Quote:In January, 2007, Patrick accepted an invitation to meet an offshore investor in a greasy spoon diner in Long Island. They had never met, but over the previous year the man had fed Patrick bits and pieces of
information about the workings of the phantom stock scam, and the hope was that he might have something more to say in person. But that day at the diner, all he had was a message.

“I’ll make this quick,” he said, with two other witnesses present. “I have a message for you from Russia. The message is, ‘We are about to kill you. We are about to kill you.’ Patrick, they are going to kill you. If you do not stop this crusade, they will kill you. Normally they’d have already hurt someone close to you as a warning, but you’re so weird, they don’t know how you’d react.”

*In a later phone conversation with an associate of Patrick’s the man described how he received this message. He said he returned home one night and his wife told him there was a package on his desk.

“And there was a beautiful little box, and inside was a matryoshka.”
Matryoshkas are those lacquered Russian dolls - the kind with multiple dolls of decreasing size inside of them.

“And I opened up the last matryoshka,” said the man, “and inside is an `F’ with a cross on it — which is from Felix.”

That’s Felix Sater, a Russian immigrant described in a federal complaint as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a money laundering and stock fraud ring involving organized crime figures from four Mafia families. The New York Times has reported that Sater was once also “embroiled in a plan to buy anti-aircraft missiles on the black market … in either Russia or Afghanistan….” Apparently, Sater offered to buy the missiles from Osama Bin Laden in exchange for amnesty in his Mafia fraud case.

David Guyatt Wrote:Can someone explain to me how Osama bin Laden has the “juice” to arange an “amnesty” for a Russian mobster in a Mafia money-laundering and stock fraud case in the US? It seems evident that Felix Sater has good reason to know that Osama can fix the case, as Russian Mafiya types are not known to to hand over substantial sums of money on vague promises based on hopes, wishes and desires?

Might this tidbit offer further insights into 911, I wonder?

Quote:Charles Gasparino (citing “speculation” from investigators) reported last week on CNBC that the Russian Mafia might have been partners in Madoff’s larcenous fund business. Or perhaps the Mob had an even greater interest in Madoff’s market making operation, as some of our sources have told us in recent weeks.

Quote:It is fitting to think of most U.S. intelligence assets as chess pieces, moved at the whim of their controllers. That is however not an apt metaphor for the meta-group, which clearly has the resources to negotiate and to exert its own influence interactively upon the governments it works with.

Since first hearing about the meta-group's role in the Russian 9/11, I have pondered the question whether it could have played a similar role in the American 9/11 as well. At this point I have to say that I have found no persuasive evidence that would prove its involvement. The fact remains that two informed and credible witnesses, Sibell Edmonds and Indira Singh, have spoken independently of the importance of international drug trafficking in the background of 9/11.

The Bush Administration has paid Sibell Edmonds the tribute of silencing her on the grounds of national interest. She has nonetheless made it clear that what she would talk about concerns that part of the world where the meta-group has influence:

SE [Sibell Edmonds]: It's interesting, in one of my interviews, they say "Turkish countries," but I believe they meant Turkic countries – that is, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and all the 'Stans, including Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and [non-Turkic countries like] Afghanistan and Pakistan. All of these countries play a big part in the sort of things I have been talking about.

CD [Chris Deliso]: What, you mean drug-smuggling?

SE: Among other things. Yes, that is a major part of it. It's amazing that in this whole "war on terror" thing, no one ever talks about these issues.[120]

Indira Singh, who lost her high-tech job at J.P. Morgan after telling the FBI about Ptech and 9/11, was even more dramatic in her public testimony at a Canadian event:

I did a number of things in my research and when I ran into the drugs I was told that if I mentioned the money to the drugs around 9/11 that would be the end of me.[121]

Quote:I read it more as an attempt by Them to exploit American fears after 9/11, and quite possibly sow the seeds for 9/11 Mk2. After all, with Millipede Minor saying the phrase "War on Terror" is no longer part of the British government's vocabulary, They need something to persuade the shirkers to get back On Message.

