Jeb’s Hasty 911 Call

    Part 2

“In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants.

These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and to the Inspector General's office. I was met with silence” [i]

When Bush Sr. became president, Springman realized that his protests were falling on deaf ears, because:  

“What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets”. [ii]

“Rounded up by Osama Bin Laden”? How did Osama Bin Laden become a chief operative for the CIA, an agency Bush Sr. once headed in 1976?

Much has since been written about the cozy business relationship between the Bin Laden and Bush families, from the Right Wing “Judicial Watch”, the Wall Street Journal, and to the Left Wing magazine, “In These Times.” [iii] 

The Bin Laden family sold its shares of the James Baker/James Carlucci/ Bush family run Carlyle Group circa 45 days after 9/11:  

The Saudi Arabian family of Osama Bin Laden severed its financial ties to the Carlyle Group, a prominent Washington investment firm, a source familiar with the relationship said. The family has sold its $2.02 million investment back to the firm in light of public controversy surrounding the family after September's terrorist attacks.[iv]

The Carlyle firm, (of which “pre- RR” has been reporting on for over 3 years) whose business ventures run the gamut from soda bottling companies in Texas to armaments, are known to use their political influence in peddling business deals around the globe.  The Bin Laden’s family connections to Carlyle reaped both groups millions in profits from the US and Saudi Arabia to the Far East. In fact, the Bin Laden family is believed to be one of Dubbya’s original financial backers.  

That Dubbya made his first $20 million off the investment given to him by the Bin Laden family (Osama’s brother) years ago, or that Dubbya draws money from the Carlyle Group, may not have been considered a great issue until 9/11. 

What makes the connection more intriguing is that Dubbya, prior to 9/11, demanded the FBI  “back off” of any further investigation into the Bin Laden family, and their possible ties to Moslem terrorists in the US and to their funding of WAMY.  The World Assembly of Muslim Youth claims to be a Moslem charity group. However, this group lost its funding and standing in Pakistan after the Pakistani government charged them with leading terrorist attacks against Indians in Kashmir.  

To this date, WAMY funds have not been frozen in the US.  

Even though the Bush family had financial ties to the Bin Laden family and Springman complained about the White House and State Departments refusal to turn off the visa spigot for suspected aliens entering the country through Saudi Arabia, this does not tie the FBI or the INS into the blame.

The FBI did, however, know about terrorist groups infiltrating the US, but perhaps not in the way the media wants its audience to believe.  Whereas the media and White House would draw the INS and FBI as the main culprits, or slackers, the earlier FBI report paints a different picture. The FBI not only documented their trials and tribulations in monitoring some terrorist groups in the US, but noted the agency’s subsequent obstruction by Dubbya. The file is reported as being cataloged as: Case ID - 199-Eye WF 213 589. 199.

Here Palast, who obtained a copy, explains in part:  

This document is marked "Secret". Case ID - 199-Eye WF 213 589. 199 is FBI code for case type. 9 would be murder. 65 would be espionage. 199 means national security. WF indicates Washington field office special agents were investigating ABL - because of its relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, WAMY - a suspected terrorist organisation (sic). ABL is Abdullah Bin Laden, president and treasurer of WAMY.[v] 

The report “alleged that the cynicism of the American establishment and "connections between the CIA and Saudi Arabia and the Bush men and bin Ladens may have been the real cause of the deaths of thousands in the World Trade Centre (sic) attacks”.[vi]

This report, and the history uncovered so far, corroborates with Springman’s unheeded complaints about spurious young Moslem men legally entering the US under the blessings of the US State Department, CIA, and Reagan/Bush White House.  Springman presents several examples of his experience in this matter. One incident involved two Pakistanis who told Springman they wanted a visa to enter the US for a trade fair – even though they could not name the trade fair or the State in which it was being held.  He denied their visas. The Embassy over-rode his ruling.  Another such example was of an Arab who, in the visa office, filled out the government forms for two Pakistanis seeking entrance into the US. Over his objections, the State Department allowed them in as well.  Springman also charged that of the ranking officials placed in the US Consulate in Jeddah, only 3 were not CIA agents.  

