on June 15 the Department of Homeland Security moved to deport illegal Moroccan Muslim Lyazid Abad after an exclusive May 26, 2004 TomFlocco.com story was posted in which Schneider implicated Abad in a sham marriage bribery conspiracy allegedly linked to Mohamed Atta, Khalil bin Laden and the 3,000 death mass murder on 9-11. [Mary Schneider vs. John Ascroft & James Ziglar, Commissioner, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)]

This morning, U.S. Immigration Court public affairs officer Susan Eastwood called TomFlocco.com to confirm that Lyazid Abad had been ordered deported on June 15, raising serious questions as to why the government is suddenly deporting Abad--given his alleged ties to Atta and bin Laden.

In 1998--five years after the first World Trade Center attack, Bonnie Sharrit told Schneider she had copies of two $1,500 Tampa bank money orders purchased by Abad and made out to Orlando immigration supervisors Susan Dugas and Stella Jarina to allegedly bribe them for a green card.

Dugas and Jarina then kept Abad's case locked in their offices without action or denial of green card for the next six years. While his application remained pending, this allowed Abad to live, work and travel freely in the U.S., allegedly continuing an al Qaeda terrorist cell support system in central Florida for Atta and others.
But Schneider also told TomFlocco.com in a series of interviews that she advised all government officials named in this story that immigration officials surreptitiously removed felony fraud case files from her office after hours, took her official case notes detecting felony activity just prior to approving illegal Muslims for green cards with ensuing U.S. citizenship, destroyed incriminating video tape evidence, arranged for a counterfeit search warrant to be served to coerce key evidence from informants, and that she personally witnessed with other office staff the shredding of seven years of official daily interview logs so no audit could take place regarding the immigration violations.

Schneider’s letters and faxes to the 9-11 Commission have also met with no response or request to hear her testimony--either in public or in private.

A court-designated whistleblower with federal protection, Schneider added that prior to the 9-11 attacks she contacted Ashcroft six times--including February, March, April, and August 9, 2001--32 days before the attacks, Freeh ten times, Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Glen Fine seven times--including December 26, 2000 and August 9, 2001, Mueller once--August 9, 2001, but also members of Congress to report that U.S. immigration officials took monetary bribes to assure green cards for illegal Muslims, which facilitated their ability to remain in the U.S. to develop terrorist support networks.

The Sharrits told Schneider that Lyazid Abad had lived with Atta and other Arabs in a central Florida apartment while engaging with other nationals in felony fraud sham marriages to remain in the country; but the Sharrits told Schneider that Abad was also associated with Khalil bin Laden who owns a 20-acre estate in Winter Garden--just minutes from Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom.

A former contract security officer in the Orlando immigration office confirmed what appeared to be evidence of ongoing bribery of federal officials after 9-11 according to Schneider: "The security officer told my attorney Donald Appignani and me that on at least 25 different occasions, aliens appearing for their green card interviews were found to have in their possession sums of cash in the amounts of $5,000 to $8,000 which were brought into the offices of immigration officials here in Orlando."

Within three months after this issue was addressed in the February, 2003 court deposition of Orlando immigration supervisor Susan Dugas in Schneider vs. Ashcroft & Zigler, the security officer was relocated from the Orlando office after reporting the incidents. The FBI, INS, senators and congressmen with full knowledge failed to take any action to stop the bribery.

Schneider said she contacted U.S. Senators more than one year before the attacks about the allegations linked to Abad and Khalil bin Laden--including Bob Graham (D-FL), Trent Lott (R-TX), Richard Shelby (R-AL), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), but also Congressmen Cliff Stearns (R-FL), Joe Scarborough (former Florida Republican congressman and current MSNBC host), Walter Jones (R-NC), Harold Rogers (D-KY), Corrine Brown (D-FL), John Mica (R-FL), Bill McCollum (former Florida Republican congressman and current U.S. Senate candidate), former Florida congressional Republicans Charles Canady (R-FL) and Tillie Fowler (R-FL), Lamar Smith, (R-TX) Dan Burton (R-IN) and David Weldon (R-FL).

Besides multiple contacts with the FBI, INS and Congress before the attacks, Schneider also sent letters since 9-11 to all members of both the Senate and House Permanent Select Intelligence Committees who have ignored and thus far failed to respond to her pleas for action to remove the terrorist cells.

This, as Byron York of National Review Online (9-11-2002) quoted FBI spokesman Bill Carter: "Unless you have evidence to stop them from leaving the country [Khalil bin Laden and other family members who the White House failed to hold as material witnesses--allowing them to leave the U.S. days after the attacks], they have every right to do that," Carter explained.

Another 9-11 Racketeering Scandal?

"In June, 1998, I came in for work and found that the box in my office safe was damaged and my computer was illegally tampered with," Mary Schneider told TomFlocco.com." She continued: "the only individuals with access to the combination were my supervisors Susan Dugas and Officer-in-Charge (OIC) Stella Jarina."

"The following morning outside informant Bonnie Sharrit phoned me to inquire why I had been giving my name and leaving harassing phone messages on their home answering machine for the past few months. I denied making the calls; and as we continued to converse, Bonnie said it was not my voice on the machine, but she provided me with the phone number on their caller-ID," said Schneider.

"I informed her that the phone calls were originating from the Orlando immigration inspections booth," said Schneider, adding "within a week the Sharrits and their daughter Christine met with me to discuss their case involving Christine’s Moroccan husband."

"While I had never met the Sharrits prior to Bonnie calling my office, Bonnie and Ed Sharrit told me their daughter had married an illegal Moroccan Muslim named Lyazid Abad, who I later discovered had lived with Mohamed Atta before marrying their daughter Christine," the immigrations official told us.

Schneider continued, "When the Sharrits returned home, Abad verbally attacked them, stating he knew they had been meeting with me because ‘Supervisor Susan’ [Dugas] had phoned him," adding "Bonnie Sharrit had already told me that she and her husband had seen copies of money orders purchased by Lyazid Abad in the amounts of $1,500 drawn on a Tampa bank and made out to my supervisors Susan Dugas and Stella Jarina."

The Sharrits also told Schneider they discovered that Abad was in possession of Orlando INS Officer-in-Charge Stella Jarina's private personal phone number, when Schneider herself did not have Jarina's personal number after working with her for 18 months.

"I immediately reported these criminal activities to Director John Chase’s Office of Internal Audit (OIA) at INS Headquarters. I spoke to Supervisor Domenic Wazielewski, reporting the felony impersonation of a federal officer via harassing phone calls to the Sharrits, extreme security violation in accessing my assigned, numbered document approval stamp, illegal access to my combination safe, illegal access to my computer and the bribery of my office supervisors," said Schneider.

"This was all documented by government memoranda--faxed and mailed to OIA and dated June 23, 1998; but within two weeks Director John Chase authorized his agent Dalton (Dale) McIntosh to fly to Orlando to investigate me on a bogus complaint filed by an alien in a sham marriage who I did not approve for a green card. And I was investigated even though the video tape of the interview provided advance evidence exonerating me of his trumped charges," said Schneider, adding "McIntosh’s trip expense was an abuse of U.S. taxpayer funds."

She continued, "Before McIntosh’s arrival in Orlando, he made harassing phone calls from INS Headquarters in Washington, DC to Bonnie Sharrit at her home, Ed Sharrit at his office and myself at the INS office," offering further that "when McIntosh came into my office to interrogate me, he ordered me to turn off my tape recorder--but I refused, accusing him of violating the Congressional Whistleblower Protection Act."

"When I refused to turn off the tape recorder for my protection, McIntosh brought in my OIC Stella Jarina who ordered me to turn it off under threat of termination from federal service. But I refused to do so, even as her hands shook so profusely that she could barely write, and the union steward with me witnessed the whole thing; so McIntosh then refused to conduct the interrogation since I continued to tape him for the record," said Schneider.