Quote:worked for the Genovese organized crime family, with goons like Meyer Lansky and Vinnie “Blue Eyes” Alo, before he was sentenced to a number of years in Sing-Sing prison.

Quote:By Steinhardt Jr.’s own account, the principal partners in his first hedge fund were the Genovese Mafia, Ivan Boesky, Marty Peretz (the aristocrat who funded Cramer), and a man named Marc Rich. Rich is
closely connected to Ronald Greenwald, described in the authoritative book "Red Mafiya" as the man who, along with the Genovese family, brought the Russian Mob to America.

Quote:A few weeks later, Elgindy appears in court for sentencing. It is noticed that he is missing one finger. He is asked about it, and claims it happened in a beach barbequing accident. The prosecutor points out that
he has been under house arrest. Elgindy changes his story, maintaining that it was a home accident. However, sources familiar with the investigation inform Deep Capture that they believe Russian mobsters did it as a warning not to talk while he was in prison. One even maintains, “The Russians went to his house and forced Elgindy to saw off his own finger, to help him better remember the experience. They also told him that if he talked they would skin [a member of Elgindy's family] alive.”

Jan Klimkowski Wrote:David - absolutely.
However, I'm also drawn to Peter Dale Scott's exploration of a meta-group based around drugs & resources - see for instance the article I linked to above.

Jan Klimkowski Wrote:David - absolutely.

However, I'm also drawn to Peter Dale Scott's exploration of a meta-group based around drugs & resources - see for instance the article I linked to above.

Quote:Adnan Khashoggi
Linked to 911 Terrorists

PART III: WE ROB BANKS

By Alex Constantine
--
"The theological-political order that is promoted by the Islamist ideology
is perfectly in tune with the requirements of American capitalism, [which]
heralds the unilateral reign of uncontrollable globalization in the hands of
business mafias and religious fanatics." - Richard Lebeviere, Dollars for
Terror


In a televised post-911 address, President Bush probed the soul of The
Terrorist: "By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by
abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path
of fascism and Nazism and totalitarianism" - a reasonable description of his
business circle and its bomb-throwing enforcers (or a Nietzchian slip).

On a daily basis, the press, seemingly blind to the domestic financial
connections to terrorism, grips the Octopus, scrapes a nerve, and a tentacle
buried in the mud trembles and unfurls, as in this recent business wire
report on Citigroup: "... links traverse a curious variety of unexamined
threads in the U.S. financial community. Online Journal's Larry Chin
(2-1-2002) reminded that Citigroup has repeatedly been charged with money
laundering. This, as it's Board of Directors includes John Deutch, former
CIA Director, Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary and intimate friend of
Enron's Ken Lay, but also former CIA Executive Director Nora Slatkin...'"

Haunting, unexplained lapses on the part of government officials - "FBI
agents in the United States probing relatives [of] Osama Bin Laden before
September 11 were told to back off soon after George W Bush became
president, the BBC has reported ..." - aren't so anomalous to the eye once
it is open.

Not, as a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Service shrilled in October
2003, so "incredible": "There are many business connections between the Bush
family and the elite of Saudi Arabia.... The powerful - and very rich - Bin
Laden family helped fund [W.'s] first venture into oil. The cozy friendship
continued for decades. After a terrorist attack at a barracks in Saudi
Arabia, which killed 19 Americans, the bin Laden family received a
multi-billion dollar contract to re-build. And incredibly, George Bush Sr.
was in a business meeting at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington on the
morning of September 11th with one of Osama Bin Laden's brothers..."1

Another "incredible" lapse amused liberal talk show hosts at the
newly-chrustened Air America network in the summer of 2004: the quizzing of
Condoleeza Rice by the 911 Commission revealed that Bush had received a
"detailed and lengthy presidential daily briefing from the CIA in which
Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda's aim of launching an attack against the U.S.
[was] discussed." The White House refused to release the report.2

Some things were simply no one's business - like the relationship of the
Bush clan to Adnan Khashoggi, who was beholden to and cherished by the bin
Ladens and Bush's Saudi business partners. Khashoggi surfaced most visibly
from the trenches of Iran-Contra affair; here, too, scraps of the
pre-history of 911 are scattered like bomb debris.

