To stop a near-term terror attack in Australia, read! -Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Friday, 22 July 2016

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au
 

To stop a near-term terror attack in Australia, read!

Since security agency ASIO raised Australia’s terrorism threat level in 2014, in response to the rise of ISIS, Australians have experienced the Sydney Siege, and observed a wave of deadly terrorist attacks all over the world. Following the 14 July attack in Nice, France, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop reminded Australians that “no city, no country is immune from terrorist attacks”. In the wake of Nice, and similar atrocities in Dhaka, Istanbul, Orlando, Belgium, San Bernardino and Paris, such a strike on Australian soil seems virtually inevitable, right? Wrong!

There is a single decisive action which could be taken, which would almost certainly stop such an attack, and it is something which you, personally, must do.

Following the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001 that killed almost 3,000 people, including 11 Australians, and wounded more than 6,000 others, the US Congress set up an investigative body drawn from both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Known as the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 and chaired by then-Senator Bob Graham of Florida, the Joint Inquiry did not attempt to supplant the investigations undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). But it did grill those agencies about what they had already known—many months before 9/11—about the activities of the hijackers, 15 out of 19 of whom were Saudi nationals, and how they were able to do what they did. Senator Graham has repeatedly said, “I think it is implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn’t speak English, most of whom had never been in the United States before, many of whom didn’t have a high school education—could’ve carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States.”

The Joint Inquiry released its final report in December 2002, but the administration of President George W. Bush withheld the concluding 28 pages of the 838-page report on grounds of “national security”. Then, despite President Barack Obama’s repeated promises to 9/11 victims’ family members that he would release the missing chapter, he steadfastly refused to do so, only capitulating under the excruciating public pressure generated by the 9/11 families, Senator Graham himself, and a bipartisan group of Congressmen led by Walter Jones, Thomas Massie, and Stephen Lynch, a process which had been uniquely initiated by the Citizens Electoral Council’s associates in the LaRouche movement in the United States, as insiders to the process have acknowledged.

Under pressure from this core of activists, dozens of Congressmen over the past several years actually read the 28 pages, which they were allowed to do only in a sealed room under strict observation, where they were not allowed to even take notes. After reading them, one Congressman after another declared that they saw no overriding issues of “national security” that should prevent their release, as Senator Graham himself had long argued. So why the fanatical, over decade-long cover up?

The reason for it is that those 28 pages reveal in extraordinary, relentless detail, that the government of Saudi Arabia, in particular its ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar bin Sultan, had provided enormous financial and logistical support to the hijackers.

Though the international news media have played down the significance of the 28 pages, some glimmers of reality have appeared, such as the 16 July Guardian article “Release of 9/11 report could strain US relationship with Saudi Arabia”, in which Philip Shenon reported, “The so-called 28 pages suggest a much larger web of connections between al-Qaeda and the Saudi royal family than had previously been known.” The New York Post’s Paul Sperry wrote on 15 July, “Now we know why the missing 28 pages on 9/11 were kept under lock and key for 15 years: They show the hijackers got help across America from Saudi diplomats and spies in the run-up to the attacks. Because of the cover-up, a Saudi terror support network may still be in place inside the United States.”

Had the 28 pages been released in 2002 with the rest of the report, it would have been almost impossible for George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard to have launched the Iraq war in 2003, the justification for which was not only Blair’s lying claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could be “launched within 45 minutes”, but that he had harboured al-Qaeda and was therefore also responsible for 9/11 and international terrorism in general. Congressman Thomas Massie underscored that the suppressed chapter forces a serious rethink: “This is sort of shocking when you read it … I had to stop every couple of pages and just sort of absorb and try to re-arrange my understanding of history for the past 13 years and the years leading up to that. It challenges you to rethink everything.”

Over the last decade, government and intelligence agency officials from many countries have repeatedly charged that the single biggest funder and creator of al-Qaeda and ISIS is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Many of these experts have also emphasised the notorious role of Australia’s “mother country”, Great Britain, in harbouring and protecting terrorists, earning the label “Londonistan” for its capital.[1] The 28 pages are the single most devastating case study not only of such Saudi sponsorship of terrorism, but of the wilful blind eye Anglo-American agencies have turned to such activities.

Implications for the UK

The name of Prince Bandar bin Sultan appears repeatedly throughout the 28 pages. A leading Saudi royal, he was the Saudi ambassador to Washington at the time of 9/11, whose close friendship with President George W. Bush and his family had earned him the nickname “Bandar Bush”. The 28 pages refer repeatedly to Bandar’s direct involvement with funds transfers to US-based Saudi intelligence agents Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, who were providing direct aid to some of the future hijackers. Not mentioned in the chapter, however, is that the UK government oversaw regular payments into the same Washington DC Riggs Bank account from which Bandar and his wife financed the 9/11 hijackers. This is the deeper scandal of the 28 pages, and the principal reason for the cover-up. The payments, which were made from a confidential account at the Bank of England administered by the UK Ministry of Defence, were corrupt kickbacks to Prince Bandar from the proceeds of the al-Yamamah oil-for-arms deal, the UK’s biggest-ever arms contract, which Bandar had negotiated with then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1985.[2] Under the deal, British defence contractor BAE Systems, which has a big presence in Australia’s defence industry, especially in South Australia, supplied fighter jets and infrastructure to the Saudi Air Force in exchange for 600,000 barrels of oil per day—one full oil tanker—for every day of the life of the contract, which as of 2005 had netted BAE Systems £43 billion. Beyond that declared profit, al-Yamamah generated a secret US$100 billion-plus off-the-books slush fund, which was used to finance coups d’état, assassinations, and terrorism, including the creation of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, as Prince Bandar’s friend and biographer William Simpson recorded.[3] Under continued Saudi sponsorship, the Afghan mujahedin morphed into al-Qaeda, and then into the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, IS).