"The next morning, McIntosh failed to meet with informants Bonnie and Ed Sharrit at his hotel lobby--an appointment he had arranged and for which the Sharrits had both taken time off from work. He never contacted them, canceled or left them a message, thus helping to suppress evidence regarding a bribery conspiracy linked to Lyazid Abad, Mohamed Atta and Khalil bin Laden," said Schneider.

"I personally appeared at the FBI’s Orlando office in July, 1998 and handed letters and information about the bribery conspiracy to duty agent Wendy Evans," adding "the FBI never contacted me before September 11, 2001 or since the attacks."

Fake search warrant served to confiscate incriminating evidence

"I later found out that Dalton McIntosh at the INS had aligned himself with Orlando FBI agent Evans, adding "in October, 1998 Bonnie was prepared to play the tape of the inspector impersonating me so I could identify the voice of whoever had been harassing her," said Schneider.

"However--before Bonnie had the opportunity to play the tape for me--within one week, she was served with a counterfeit search warrant to confiscate the answering machine tape recording of the INS inspector who impersonated me, but also ‘any communication from Mary Schneider,’ " said the Orlando INS adjudications officer.

Believing that Schneider and the Sharrits had been placed under electronic surveillance by the FBI and the INS because they were about to expose criminal activities--some with terrorist implications involving both agencies, TomFlocco.com asked Schneider to elaborate on how a fake warrant could be issued and who may have served it on Sharrit:

"On October 19, 1998--the day of the incident, Bonnie called me extremely upset, describing the ordeal in detail through her tears, while later revealing that she had learned that a judge had called for an investigation into who forged a signature for issuance of a search warrant," said Schneider, relating curiously, "after the warrant was served, FBI agent Wendy Evans appeared at her door."

After the phone message evidence was confiscated, Bonnie Sharrit revealed to Schneider that she was told to "forget about the briberies and keep quiet."

Schneider told us "in July, 1998, I contacted the Ft. Lauderdale DOJ Inspector General’s office (OIG), and gave Special Agent-in-Charge Alan Hazen all the information, letters, and memos involving the bribery conspiracy, but also a list of dozens of fraud cases surreptitiously removed from my office. But no action was taken for seven months."
____________________________________________

"Several days after this warning Dugas and Jarina ordered college intern Kerri Bell-Yeager to shred seven years of official daily interview log sheets recording which aliens had been interviewed, their case number, and the disposition of the case--for example those that I had continued in order to pursue fraud."
____________________________________________



"In February, 1999 two DOJ-OIG agents came to Orlando, spoke briefly with me, and then met with Bonnie and Ed Sharrit; but they refused to take copies of the bribery money orders purchased by the illegal Morrocan Muslim Lyazid Abad which were made out to my supervisors, Dugas and Jarina. The Sharrits were outraged that as informants, the OIG treated them as if they were the criminals," Schneider told us.

Schneider added "during this time frame, INS-OIA Special Agent Dalton McIntosh left the Sharrits an ominous voice mail: ‘We are in the process of removing Mary Schneider from her duties, and we need your help.’ "

"Within weeks of this incident, in March, 1999, the OIG gave advance notice and warning to my supervisors, Susan Dugas and Stella Jarina, that they were to be questioned about briberies," said Schneider, continuing, "several days after this warning Dugas and Jarina ordered college intern Kerri Bell-Yeager to shred seven years of official daily interview log sheets recording which aliens had been interviewed, their case number, and the disposition of the case--for example those that I had continued in order to pursue fraud."

"I personally witnessed the destruction of these vital records along with other staff members--also involving a Caribbean national bribery ring reported to me by informant Marcien Gerard Jean, who knew the conspirators arranging sham marriages in another ring who personally told him they had someone inside the INS office helping them," said Schneider, adding "I haven’t talked to him since. He suddenly disappeared."

The Orlando chat room

At the time of the shredding in March, 1999, Bonnie Sharrit informed me about Orlando-area participants in an active AOL chat room which also named my supervisors [Dugas and Jarina] as participants in sham marriage immigration bribery. Two months later, on May 23, 1999, that same chat room continued to discuss the bribery involving Dugas and Jarina, but also Nancy Abernathy who was then an assistant to Congressman Bill McCollum (R-FL)," she said.

The chat room confirmed Schneider’s and the Sharrit’s concerns for National Security, because the illegal Muslims’ bribery of U.S. immigration officials was also supporting an Al Qaeda terrorist cell involving Egyptian Ihab Ali, who was identified as one of Osama bin Laden’s trusted lieutenants--but also his former pilot.

Schneider added "Even after the Sharrits exposed the illegal activities of Lyazid Abad in June, 1998 and after May, 1999, when Orlando, Florida taxi driver Egyptian Ihab Ali was arrested for organizing the U.S. Embassy bombings, the Orlando AOL chat room confirmed that U.S. immigration officials were allegedly taking bribes from illegal Muslims for green cards--individuals who were reportedly assisting Al Qaeda and Ihab Ali within the Orlando terrorist support network."

Schneider had repeatedly informed high government officials about the illegal activities; but Lyazid Abad was never denied a green card. Now the government is deporting him.

The Egyptian Ihab Ali was arrested by the FBI and brought to New York City around May, 1999; and in October, 2000, the Orlando taxi driver’s cover was blown in court testimony because federal official linked the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania to Ali when his name was found in a letter from Ali to a U.S. Army sergeant with ties to al Qaeda in California.

The letter said "give my best regards to your friend Osama....Tell him -- Sam -- that apologize that I couldn’t finish what he requested of me due to some personal problems," and phone records showed a series of calls placed in 1997 between a phone in the name of Ali’s sister and an al Qaeda house in Nairobi where the [U.S. Embassy] bomb plots were managed. (St. Petersburg Times, 10-28-2001)

The Times added that Kenyan agents found a letter written by bombing conspirator Wadih al Hage to Ihab Ali on February 21, 1997, saying "he and his friends say hello to you;" and Ali sent a fax from an Orlando apartment to al Hage in Kenya on February 26, 1997: "in reply to the DR’s request [Dr. Muhammad Atef--al Qaeda military commander], please inform him that I am always ready to help out."

Within two days of the Ali revelations, in May 1999, Schneider told us she contacted and faxed copies of the AOL chat room containing significant intelligence corroborating her whistleblower allegations to the New York City Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force, but also SAIC Alan Hazen at the Fort Lauderdale OIG.

Schneider then told us "the OIG quickly issued letters of exoneration to Dugas and Jarina. And at the July, 2000 Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) hearing regarding retaliation against me for my whistleblower allegations, Susan Dugas gave sworn testimony stating that she and Stella Jarina were questioned for 15-20 minutes about the bribery, and then she held up her complete OIG investigation report which contained one single paragraph."

Three days after faxing the FBI and the OIG copies of the AOL chatroom, whistleblower Schneider was suspended for 30 days without pay in June, 1999, which the MSPB judge later ruled in November, 2000 was an illegal retaliation for whistleblower activites, thus indicating that individuals in government agencies much higher up in authority did not want a bribery conspiracy linked to September 11 publicized--let alone investigated.

Schneider told us many of these activities appear to be ongoing, and as such, the adjudications officer’s allegations may indicate Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) practices which are similar in nature to an ongoing 9-11 RICO suit against various government officials--including the President, Vice-President, members of the cabinet and other high-ranking agency officials: Mariani vs. Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, et. al.

Government tracking Abad and Atta before attacks?

Bonnie Sharrit told Schneider that Lyazid Abad was associated with Osama bin Laden’s brother Khalil who lived in West Orange County, and that she knew Khalil had made inquiries prior to September 11 about how he could bring in other Arabs from Saudi Arabia and Brazil to attend a flight school in Daytona Beach.