In 1985, Khashoggi turned to the Saudi National Commercial Bank, controlled
by Sheikh Mahfouz, to borrow $35-million dollars to buy military hardware
for shipment to Iran.

Was it such an anomaly, after all, that Mahfouz, the Saudi banker and
part-owner of BCCI - later a key suspect in the 911 plot - Adnan, and Bush
were tight? W. had been bailed out three times when his business ventures
went under. In 1988, the year his father won the presidency, a gaggle of
Saudis bought into Harken Oil. Later the same year, Harken drilled for oil
in the Persian Gulf, the company's first offshore contract. Two of the
investors in Harken were Mahfouz and Osama's brother, Salem bin Laden.3
But reporters continued to be shocked by the continuous stream of
"revelations." "In politics, truth is often stranger than fiction," wrote
Martin Rivers at the Center for Research on Globalization. "Sheikh Mahfouz's
sister is actually one of four wives of Osama bin Laden, making the two men
brothers-in-law, a fact that former CIA Director James Woolsey revealed in
1998 Senate testimony. Thus, Osama bin Laden is sleeping with the sister of
Bush's [and Khashoggi's] business partner. Really."

Absolutely, and reporters, tank-thinkers, even prosecutors were "shocked"
when they tripped on the miz-maze of illegal financial transactions
preceding 911.

On May 22, 2002, FBI agents Jeffrey A. Royer and Lynn Wingate were indicted
for engaging in securities fraud, racketeering and obstruction of justice.
An extortion charge was also filed against Royer.

The next morning, the Washington Post printed the remarks of prosecuting
U.S. attorney Alan Vinegard: "The allegations reveal a shocking partnership
between an experienced stock manipulator and law enforcement agents,
undertaken for their illicit personal financial gain." Seems Royer and
Wingate dipped into the FBI's case-file database to keep tabs on the
investigation and pass confidential information on to perpetrators in the
stock scheme.

Kenneth Breen, an assistant federal attorney assigned to the case, added
that one Amr Ibrahim "Anthony" Elgindy, a financial consultant and
co-conspirator named in the indictment, notified his Salomon Smith Barney
broker to to sell off $300,000 worth of stocks from his children's trust
funds. While chatting with his broker by phone, Anthony Elgindy predicted
that a stock market crash was imminent and the index would fall to 3000 (it
did).4 The broker contacted the FBI, but Elgindy explained away his apparent
foreknowledge of the 911 terrorist assaults with the alibi that he'd been
trying to unload the stock shares for several weeks (this explanation didn't
rule out the possiblility that Elgindy's foreknowkedge preceded 911 by the
same margin, however).

Elgindy had co-conspired lustily for shares in a communications company,
GenesisIntermedia (GENI). It was a stock pumping orgy. The proprietors of
GENI were Adnan Khashoggi and Ramy El-Batrawi (both career criminals lurking
behind their GENI blind would be instrumental in a wide-ranging
disinfomation campaign waged to confuse the public after 911).

In the sealed indictment, opened in November of the same year, a bit of
transcribed dialogue was included in the evidence file that referred to an
"Anthony" receiving "$1.8 million" to inflate the price of GENI stock.