Indeed, Presidents Bush and Obama were not the only, or even the main protectors of Bandar and the Saudis in their creation and financing of international terrorism. That role has been played by the UK establishment through its arms industries and intelligence agencies, and in particular by Prince Charles, personally. The later phases of al-Yamamah were negotiated by Charles himself during 12 official visits to Saudi Arabia and innumerable private ones.[4] He also obstructed UK investigations into the Saudi role in international terrorism. Author Mark Hollingsworth reported in his book Saudi Babylon: Torture, Corruption and Cover-up Inside the House of Saud, that New Scotland Yard Detective Chief Inspector Stephen Ratcliffe, confronted by lawyers for the families of 9/11 victims with the question, “Have the UK authorities uncovered anything to show that charities run by some members of the Saudi royal family were channelling money to terrorists?”, replied with embarrassment: “‘Our ability to investigate the Saudis is very limited’, he said. He then paused, looked across at a photograph of Prince Charles on the wall, raised his eyebrows and smiled knowingly without saying a word. ‘He did not say anything but the message was crystal clear when he looked at the picture’, said a police officer who was present. ‘It was Prince Charles’s special relationship with the Saudis which was a problem. He gave no other reason why they were restricted’.”[5]

Among the closest Saudi friends of Charles is not only Bandar, but the latter’s brother-in-law, Prince Turki bin Faisal, whose sister Princess Haifa (Bandar’s wife) was also implicated in the Riggs Bank accounts from which payments to the hijackers’ sponsors were made. Turki had headed Saudi General Intelligence from 1979 to 2001, during which time he oversaw the creation of al-Qaeda; he resigned 10 days before the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 families have also charged Turki with orchestrating 9/11. Bandar and Turki were two out of only eight foreign royal invitations to the wedding of Prince Charles with Camilla Parker-Bowles in 2005, and they are two of eight leading propagandists, organisers or financiers of international terrorism who are past or present board members or funders of his Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS).[6] Three decades ago Charles convinced his good friend, the now-deceased Saudi King Fahd, to finance the construction of a network of mosques in the UK, which was soon to house the first phases of terrorist infrastructure where the Wahhabist radicals were trained, such as the infamous Finsbury Park Mosque in northern London. Among other atrocities, Finsbury personnel were involved in the 7 July 2005 subway bombings (“7/7”) in London, which killed 52 and wounded 700 more.[7] Also of particular note is the role of Abdullah Omar Naseef, co-founder of Charles’s OCIS and past chairman of its Board of Trustees, who co-created Maktab al-Khidamat, the mujahedin organisation that in 1989 changed its name to al-Qaeda. Naseef’s Pakistan-based Rabita Trust was designated a “Global Terrorist Entity” by the United States in October 2001, and in 2013 the Second Circuit US Court of Appeals authorised continuation of a 9/11 families’ lawsuit against Naseef for “knowingly provid[ing] financial support to al-Qaeda through the [Muslim World League], Rabita”, and other organisations.[8]

With the 28 pages now public, the Australian government should call on the British government to end its parallel cover-up of how the al-Yamamah arms deal generated funds for the 9/11 attack. The UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) opened an investigation of the al-Yamamah deal in 2003, which revealed serious corruption, including kickbacks paid to Prince Bandar and his agent Wafic Saïd, another person close to Prince Charles. The SFO investigation progressed until December 2006 when the attorney-general, under direct orders from Tony Blair, shut it down, citing “national and international security”. In light of the 28 pages, which reveal that Bandar funded the 9/11 attack from the same account into which the Ministry of Defence transferred his al-Yamamah kickbacks, Theresa May’s government must immediately reopen the SFO’s al-Yamamah investigation, or rightly be regarded as complicit in terrorism.