According to her parents--who relayed the information to Mary Schneider, Christine Sharrit’s story could also be confirmed by officers from Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Department of Defense (DOD). The Criminal Investigations Division (DOD-CID) was so interested in Abad--the illegal Moroccan Muslim who lived with Atta, that they sought out his estranged wife Christine Sharrit in the Fall of 2001 just after the attacks on the World Trade Center while she was on military duty overseas.

While questioned, Sharrit said CID investigators showed her a photo of a Middle Eastern man and asked her whether she recognized him. Sharrit said he looked familiar as one of six or seven Arabs living in an apartment with Abad prior to their wedding in 1997. However, Sharrit was surprised when the investigators revealed the identity of the individual in the photo as Mohamed Atta--the generally acknowledged alleged leader of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Christine also told Mary Schneider that she was shocked to find out that the government knew so much more about her husband than she did--including his previous residences and the fact that he had engaged in bigamy with a fifth wife while still married to her--all of which she was unaware.

All this, while confirming that the government was well aware of Abad’s connections to Mohamed Atta and that they were likely tracking his movements in the days prior to the attacks--given that Sharrit was contacted so quickly after 9-11 about her husband Lyazid.

Khalil bin Laden linked to evidence of terrorism in Brazil’s Triple Border region?

Curiously, the Sharrits told Mary Schneider that their ex son-in-law, Lyazid Abad, claimed to them that he had at one time actually picked up Osama bin Laden’s brother [Khalil bin Laden], driven him down to and dropped him off in Miami, and returned to pick him up and then drove him over to Tampa. [Schneider sent this specific information about Khalil bin Laden to the FBI on May 17, 1999--over two years before the attacks.]

In the May 26 article, Sleeping With the Enemy, the Orlando chat room subsection referred to an individual named the "Manoman," who transported certain individuals around central Florida.

[Respected New York City 9-11 researcher Nico Haupt found that the Supreme Court of Bosnia Herzegovina granted access on March 6, 2003 to documents seized by the Bosnian police in March, 2002 at the Muslim Offices of Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) in Sarajevo. A French team of investigators received the documents which were part of a computer file titled "Tareekh Osama" or "Osama History" which included a list of the top-20 Saudi financial sponsors--the so-called "golden chain" of bin Laden financiers--and made them available on the internet. The documents confirmed another reason why the White House should have held Khalid bin Laden for grand jury interrogation: mentioned among the list of BIF-linked Saudi financiers of terrorism was Khalil bin Laden, a board member of United Gulf Industries Corporation--headquartered in the city of "Manama," Bahrain, leading to speculation that Lyazid Abad may have been Khalil bin Laden’s personal chauffeur -- the "Manoman" in the Orlando chat room. And both Bush 41 and Bush 43 have extensive past connections to the country of Bahrain--many of them financial.]

Chat rooms are typically used by terrorists to communicate. But thus far neither the Congressional Intelligence Committee nor the 9-11 Commission has mentioned anything about Khalil bin Laden and Lyazid Abad as pieces to the September 11 puzzle.

According to a German news report, seven weeks after the September 11 attacks Brazilian police placed Khalil bin Laden--brother of Osama, under investigation due to reports of his visit in September, 2001 to a province near the tri-border region of Brazil-Paraguay-Argentina--an area suspected as a site for Hezbollah terrorist training camps, according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA). (12-03-2002) The results of that investigation have not been publicly revealed. And the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee and 9-11 Commission have never mentioned Khalil or his ties to Triple Border's suspicious connections to terrorism.

"The region is the Hilton of Islamic extremism. It’s been on the radar since the early 90’s but no one’s done anything about it," said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Centre for the study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland. (Vanity Fair, December, 2002)

Ranstorp added "the day after September 11, the CIA had a team of investigators [in Triple Border] there," continuing, "Brazilian authorities have intercepted numerous phone calls from clandestine telephone exchanges in Triple Border and Afghanistan [from cell phones in caves?] and last year a CNN reporter in Kabul found a large tourist poster from Triple Border at an al Qaeda safe house in Afghanistan."

According to U.S. cable television terrorism analyst and author of the Vanity Fair piece--Sebastian Junger, "Triple Border is now a thriving nexus of drugs, weapons, and money-laundering operations," adding "the Paraguayan consul [stationed] in Miami, Florida was recently arrested for allegedly selling a batch of 300 passports to foreigners--including terrorist suspects from the Middle East, who planned to move to Ciudad del Este, Paraguay."



Junger said "bank records show that a Lebanese businessman and shopping mall owner in Ciudad del Este named Assad Ahmad Mohamad Barakat....has transferred thousands of dollars to Hezbollah over the years," while Junger also revealed that "in [Barakat's Paraguay] office the police found scores of copies of an al Qaeda promotional video--providing yet more evidence that Khalil bin Laden’s links to terrorism allegations in Brazil should have been well worth exploring before the White House let him leave the U.S. after the attacks.

Vanity Fair and Junger said another Moroccan named Gueddan Abdel Fatah--incarcerated in Sao Paulo, handed a typed letter to attorney Edith Espinosa at the prison just six days before the September 11 attacks--and begged her to give it to the Federal Police in Brazil in the presence of U.S. Embassy and Israeli diplomatic officials.

In the letter, Fatah said "there were going to be ‘two explosions’ in the United States in the near future," but Espinosa neglected to pass the letter along, while Fatah said "he had gone to Triple Border the year before and had attended meetings at a mosque in Foz do Iguacu where Shiite and Sunni Muslims--ordinarily enemies--talked openly about ‘blowing up’ the United States."

DPA also reported that Brazilian officials were investigating Khalil’s numerous business connections in the area of the southwestern corner of Brazil as well as letters Khalil sent to a Brazilian psychologist--evidence that has apparently never reached either the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee or the 9-11 Commission, given Khalil’s connections to Lyazid Abad.

DPA also said Brazil has been investigating the movements of other unnamed Arab-origin citizens living in the Triple Border region while also having frozen the bank accounts of some who are suspected of being linked to terrorists. An Associated Press report from Sao Paulo, Brazil said Khalil is married to Brazilian Isabel Cristina Bayma, and is said to visit Brazil once per year.

A Japan Today / Kyodo News report out of Rio De Janeiro (3-31-2003) by Lenilson Ferreira said that on March 11, 2003 top-selling Brazilian weekly Veja published a cover-story about a reported Osama bin Laden visit to Triple Border’s massive Iguacu River falls in 1995--two years after the first World Trade Center bombing--where he reportedly spent three days meeting with members of the substantial local Arab community--some 30,000 strong, although this alone does not indicate Tri-Border is linked to international terror.

According to Veja, the local travel industry uses Osama as a tourist incentive: "When he is not blowing up the world, Osama bin Laden enjoys himself," says one ad displaying a long-bearded man wearing Arab clothes and lounging on a sofa, adding "If bin Laden risked his neck to visit Foz do Iguacu, it means it is worthwhile! Everybody wants to see us. Why haven’t you come yet?" asks the tourism campaign launched in 30 daily newspapers in Brazil, Argentina and Chile.

Veja also reported that terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed of Kuwait, third-ranking al-Qaeda leader--the infamous "KSM" of 9-11 Commission staff report fame--also visited Foz do Iguacu under a "tourist" visa, thus raising more serious questions about why the White House wants Lyazid Abad out of the United States without presenting him for grand jury interrogation--let alone why they released Khalid bin Laden.