Elgindy ... didn't that name surface during the Iran-contra investigation?
Gary Dobray, in his "Body Politic" Internet column, found another
Iran-contra link, this one to Anthony's brother, Khaled: "Recently the White
House made this Iran-Contra co-conspirator [Elliot Abrams] a new National
Security Council official.... [Abrams] chaired the US Commission on
International Religious Freedom and, as fate would have it, [sat] on the DC
Human Rights Committee chaired by Abrams was ... Anthony Elgindy's brother,
Khaled Elgindy. Khaled is a DC Arab activist who served as a policy analyst
on Elliot Abrams' Human Rights Committee. Anthony and Khaled's father,
Ibrahim Elgindy, was reported by the press to have founded an umbrella group
of Muslim organizations in Chicago and led a 1998 protest on behalf of
Muhammad Salah, a man the US government calls a designated global terrorist.
Salah confessed to Israeli authorities that he was raising money for Hamas'
suicide bombings and training cells in the US to make bombs and
explosives."5

There were more ties to Iran-Contra on the GENI payroll: The director of
GENI was Michael Roy Fugler. Fugler was a business front organizer for CIA
"informant" Barry Seal. Seal, of course, allegedly ran cocaine into the U.S.
until 1986, when he turned witness against his Colombian suppliers.

He's dead, of course.

All of which goes to say that once you map this underworld out, nothing
surprises you anymore.
-----------------
NOTES

1) CBC Broadcast, "CONSPIRACY OR COINCIDENCE?," October 29, 2003. See,
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/conspiracytheories/saudi.html

2) Ibid.

3) See Salon, November 19, 2001 and Intelligence Newsletter, March 2, 2000.

4) Anthony M. DeStefano, "Ex-Agent Had Key Data Stock scam charges have
eerie link," Newsday, May 29, 2002
http://prisonplanet.com/Ex_Agent_Had_Key_Data.htm.

5) Gary Dobray, http://www.onthecanvas.com/body_politic.htm

Quote:Can someone explain to me how Osama bin Laden has the “juice” to arange an “amnesty” for a Russian mobster in a Mafia money-laundering and stock fraud case in the US? It seems evident that Felix Sater has good reason to know that Osama can fix the case, as Russian Mafiya types are not known to to hand over substantial sums of money on vague promises based on hopes, wishes and desires?

Quote:While Marc Rich and his Russian connections are too well known to require further airing here, Ronald Greenwald is a new name to me - and he seems to be a mighty interesting character judging by his Wiki entry (which I suspect is far from fulsome?):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Greenwald

Quote:Mark Rich and the Russia Connection
Christopher Ruddy
Monday, Feb. 19, 2001
Marc Rich may have a pardon clearing him to enter the U.S. at any time, but don't expect him ever to return.
Washington sources tell me that congressional investigators would love to slap him with a subpoena upon arrival and haul him before congressional hearings and the cameras for interrogation.

The Clinton pardon deal may just be one small part of what Congress may want to find out from Rich.

Perhaps the most serious concern for congressional investigators is Rich's longstanding ties with Russian intelligence agencies, the Russian mafia, and some of the old communist states of East Europe.

Last week the New York Post's Rod Dreher reported that Rich made tens of millions of dollars helping Russia’s communist bosses loot their country, leaving it bankrupt.

Rich’s role in ruining Russia’s economy was detailed in the book "Godfather of the Kremlin," by Paul Klebnikov, who Dreher describes as an expert on Russia and a Forbes magazine senior editor.

The book reveals how Rich and Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky and associates stole untold sums from the Russian people through corrupt international financial manipulations.

In 1983, the year he fled the United States to avoid prosecution, Rich took advantage of the grain embargo the United States imposed on the USSR because of its war in Afghanistan.

Rich ignored the embargo and imported grain into the Soviet Union, winning friends in the Soviet hierarchy with whom he would ally himself when the Communist government collapsed.

According to NewsMax.com Washington sources, from then on Rich was associated in his business dealings "by the Communist Party and KGB senior figures. Everybody in that carousel, commie and KGB, got personal benefits ... commissions in Western accounts."