Typified by the role of Prince Charles, the City of London/Wall Street-run Anglo-American establishment has aided and protected the Saudi role in international terrorism, including such “domestic” terrorists in the UK as the self-confessed MI5 agent Abu Hamza, who inspired the 7/7 subway bombings in 2005, among dozens of similar cases where MI5 or MI6 assets were involved in terrorism. The Sydney Siege gunman also fits this profile, having had years of extensive involvement with MI5’s Australian branch ASIO. Now, with that establishment’s financial system on the verge of a collapse far worse than that of 2008, they are unleashing that Saudi-centred terrorist apparatus more than ever, in order to justify the establishment of domestic police-states before their system evaporates and their political control along with it. After all, the rise in the minor party vote in Australia as voters turn on the major parties, part of a global revolt by voters against Establishment elites, also seen in voting in the UK and USA, all represent a revolt by those whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by City of London/Wall Street looting over the past several decades. Again and again, the same City of London institutions responsible for imposing brutal austerity, have been implicated in the financing of terrorism.[9]

Do these charges seem outrageous to you? Then read the 28 pages. We have provided excerpts of those pages in the 20 July 2016 issue of our Australian Alert Service, but there is really no substitute to your taking an hour to read the entire 28 pages for yourself. They are available if you respond to the email address listed above, with a 2003 cover letter from members of the Joint Inquiry. See if they do not, as they did for Congressman Massie, change your entire view of the world as it has evolved since 9/11.

Having read the 28 pages, then ask yourself how in the world most leading press and government officials can conceivably argue, as does CIA chief John Brennan (a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia), that the 28 pages are “unverified” and “just preliminary reports”, and that, as Tony Blair claimed and the British and US governments continue to claim, the Saudis are still “our greatest allies in fighting international terrorism”.

Once you have internalised the shocking implications of the 28 pages, organise all of your friends and associates to read them as well. And demand that your MP read them for him or herself, and then act upon their stunning implications.

Or, you can dismiss our warnings and simply sit and wait, wondering when the next terror strike will horribly maim or kill you or your loved ones.

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Notes and references

 

1. Tom Tugendhat, “Why a US law to let 9/11 families sue Saudi Arabia is a threat to Britain and its intelligence agencies”, The Telegraph, 5 June 2016. The Conservative MP, a former adviser to the Chief of the Defence Staff, expressed the dread gripping the British Establishment at the prospect that the US Congress will pass the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA). This bill will allow US victims of terrorists to bring lawsuits in US courts against foreign governments that sponsored or turned a blind eye to the terrorists who committed the attack. “Saudi Arabia may be the target of the law, but it could also have serious unintended consequences for Britain,” Tugendhat lamented. “Under the bill, US citizens might sue the British government claiming a negligent lack of effort to tackle Islamic radicalism in earlier decades. Some in the US already accuse Britain of tolerating radical preachers in ‘Londonistan’ during the Nineties, an approach they say spawned terrorism.” The JASTA bill passed the US Senate in May, and is due to come to a vote in the House of Representatives in September, around the time of the 15th anniversary of 9/11.
          “9/11, ISIS, and the Anglo-American/Saudi Terror Nexus”, reprints from Executive Intelligence Review (2000-2014), is a dossier of articles amply documenting the status of “Londonistan” as a pivotal centre of global terrorism. Return to text
2. David Leigh and Rob Evans, “BAE accused of secretly paying £1bn to Saudi prince”, The Guardian, 7 June 2007, reported: “According to legal sources familiar with the records, BAE Systems made cash transfers to Prince Bandar every three months for 10 years or more. BAE drew the money from a confidential account held at the Bank of England that had been set up to facilitate the al-Yamamah deal. … Both BAE and the government’s arms sales department, the Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO), allegedly had drawing rights on the funds, which were held in a special Ministry of Defence account run by the government banker, the paymaster general. Those close to DESO say regular payments were drawn down by BAE and despatched to Prince Bandar’s account at Riggs bank in Washington DC.” Return to text
3. Jeffrey Steinberg, “Scandal of the Century Rocks British Crown and the City”, EIR, 22 June 2007. This and other articles in EIR’s 15-year dossier (Note 1) document the deployment of al-Yamamah funds. Return to text
4. “Prince Charles and Saudi-backed terrorism: Demand answers!”, CEC Media Release, 25 November 2015. Return to text
5. Mark Hollingsworth with Sandy Mitchell, Saudi Babylon: Torture, Corruption and Cover-Up Inside the House of Saud (Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 2005). Return to text
6. “Prince Charles and Saudi-backed terrorism: Demand answers!”, CEC Media release, 25 November 2015. Return to text
7. Glen Isherwood, “Who Is Sponsoring International Terrorism?”, video and transcript of presentation to CEC International Conference, March 2015, details these sordid relationships. Return to text
8. Richard Freeman and Jeffrey Steinberg, “British-Saudi Bank Cartel Alleged to Finance Terrorism”, EIR, 22 May 2015. See also the documentation in notes 4 and 7. Return to text

Jon Henley, “City ‘haven’ for terrorist money laundering”, The Guardian, 9 October 2001. Henley reported on a French Parliamentary report, with attached documentation that, “Up to 40 companies, banks and individuals based in Britain can legitimately be suspected of maintaining direct or indirect relations with the terrorist” Osama bin Laden. More recently, Freeman and Steinberg of EIR reported (op. cit., Note 8) on a US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report detailing the ties of the British megabank HSBC to international narcotics money-laundering and the financing of terrorism. Nearly 50 pages of this Senate report dealt with terrorism financing, using the case study of HSBC’s relations with Al-Rajhi Bank, the largest bank in Saudi Arabia, and the failure of HSBC to acknowledge US government and other reports of al-Rajhi’s links to Islamic extremists and terrorists.