However, despite evidence to the contrary, U.S. diplomats and officials with the Organization of American States have said repeatedly that they have seen no evidence of terrorist cells in the area. "It’s folklore," said Geraldo Pereira, Foz do Iguacu’s chief of police. (Washington Post, 4-04-2004)

But without a thorough investigation--in a situation similar to illegal Moroccan Muslim Lyazid Abad with his al-Qaeda / Mohamed Atta / 9-11 links who is being deported now--Khalil bin Laden was allowed to leave the United States from Boston Logan Airport on September 19--where the Atta originated the 9-11 attacks--courtesy of bin Laden family ties to the White House.

Massachusetts Port Authority’s Director, Virginia Buckingham, said in the Boston Globe: "My staff was told that a private jet was arriving at Logan from Saudi Arabia to pick up 14 members of Osama bin Laden’s family living in the Boston area," adding " 'Does the FBI know? Does the State Department know? Why are they letting these people go? Have they questioned them? This was ridiculous.' "

Whistleblower Retaliation

Schneider said she specifically contacted other key government officials before the September 11 attacks: Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) Office of Internal Audit Director John Chase, The New York Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force, INS Internal Audit Assistant Director Sue Armstrong on August 9, 2001, Ft. Lauderdale DOJ Office of the Inspector General Special Agent-in-Charge Alan Hazen six times, and Miami INS District Director Robert Wallis and Deputy District Director John Bulger on Nov. 1, 2000--less than a year before 9-11. Both have since been promoted despite failing to take action before the attacks.

Because she repeatedly alerted multiple federal officials, Miami U.S. attorney Guy Lewis and Congress about terrorist threats, Department of Homeland Security whistleblower Mary Schneider is currently being harassed, threatened with termination after 30 years federal service--but prior to pension benefits, issued unsatisfactory work evaluations based on trumped up allegations, had her official whistleblower status recently revoked by the courts, and had her Title VII civil rights violations lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft dismissed just one day prior to jury selection in a manner similar to FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds.

Instead of promoting Schneider and giving her a raise for attempting to protect the American people, current congressional oversight permits the executive branch of govenment to commit what amounts to financial and emotional attrocities against a loyal and honorable federal employee.

Moreover, in reprisal and retaliation for exposing criminal conspiracies involving federal agencies and elected officials who allowed the facilitation of a terrorist cell support network in central Florida before the 9-11 attacks, the government is actively pursuing Schneider’s termination while also having suspended her salary twice for 30 days for refusing to tell the conspirators what she knows about their criminal activities.

Americans are paying taxes to support legislative, executive and judicial retaliation against an honest government worker attempting to expose fraudulent and criminal activites that helped lead to the deaths of 3,000 souls on 9-11--actions that high officials must out of necessity cover up at the risk of losing their own freedom, or worse, if a grand jury is ever impaneled.

**********************************************
Disclaimer by Mary Schneider: "I have never, nor do I now, represent or speak on behalf of any government agency of the United States or its policies. I am speaking as a private citizen who is highly concerned for our national security regarding extensive treasonous briberies and cover up conspiracies."
***Contact Mary Schneider: http://maryschneider.us/ **********************************************
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Sun., July 04, 2004 Tamuz 15, 5764

White man's burden
Ari Shavit

The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jews, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible. But another journalist, Thomas Friedman (not part of the group), is skeptical

1. The doctrine

WASHINGTON - At the conclusion of its second week, the war to "liberate" Iraq wasn't looking good. Not even in Washington. The assumption of a swift collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime had itself collapsed. The presupposition that the Iraqi dictatorship would crumble as soon as mighty America entered the country proved unfounded. The Shi'ites didn't rise up, the Sunnis fought fiercely. Iraqi guerrilla warfare found the American generals unprepared and endangered their overextended supply lines. Nevertheless, 70 percent of the American people continued to support the war; 60 percent thought victory was certain; 74 percent expressed confidence in President George W. Bush.

Washington is a small city. It's a place of human dimensions. A kind of small town that happens to run an empire. A small town of government officials and members of Congress and personnel of research institutes and journalists who pretty well all know one another. Everyone is busy intriguing against everyone else; and everyone gossips about everyone else.

In the course of the past year, a new belief has emerged in the town: the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving force of history. They believe that the right political idea entails a fusion of morality and force, human rights and grit. The philosophical underpinnings of the Washington neoconservatives are the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Edmund Burke. They also admire Winston Churchill and the policy pursued by Ronald Reagan. They tend to read reality in terms of the failure of the 1930s (Munich) versus the success of the 1980s (the fall of the Berlin Wall).

Are they wrong? Have they committed an act of folly in leading Washington to Baghdad? They don't think so. They continue to cling to their belief. They are still pretending that everything is more or less fine. That things will work out. Occasionally, though, they seem to break out in a cold sweat. This is no longer an academic exercise, one of them says, we are responsible for what is happening. The ideas we put forward are now affecting the lives of millions of people. So there are moments when you're scared. You say, Hell, we came to help, but maybe we made a mistake.

2. William Kristol

Has America bitten off more than it can chew? Bill Kristol says no. True, the press is very negative, but when you examine the facts in the field you see that there is no terrorism, no mass destruction, no attacks on Israel. The oil fields in the south have been saved, air control has been achieved, American forces are deployed 50 miles from Baghdad. So, even if mistakes were made here and there, they are not serious. America is big enough to handle that. Kristol hasn't the slightest doubt that in the end, General Tommy Franks will achieve his goals. The 4th Cavalry Division will soon enter the fray, and another division is on its way from Texas. So it's possible that instead of an elegant war with 60 killed in two weeks it will be a less elegant affair with a thousand killed in two months, but nevertheless Bill Kristol has no doubt at all that the Iraq Liberation War is a just war, an obligatory war.

Kristol is pleasant-looking, of average height, in his late forties. In the past 18 months he has used his position as editor of the right-wing Weekly Standard and his status as one of the leaders of the neoconservative circle in Washington to induce the White House to do battle against Saddam Hussein. Because Kristol is believed to exercise considerable influence on the president, Vice President Richard Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he is also perceived as having been instrumental in getting Washington to launch this all-out campaign against Baghdad. Sitting behind the stacks of books that cover his desk at the offices of the Weekly Standard in Northwest Washington, he tries to convince me that he is not worried. It is simply inconceivable to him that America will not win. In that event, the consequences would be catastrophic. No one wants to think seriously about that possibility.

What is the war about? I ask. Kristol replies that at one level it is the war that George Bush is talking about: a war against a brutal regime that has in its possession weapons of mass destruction. But at a deeper level it is a greater war, for the shaping of a new Middle East. It is a war that is intended to change the political culture of the entire region. Because what happened on September 11, 2001, Kristol says, is that the Americans looked around and saw that the world is not what they thought it was. The world is a dangerous place. Therefore the Americans looked for a doctrine that would enable them to cope with this dangerous world. And the only doctrine they found was the neoconservative one.

That doctrine maintains that the problem with the Middle East is the absence of democracy and of freedom. It follows that the only way to block people like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden is to disseminate democracy and freedom. To change radically the cultural and political dynamics that creates such people. And the way to fight the chaos is to create a new world order that will be based on freedom and human rights - and to be ready to use force in order to consolidate this new world. So that, really, is what the war is about. It is being fought to consolidate a new world order, to create a new Middle East.

Does that mean that the war in Iraq is effectively a neoconservative war? That's what people are saying, Kristol replies, laughing. But the truth is that it's an American war. The neoconservatives succeeded because they touched the bedrock of America. The thing is that America has a profound sense of mission. America has a need to offer something that transcends a life of comfort, that goes beyond material success. Therefore, because of their ideals, the Americans accepted what the neoconservatives proposed. They didn't want to fight a war over interests, but over values. They wanted a war driven by a moral vision. They wanted to hitch their wagon to something bigger than themselves.

Does this moral vision mean that after Iraq will come the turns of Saudi Arabia and Egypt?