These policy violation incidents occurred so often that Springman kept a dossier on these illegal activities.  When he returned stateside and, as head of the visa department in Jeddah, lodged a complaint with the State Department -- Springman claimed they shredded his documents.

Springman did not realize the enormity of the State Department’s irregular activities until he discovered that it was the Reagan-Bush White House who recruited these future Taliban fighters to be trained with US assistance and funding.[vii]

What else could one have expected form an Iran-Contra administration but to have supported a Taliban membership known to have been hostile to US, and then lie about it to the American people and to themselves?  

The Reagan/Bush White House and NSC were actively involved in forging greater bonds between themselves and the Afghan warlords and tribes; despite the fact the Afghan groups hated and distrusted the US.

In several White House e-mails dated in late October of 1985, Walter Raymond of the NSC discusses with another NSC high ranking official, Donald Fortier, alternative ways in trying to convince a visiting Afghan rebel group to chum around with Reagan in the White House -- since the president already set a “firm appointment” to visit with this fanatical group from “11:30 to 11:50 a.m.” on 10/30/85. 

 The response from Fortier was that the militant group did not want to go to the White House even though “(T)hey have been invited to the White House by the president of the US and for that they were damned lucky.”

Raymond comments in an e-mail that he realizes Afghan Fighters are “not Pro-American” and do not want to be seen as a puppet to the US.

Nonetheless, Raymond adds to another email: “The president, as you know, strongly supports the brave fight for freedom being waged by the Afghans peoples…and that Reagan deeply believes the Mujahaddin must be part of any process leading to peace in Afghanistan”.  This included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the most radical Islamic fundamentalist and certainly one of the more fervent anti-American players in the visiting group.  

Raymond reminds Fortier: “(T)his is a continency (sic) plan. Do not used unless asked. I have…advised State…to use the same line.“ The meeting never took place. It was not because the administration came to its senses and realized they were doing business with an anti-American radical militia. But the refusal to visit the Reagan/Bush White House was due, instead, to the Afghan’s and Pakistani refusal to go no further than visiting New York.[viii]

Apparently, an air of impropriety meant more to these radical and fundamentalist warlords than it did to either Reagan or Bush.

So, here, it is discovered how the Reagan/Bush administration cuddled up and to worst elements of the anti-American Afghan militias by giving them weapons and further training in war and terrorism in order for Reagan/Bush to win points with the so-called “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan -- who would later form a terrorist organization to attack American interests.

 Yet the Reagan/Bush Administration did not just favor any group, but those “freedom fighters” particularly favored by Osama Bin-Laden -- who chose his extremists with the full support of the White House.  Bin-Laden appeared to be a contact man between the US and his “freedom fighters” of choice. He was, after all, a member of that Bin-Laden family who were financially tied to the Bush family for tens of millions of dollars.  The relationship between Osama Bin-Laden, Afghan Fundamentalists, the Pakistan Government and Taliban movements on the one hand -- and the CIA, the Reagan/Bush White House and the State Department on the other hand, are actually the same hand.  

As in the case of Iraq’s Hussein, Panama’s Noreiga and now the Saudi’s Bin-Laden clan…one must question why we are yet again witnessing another example of a Bush family member going after another one of their family’s former business partners.

As to what role the FBI actually played in all this blowback is unclear. If anything, it appears the FBI is taking the brunt. As Springman pointed out:

The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State Department's faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which 19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel their investigation was being obstructed. Would you be surprised to find out that FBI agents are a bit frustrated that they can't be looking into some Saudi connections?[ix] (Italics added).

Springman is partially right. It would have been more correct for him to have said: “If they were allowed to follow Saudi investment patterns, the FBI could have found some answers”. 

An article from the UK is expected out in the next few months on a 1994 financial meeting between the Saudi’s and Moslem terrorists.  This might shed further light on this matter.

Next Installment: Mueller’s FBI plays cat with your mouse.

Dubbya’s Hasty 911 Call: Part 3.