It is widely believed by intelligence experts that today's powerful Russian "mafia" is nothing more than an arm of Russian intelligence agencies, such as the former KGB.

Other evidence suggests Rich had more than a casual business relationship with Russia's spy agencies.

Appearing on CNN's "Larry King Live" earlier this month, former head of the U.S. Marshals Service Howard Safir revealed efforts by East Germany, then a Russian satellite state, to get Rich off the hook.

Safir said, referring to Rich, "You are talking about an individual, when I did a spy exchange in 1986, he had a lawyer from East Germany offer $225 million for him and Pinky Green if the prosecutions were wiped out."

According to Klebnikov, Rich came into the picture again as a major wheeler-dealer in Russia around 1990, when the Soviet Union began to open up to outsiders, Dreher wrote.

"Governmental authority began to crumble. All these local Communist Party bosses got to strike deals on their own," the author told Dreher.

Working out of Switzerland, which has secretive banking laws, Rich was in a prime position to help Russia's plunderers carry out their dirty work," Dreher wrote.

"Klebnikov reported that Rich dealt in oil, aluminum, zinc and other raw commodities.

"He'd strike a deal with the local party boss, or the director of a state-owned company," Klebnikov told Dreher. "He'd say, 'OK, you will sell me the [commodity] at 5 to 10 percent of the world market price.

" 'And in return, I will deposit some of the profit I make by reselling it 10 times higher on the world market, and put the kickback in a Swiss bank account.' "

"He made a complete mint off of Russia," says Klebnikov.

Rich began buying Russian aluminum at absurdly cheap prices, with his hard currency. Rich then dumped the aluminum onto Western industrial markets, causing a 30 percent collapse in the price of the metal, as Western industry had no way to compete.

There was such an outflow of aluminum from Russia that there were shortages of aluminum for Russian fish canneries. At the same time, Rich reportedly moved in to secure export control over the supply of most West Siberian crude oil to Western markets.

Rich's companies were under investigation for fraud in Russia, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal of May 13, 1993.

As a result, for at least two years, while the Soviet Union was writhing in its death throes, Rich was that nation's largest trader of aluminum and oil on a spot basis.

According to Dreher, a former foreign-trade minister told the author that Rich taught the robber-baron elite how to get around the law by running secret deals through shell companies and the like.

In an interview with Forbes magazine, a former Russian trade minister, Oleg Davydov, told Klebnikov that in the rush to privatize government-owned industries the Russian government made a serious mistake by immediately dismantling the government foreign trade monopolies.

"These organizations had decades of experience and representatives all over the world," Davydov explained.

"They charged 0.5 percent commission and remitted all the difference [between domestic commodity prices and world prices] to the government. When these legal channels became inconvenient [for Russia's new businessmen], there appeared a huge mass of foreign entrepreneurs, mostly crooks like Marc Rich, who began to teach us various ways of taking the money out through offshore companies."

"Marc Rich ended up being a mentor to all these young kids who came out of the Communist Party establishment, and who made billions off these schemes themselves," Klebnikov charges.

"Applying the lessons they learned from Marc Rich, they bankrupted Russia," Klebnikov alleges. "As a result, you have a ruined economy, bankrupt government, and an impoverished population."

Rich, headquartered in Switzerland, was well situated to help the Russian mafia. Switzerland has already been identified by international police agencies as a major center of Russian money laundering.

If it is true that Rich and his intermediaries were willing to spend more than $200 million for a pardon for U.S. crimes, it raises questions of whether a lot more money may have changed hands than the few million suspected as donations to the DNC, Hillary's Senate campaign or the Clinton Library.

Could money, for example, have been transferred to an offshore bank account? It's a good question investigators need to ask. Especially since the Clintons have had their own Switzerland connection. Several years ago London's Sunday Telegraph reported that Vince Foster, onetime White House deputy counsel, made frequent trips to Switzerland before the Clintons entered the White House.