Kristol says that he is at odds with the administration on the question of Saudi Arabia. But his opinion is that it is impossible to let Saudi Arabia just continue what it is doing. It is impossible to accept the anti-Americanism it is disseminating. The fanatic Wahhabism that Saudi Arabia engenders is undermining the stability of the entire region. It's the same with Egypt, he says: we mustn't accept the status quo there. For Egypt, too, the horizon has to be liberal democracy.

It has to be understood that in the final analysis, the stability that the corrupt Arab despots are offering is illusory. Just as the stability that Yitzhak Rabin received from Yasser Arafat was illusory. In the end, none of these decadent dictatorships will endure. The choice is between extremist Islam, secular fascism or democracy. And because of September 11, American understands that. America is in a position where it has no choice. It is obliged to be far more aggressive in promoting democracy. Hence this war. It's based on the new American understanding that if the United States does not shape the world in its image, the world will shape the United States in its own image.

3. Charles Krauthammer

Is this going to turn into a second Vietnam? Charles Krauthammer says no. There is no similarity to Vietnam. Unlike in the 1960s, there is no anti-establishment subculture in the United States now. Unlike in the 1960s, there is now an abiding love of the army in the United States. Unlike in the 1960s, there is a determined president, one with character, in the White House. And unlike in the 1960s, Americans are not deterred from making sacrifices. That is the sea-change that took place here on September 11, 2001. Since that morning, Americans have understood that if they don't act now and if weapons of mass destruction reach extremist terrorist organizations, millions of Americans will die. Therefore, because they understand that those others want to kill them by the millions, the Americans prefer to take to the field of battle and fight, rather than sit idly by and die at home.

Charles Krauthammer is handsome, swarthy and articulate. In his spacious office on 19th Street in Northwest Washington, he sits upright in a black wheelchair. Although his writing tends to be gloomy, his mood now is elevated. The well-known columnist (Washington Post, Time, Weekly Standard) has no real doubts about the outcome of the war that he promoted for 18 months. No, he does not accept the view that he helped lead America into the new killing fields between the Tigris and the Euphrates. But it is true that he is part of a conceptual stream that had something to offer in the aftermath of September 11. Within a few weeks after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, he had singled out Baghdad in his columns as an essential target. And now, too, he is convinced that America has the strength to pull it off. The thought that America will not win has never even crossed his mind.

What is the war about? It's about three different issues. First of all, this is a war for disarming Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. That's the basis, the self-evident cause, and it is also sufficient cause in itself. But beyond that, the war in Iraq is being fought to replace the demonic deal America cut with the Arab world decades ago. That deal said: you will send us oil and we will not intervene in your internal affairs. Send us oil and we will not demand from you what we are demanding of Chile, the Philippines, Korea and South Africa.

That deal effectively expired on September 11, 2001, Krauthammer says. Since that day, the Americans have understood that if they allow the Arab world to proceed in its evil ways - suppression, economic ruin, sowing despair - it will continue to produce more and more bin Ladens. America thus reached the conclusion that it has no choice: it has to take on itself the project of rebuilding the Arab world. Therefore, the Iraq war is really the beginning of a gigantic historical experiment whose purpose is to do in the Arab world what was done in Germany and Japan after World War II.

It's an ambitious experiment, Krauthammer admits, maybe even utopian, but not unrealistic. After all, it is inconceivable to accept the racist assumption that the Arabs are different from all other human beings, that the Arabs are incapable of conducting a democratic way of life.

However, according to the Jewish-American columnist, the present war has a further importance. If Iraq does become pro-Western and if it becomes the focus of American influence, that will be of immense geopolitical importance. An American presence in Iraq will project power across the region. It will suffuse the rebels in Iran with courage and strength, and it will deter and restrain Syria. It will accelerate the processes of change that the Middle East must undergo.

Isn't the idea of preemptive war a dangerous one that rattles the world order?

There is no choice, Krauthammer replies. In the 21st century we face a new and singular challenge: the democratization of mass destruction. There are three possible strategies in the face of that challenge: appeasement, deterrence and preemption. Because appeasement and deterrence will not work, preemption is the only strategy left. The United States must implement an aggressive policy of preemption. Which is exactly what it is now doing in Iraq. That is what Tommy Franks' soldiers are doing as we speak.

And what if the experiment fails? What if America is defeated?

This war will enhance the place of America in the world for the coming generation, Krauthammer says. Its outcome will shape the world for the next 25 years. There are three possibilities. If the United States wins quickly and without a bloodbath, it will be a colossus that will dictate the world order. If the victory is slow and contaminated, it will be impossible to go on to other Arab states after Iraq. It will stop there. But if America is beaten, the consequences will be catastrophic. Its deterrent capability will be weakened, its friends will abandon it and it will become insular. Extreme instability will be engendered in the Middle East.

You don't really want to think about what will happen, Krauthammer says looking me straight in the eye. But just because that's so, I am positive we will not lose. Because the administration understands the implications. The president understands that everything is riding on this. So he will throw everything we've got into this. He will do everything that has to be done. George W. Bush will not let America lose.

4. Thomas Friedman

Is this an American Lebanon War? Tom Friedman says he is afraid it is. He was there, in the Commodore Hotel in Beirut, in the summer of 1982, and he remembers it well. So he sees the lines of resemblance clearly. General Ahmed Chalabi (the Shi'ite leader that the neoconservatives want to install as the leader of a free Iraq) in the role of Bashir Jemayel. The Iraqi opposition in the role of the Phalange. Richard Perle and the conservative circle around him as Ariel Sharon. And a war that is at bottom a war of choice. A war that wants to utilize massive force in order to establish a new order.

Tom Friedman, The New York Times columnist, did not oppose the war. On the contrary. He too was severely shaken by September 11, he too wants to understand where these desperate fanatics are coming from who hate America more than they love their own lives. And he too reached the conclusion that the status quo in the Middle East is no longer acceptable. The status quo is terminal. And therefore it is urgent to foment a reform in the Arab world.

Some things are true even if George Bush believes them, Friedman says with a smile. And after September 11, it's impossible to tell Bush to drop it, ignore it. There was a certain basic justice in the overall American feeling that told the Arab world: we left you alone for a long time, you played with matches and in the end we were burned. So we're not going to leave you alone any longer.

He is sitting in a large rectangular room in the offices of The New York Times in northwest Washington, on the corner of 17th Street. One wall of the room is a huge map of the world. Hunched over his computer, he reads me witty lines from the article that will be going to press in two hours. He polishes, sharpens, plays word games. He ponders what's right to say now, what should be left for a later date. Turning to me, he says that democracies look soft until they're threatened. When threatened, they become very hard. Actually, the Iraq war is a kind of Jenin on a huge scale. Because in Jenin, too, what happened was that the Israelis told the Palestinians, We left you here alone and you played with matches until suddenly you blew up a Passover seder in Netanya. And therefore we are not going to leave you along any longer. We will go from house to house in the Casbah. And from America's point of view, Saddam's Iraq is Jenin. This war is a defensive shield. It follows that the danger is the same: that like Israel, America will make the mistake of using only force.

This is not an illegitimate war, Friedman says. But it is a very presumptuous war. You need a great deal of presumption to believe that you can rebuild a country half a world from home. But if such a presumptuous war is to have a chance, it needs international support. That international legitimacy is essential so you will have enough time and space to execute your presumptuous project. But George Bush didn't have the patience to glean international support. He gambled that the war would justify itself, that we would go in fast and conquer fast and that the Iraqis would greet us with rice and the war would thus be self-justifying. That did not happen. Maybe it will happen next week, but in the meantime it did not happen.

When I think about what is going to happen, I break into a sweat, Friedman says. I see us being forced to impose a siege on Baghdad. And I know what kind of insanity a siege on Baghdad can unleash. The thought of house-to-house combat in Baghdad without international legitimacy makes me lose my appetite. I see American embassies burning. I see windows of American businesses shattered. I see how the Iraqi resistance to America connects to the general Arab resistance to America and the worldwide resistance to America. The thought of what could happen is eating me up.

What George Bush did, Friedman says, is to show us a splendid mahogany table: the new democratic Iraq. But when you turn the table over, you see that it has only one leg. This war is resting on one leg. But on the other hand, anyone who thinks he can defeat George Bush had better think again. Bush will never give in. That's not what he's made of. Believe me, you don't want to be next to this guy when he thinks he's being backed into a corner. I don't suggest that anyone who holds his life dear mess with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush.

Is the Iraq war the great neoconservative war? It's the war the neoconservatives wanted, Friedman says. It's the war the neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.

Still, it's not all that simple, Friedman retracts. It's not some fantasy the neoconservatives invented. It's not that 25 people hijacked America. You don't take such a great nation into such a great adventure with Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard and another five or six influential columnists. In the final analysis, what fomented the war is America's over-reaction to September 11. The genuine sense of anxiety that spread in America after September 11. It is not only the neoconservatives who led us to the outskirts of Baghdad. What led us to the outskirts of Baghdad is a very American combination of anxiety and hubris.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=White+man%27s+burden&itemNo=280279

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THE BUSH-CHENEY DRUG EMPIRE

[Lead story in the October 24, 2000 issue of "From The
Wilderness"]

by
Michael C. Ruppert

© Copyright 2000, Michael C. Ruppert and "From The
Wilderness" Publications, P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman
Oaks, CA 91413, 818-788-8791, www.copvcia.com. All
Rights Reserved. - Permission to reprint for
non-profit only is hereby granted as long as proper
sourcing appears. For all other permissions contact
mruppert@copvcia.com.

-----------------------------------

FTW October 24, 2000 - The success of Bush Vice
Presidential running mate Richard Cheney at leading
Halliburton, Inc. to a five year $3.8 billion
"pig-out" on federal contracts and taxpayer-insured
loans is only a partial indicator of what may happen
if the Bush ticket wins in two weeks. A closer look at
available research, including an August 2, 2000 report
by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) at
www.public-i.org, suggests that drug money has played
a role in the successes achieved by Halliburton under
Cheney's tenure as CEO from 1995 to 2000. This is
especially true for Halliburton's most famous
subsidiary, heavy construction and oil giant, Brown
and Root. A deeper look into history reveals that
Brown and Root's past as well as the past of Dick
Cheney himself, connect to the international drug
trade on more than one occasion and in more than one
way.

This June the lead Washington, D.C. attorney for a
major Russian oil company connected in law enforcement
reports to heroin smuggling and also a beneficiary of
US backed loans to pay for Brown and Root contracts in
Russia, held a $2.2 million fund raiser to fill the
already bulging coffers of presidential candidate
George W. Bush. This is not the first time that Brown
and Root has been connected to drugs and the fact is
that this "poster child" of American industry may also
be a key player in Wall Street's efforts to maintain
domination of the half trillion dollar a year global
drug trade and its profits. And Dick Cheney, who has
also come closer to drugs than most suspect, and who
is also Halliburton's largest individual shareholder
($45.5 million), has a vested interest in seeing to it
that Brown and Root's successes continue.

Of all American companies dealing directly with the
U.S. military and providing cover for CIA operations
few firms can match the global presence of this giant
construction powerhouse which employs 20,000 people in
more than 100 countries. Through its sister companies
or joint ventures, Brown and Root can build offshore
oil rigs, drill wells, construct and operate
everything from harbors to pipelines to highways to
nuclear reactors. It can train and arm security forces
and it can now also feed, supply and house armies. One
key beacon of Brown and Root's overwhelming appeal to
agencies like the CIA is that, from its own corporate
web page, it proudly announces that it has received
the contract to dismantle aging Russian nuclear tipped
ICBMs in their silos.

Furthermore, the relationships between key
institutions, players and the Bushes themselves
suggest that under a George "W" administration the
Bush family and its allies may well be able, using
Brown and Root as the operational interface, to
control the drug trade all the way from Medellin to
Moscow.

Originally formed as a heavy construction company to
build dams, Brown and Root grew its operations via
shrewd political contributions to Senate candidate
Lyndon Johnson in 1948. Expanding into the building of
oil platforms, military bases, ports, nuclear
facilities, harbors and tunnels, Brown and Root
virtually underwrote LBJ's political career. It
prospered as a result, making billions on U.S.
Government contracts during the Vietnam War. The
"Austin Chronicle" in an August 28 Op-ed piece
entitled "The Candidate From Brown and Root" labels
Republican Cheney as the political dispenser of Brown
and Root's largesse. According to political campaign
records, during Cheney's five year tenure at
Halliburton the company's political contributions more
than doubled to $1.2 million. Not surprisingly, most
of that money went to Republican candidates.

Independent news service "newsmakingnews.com," also
describes how in 1998, with Cheney as Chairman,
Halliburton spent $8.1 billion to purchase oil
industry equipment and drilling supplier Dresser
Industries. This made Halliburton a corporation that
will have a presence in almost any future oil drilling
operation anywhere in the world. And it also brought
back into the family fold the company that had once
sent a plane - also in 1948 - to fetch the new Yale
Graduate George H.W. Bush, to begin his career in the
Texas oil business. Bush the elder's father,
Prescott, served as a Managing Director for the firm
that once owned Dresser, Brown Bothers Harriman.

It is clear that everywhere there is oil there is
Brown and Root. But increasingly, everywhere there is
war or insurrection there is Brown and Root also. From
Bosnia and Kosovo, to Chechnya, to Rwanda, to Burma,
to Pakistan, to Laos, to Vietnam, to Indonesia, to
Iran to Libya to Mexico to Colombia, Brown and Root's
traditional operations have expanded from heavy
construction to include the provision of logistical
support for the U.S. military. Now, instead of U.S.
Army quartermasters, the world is likely to see Brown
and Root warehouses storing and managing everything
from uniforms to rations to vehicles.

Dramatic expansion of Brown and Root's operations in
Colombia also suggest Bush preparations for a war
inspired feeding frenzy as a part of "Plan Colombia."
This is consistent with moves by former Bush Treasury
Secretary Nicholas Brady to open a joint
Colombian-American investment partnership called
Corfinsura for the financing of major construction
projects with the Colombian Antioquia Syndicate,
headquartered in Medellin. (See FTW June, 00). And
expectations of a ground war in Colombia may explain
why, in a 2000 SEC filing, Brown and Root reported
that in addition to owning more than 800,000 square
feet of warehouse space in Colombia, they also lease
another 122,000 square feet. According to the filing
of the Brown and Root Energy Services Group, the only
other places where the company maintains warehouse
space are in Mexico (525,000 sq. feet), and the U.S.
(38,000) square feet.

According to the web site of Colombia's Foreign
Investment Promotion Agency Brown and Root had no
presence in the country until 1997. What does Brown
and Root, which, according to the AP has made more
than $2 billion supporting and supplying U.S. troops,
know about Colombia that the U.S. public does not?
Why the need for almost a million square feet of
warehouse space that can be transferred from one Brown
and Root operation (energy) to another (military
support) with the stroke of a pen?

DRUGS

As described by the Associated Press, during
"Iran-Contra" Congressman Dick Cheney of the House
Intelligence Committee was a rabid supporter of Marine
Lt. Col. Oliver North. This was in spite of the fact
that North had lied to Cheney in a private 1986 White
House briefing. Oliver North's own diaries and
subsequent investigations by the CIA Inspector General
have irrevocably tied him directly to cocaine
smuggling during the 1980s and the opening of bank
accounts for one firm moving four tons of cocaine a
month. This, however, did not stop Cheney from
actively supporting North's 1994 unsuccessful run for
the U.S. Senate from Virginia just a year before he
took over the reins at Brown and Root's parent
company, Dallas based Halliburton Inc. in 1995.

As the Bush Secretary of Defense during Desert
Shield/Desert Storm (1990-91), Cheney also directed
special operations involving Kurdish rebels in
northern Iran. The Kurds' primary source of income for
more than fifty years has been heroin smuggling from
Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran, Iraq and
Turkey. Having had some personal experience with Brown
and Root I noted carefully when the Los Angeles Times
observed that on March 22, 1991 that a group of gunmen
burst into the Ankara, Turkey offices of the joint
venture, Vinnell, Brown and Root and assassinated
retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant John Gandy.

In March of 1991, tens of thousands of Kurdish
refugees, long-time assets of the CIA, were being
massacred by Saddam Hussein in the wake of the Gulf
War. Saddam, seeking to destroy any hopes of a
successful Kurdish revolt, found it easy to kill
thousands of the unwanted Kurds who had fled to the
Turkish border seeking sanctuary. There, Turkish
security forces, trained in part by the Vinnell, Brown
and Root partnership, turned thousands of Kurds back
into certain death. Today, the Vinnell Corporation (a
TRW Company) is, along with the firms MPRI and DynCorp
(FTW June, 00) one of the three pre-eminent private
mercenary corporations in the world. It is also the
dominant entity for the training of security forces
throughout the Middle East. Not surprisingly the
Turkish border regions in question were the primary
transhipment points for heroin, grown in Afghanistan
and Pakistan and destined for the markets of Europe.

A confidential source with intelligence experience in
the region subsequently told me that the Kurds "got
some payback against the folks that used to help them
move their drugs." He openly acknowledged that Brown
and Root and Vinnell both routinely provided NOC or
non-official cover for CIA officers. But I already
knew that.

From 1994 to 1999, during US military intervention in
the Balkans where, according to "The Christian Science
Monitor" and "Jane's Intelligence Review," the Kosovo
Liberation Army controls 70 per cent of the heroin
entering Western Europe, Cheney's Brown and Root made
billions of dollars supplying U.S. troops from vast
facilities in the region. Brown and Root support
operations continue in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia to
this day.

Dick Cheney's footprints have come closer to drugs
than one might suspect. The August Center for Public
Integrity report brought them even closer. It would be
factually correct to say that there is a direct
linkage of Brown and Root facilities - often in remote
and hazardous regions - between every drug producing
region and every drug consuming region in the world.
These coincidences, in and of themselves, do not prove
complicity in the trade. Other facts, however, lead
inescapably in that direction.

A DIRECT DRUG LINK

The CPI report entitled "Cheney Led Halliburton To
Feast at Federal Trough" written by veteran
journalists Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller describes
how, under five years of Cheney's leadership,
Halliburton, largely through subsidiary Brown and
Root, enjoyed $3.8 billion in federal contracts and
taxpayer insured loans. The loans had been granted by
the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and the Overseas Private
Investment Corporation (OPIC). According to Ralph
McGehee's "CIA Base ©" both institutions are heavily
infiltrated by the CIA and routinely provide NOC to
its officers.

One of those loans to Russian financial/banking
conglomerate The Alfa Group of Companies contained
$292 million to pay for Brown and Root's contract to
refurbish a Siberian oil field owned by the Russian
Tyumen Oil Company. The Alfa Group completed its 51%
acquisition of Tyumen Oil in what was allegedly a
rigged bidding process in 1998. An official Russian
government report claimed that the Alfa Group's top
executives, oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven
"allegedly participated in the transit of drugs from
Southeast Asia through Russia and into Europe."

These same executives, Fridman and Aven, who
reportedly smuggled the heroin in connection with
Russia's Solntsevo mob family were the same ones who
applied for the EXIM loans that Halliburton's lobbying
later safely secured. As a result Brown and Root's
work in Alfa Tyumen oil fields could continue - and
expand.

After describing how organized criminal interests in
the Alfa Group had allegedly stolen the oil field by
fraud, the CPI story, using official reports from the
FSB (the Russian equivalent of the FBI), oil
companies such as BP-Amoco, former CIA and KGB
officers and press accounts then established a solid
link to Alfa Tyumen and the transportation of heroin.

In 1995 sacks of heroin disguised as sugar were stolen
from a rail container leased by Alfa Echo and sold in
the Siberian town of Khabarovsk. A problem arose when
many residents of the town became "intoxicated" or
"poisoned." The CPI story also stated, "The FSB report
said that within days of the incident, Ministry of
Internal Affairs (MVD) agents conducted raids of Alfa
Eko buildings and found 'drugs and other compromising
documentation.'

"Both reports claim that Alfa Bank has laundered drug
funds from Russian and Colombian drug cartels.

"The FSB document claims that at the end of 1993, a
top Alfa official met with Gilberto Rodriguez
Orejuela, the now imprisoned financial mastermind of
Colombia's notorious Cali cartel, 'to conclude an
agreement about the transfer of money into the Alfa
Bank from offshore zones such as the Bahamas,
Gibraltar and others. The plan was to insert it back
into the Russian economy through the purchase of stock
in Russian companies.

"É He [the former KGB agent] reported that there was
evidence 'regarding [Alfa Bank's] involvement with the
money laundering ofÉ Latin American drug cartels."

It then becomes harder for Cheney and Halliburton to
assert mere coincidence in all of this as CPI reported
that Tyumen's lead Washington attorney James C,
Langdon, Jr. at the firm of Aikin Gump "helped
coordinate a $2.2 million fund raiser for Bush this
June. He then agreed to help recruit 100 lawyers and
lobbyists in the capital to raise $25,000 each for W's
campaign."

The heroin mentioned in the CPI story, originated in
Laos where longtime Bush allies and covert warriors
Richard Armitage and retired CIA ADDO (Associate
Deputy Director of Operations) Ted Shackley have been
repeatedly linked to the drug trade. It then made its
way across Southeast Asia to Vietnam, probably the
port of Haiphong. Then the heroin sailed to Russia's
Pacific port of Valdivostok from whence it
subsequently bounced across Siberia by rail and thence
by truck or rail to Europe, passing through the hands
of Russian Mafia leaders in Chechnya and Azerbaijan.
Chechnya and Azerbaijan are hotbeds of both armed
conflict and oil exploration and Brown and Root has
operations all along this route.

This long, expensive and tortured path was hastily
established, as described by FTW in previous issues,
after President George Bush's personal envoy Richard
Armitage, holding the rank of Ambassador, had traveled
to the former Soviet Union to assist it with its
"economic development" in 1989. The obstacle then to a
more direct, profitable and efficient route from
Afghanistan and Pakistan through Turkey into Europe
was a cohesive Yugoslavian/Serbian government
controlling the Balkans and continuing instability in
the Golden Crescent of Pakistan/Afghanistan. Also,
there was no other way, using heroin from the Golden
Triangle (Burma, Laos and Thailand), to deal with
China and India but to go around them.

It is perhaps not by coincidence again that Cheney and
Armitage share membership in the prestigious Aspen
Institute, an exclusive bi-partisan research think
tank, and also in the U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of
Commerce. Just last November, in what may be a portent
of things to come, Armitage, played the role of
Secretary of Defense in an practical exercise at the
Council on Foreign Relations where he and Cheney are
also both members. Speculation that the scandal
plagued Armitage, who resigned under a cloud as
Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan
Administration, is W's first choice for Secretary of
Defense next year is widespread.

The Clinton Administration took care of all that
wasted travel for heroin with the 1998 destruction of
Serbia and Kosovo and the installation of the KLA as a
regional power. That opened a direct line from
Afghanistan to Western Europe and Brown and Root was
right in the middle of that too. The Clinton skill at
streamlining drug operations was described in detail
in the May issue of FTW in a story entitled "The
Democratic Party's Presidential Drug Money Pipeline."
That article has since been reprinted in three
countries. The essence of the drug economic lesson was
that by growing opium in Colombia and by smuggling
both cocaine and heroin from Colombia to New York City
through the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico (a
virtual straight line), traditional smuggling routes
could be shortened or even eliminated. This reduced
both risk and cost, increased profits and eliminated
competition.

FTW suspects the hand of Medellin co-founder Carlos
Lehder in this process and it is interesting to note
that Lehder, released from prison under Clinton in
1995, is now active in both the Bahamas and South
America. Lehder was known during the eighties as "The
genius of transportation." I can well imagine a Dick
Cheney, having witnessed the complete restructuring of
the global drug trade in the last eight years, going
to George W and saying, "Look, I know how we can make
it even better." One thing is for certain. As quoted
in the CPI article, one Halliburton Vice President
noted that if the Bush-Cheney ticket was elected, "the
company's government contracts would obviously go
through the roof."

THE DARK PAST

In July of 1977 this writer, then a Los Angeles Police
officer struggled to make sense of a world gone
haywire. In a last ditch effort to salvage a
relationship with my fiancŽe, Nordica Theodora D'Orsay
(Teddy), a CIA contract agent, I had traveled to
find her in New Orleans. On a hastily arranged
vacation, secured with the blessing of my Commanding
Officer, Captain Jesse Brewer of LAPD, I had gone on
my own, unofficially, to avoid the scrutiny of LAPD's
Organized Crime Intelligence Division (OCID).

Starting in the late spring of 1976 Teddy had wanted
me to join her operations from within the ranks of
LAPD. I had refused to get involved with drugs in any
way and everything she mentioned seemed to involve
either heroin or cocaine along with guns that she was
always moving out of the country. The Director of the
CIA then was George Herbert Walker Bush.

Although officially on staff at the LAPD Academy at
the time, I had been unofficially loaned to OCID since
January when Teddy, announcing the start of a new
operation planned in the fall of 1976 had suddenly
disappeared. She left many people, including me,
baffled and twisting in the breeze. The OCID
detectives had been pressuring me hard for information
about her and what I knew of her activities. It was
information I could not give them. Hoping against hope
that I would find some way to understand her
involvement with CIA, LAPD, the royal family of Iran,
the Mafia and drugs I set out alone into eight days of
Dantean revelations that have determined the course
of my life from that day to this.

Arriving in New Orleans in early July, 1977 I found
her living in an apartment across the river in Gretna.
Equipped with scrambler phones, night vision devices
and working from sealed communiquŽs delivered by naval
and air force personnel from nearby Belle Chasse Naval
Air Station, Teddy was involved in something truly
ugly. She was arranging for large quantities of
weapons to be loaded onto ships leaving for Iran. At
the same time she was working with Mafia associates of
New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello to coordinate
the movement of service boats that were bringing large
quantities of heroin into the city. The boats arrived
at Marcello controlled docks, unmolested by even the
New Orleans police she introduced me to, along with
divers, military men, former Green Berets and CIA
personnel.

The service boats were retrieving the heroin from oil
rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, oil rigs in international
waters, oil rigs built and serviced by Brown and Root.
The guns that Teddy monitored, apparently Vietnam era
surplus AK 47s and M16s, were being loaded onto ships
also owned or leased by Brown and Root. And more than
once during the eight days I spent in New Orleans I
met and ate at restaurants with Brown and Root
employees who were boarding those ships and leaving
for Iran within days. Once, while leaving a bar and
apparently having asked the wrong question, I was shot
at in an attempt to scare me off.

Disgusted and heart broken at witnessing my fiancŽe
and my government smuggling drugs, I ended the
relationship. Returning home to LA I made a clean
breast and reported all the activity I had seen,
including the connections to Brown and Root, to LAPD
intelligence officers. They promptly told me that I
was crazy. Forced out of LAPD under threat of death at
the end of 1978, I made complaints to LAPD's Internal
Affairs Division and to the LA office of the FBI under
the command of FBI SAC Ted Gunderson. I and my
attorney wrote to the politicians, the Department of
Justice, the CIA and contacted the L.A. Times. The FBI
and the LAPD said that I was crazy.

According to a 1981 two-part news story in the "Los
Angeles Herald Examiner" it was revealed that The FBI
had taken Teddy into custody and then released her
before classifying their investigation without further
action. Former New Orleans Crime Commissioner Aaron
Cohen told reporter Randall Sullivan that he found my
description of events perfectly plausible after his
thirty years of studying Louisiana's organized crime
operations.

To this day a CIA report prepared as a result of my
complaint remains classified and exempt from release
pursuant to Executive Order of the President in the
interests of national security and because it would
reveal the identities of CIA agents.

On October 26, 1981, in the basement of the West Wing
of the White House, I reported on what I had seen in
New Orleans to my friend and UCLA classmate Craig
Fuller. Craig Fuller went on to become Chief of Staff
to Vice President Bush from 1981 to 1985.

In 1982, then UCLA political science professor Paul
Jabber, filled in many of the pieces in my quest to
understand what I had seen in New Orleans. He was
qualified to do so because he had served as a CIA and
State Department consultant to the Carter
administration. Paul explained that, after a 1975
treaty between the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein the
Shah had cut off all overt military support for
Kurdish rebels fighting Saddam from the north of Iraq.
In exchange the Shah had gained access to the Shat
al-Arab waterway so that he could multiply his oil
exports and income. Not wanting to lose a long-term
valuable asset in the Kurds, the CIA had then used
Brown and Root, which operated in both countries and
maintained port facilities in the Persian Gulf and
near Shat al-Arab to rearm the Kurds. The whole
operation had been financed with heroin. Paul was
matter-of-fact about it.

In 1983 Paul Jabber left UCLA to become a Vice
President of Banker's Trust and Chairman of the Middle
East Department of the Council on Foreign Relations.

----------

If one is courageous enough to seek an "operating
system" that theoretically explains what FTW has just
described for you, one need look no further than a
fabulous two-part article in "Le Monde Diplomatique"
in April of this year. The brilliant stories, focusing
heavily on drug capital are titled "Crime, The World's
Biggest Free Enterprise." The brilliant and
penetrating words of authors Christian de Brie and
Jean de Maillard do a better job of explaining the
actual world economic and political situation than
anything that I have ever read.

De Brie writes, "By allowing capital to flow unchecked
from one end of the world to the other, globalization
and abandon of sovereignty have together fostered the
explosive growth of an outlaw financial marketÉ

"It is a coherent system closely linked to the
expansion of modern capitalism and based on an
association of three partners: governments,
transnational corporations and mafias. Business is
business: financial crime is first and foremost a
market, thriving and structured, ruled by supply and
demand.

"Big business complicity and political laisser faire
is the only way that large-scale organized crime can
launder and recycle the fabulous proceeds of its
activities. And the transnationals need the support of
governments and the neutrality of regulatory
authorities in order to consolidate their positions,
increase their profits, withstand and crush the
competition, pull off the "deal of the century" and
finance their illicit operations. Politicians are
directly involved and their ability to intervene
depends on the backing and the funding that keep them
in power. This collusion of interests is an essential
part of the world economy, the oil that keeps the
wheels of capitalism turning."

After confronting CIA Director John Deutch on world
television on November 15, 1996 I was interviewed by
the staffs of both the Senate and House Intelligence
Committees. I prepared written testimony for Senate
Intelligence which I submitted although I was never
called to testify. In every one of those interviews
and in my written testimony and in every lecture since
that time I have told the story of Brown and Root. I
will tell it again at the USC School of International
Relations on December the 8th, 2000 - regardless of
who wins the election.