Gold9472
11-29-2007, 09:46 AM
Rudy's Ties to a Terror Sheikh
Giuliani's business contracts tie him to the man who let 9/11's mastermind escape the FBI
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0748,barrett,78478,6.html
by Wayne Barrett
November 27th, 2007 3:39 PM
Three weeks after 9/11, when the roar of fighter jets still haunted the city's skyline, the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, toured Ground Zero. Although a member of the emir's own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the attack - a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM - al-Thani rushed to New York in its aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, principally to the families of its victims. Rudy Giuliani, apparently unaware of what the FBI and CIA had long known about Qatari links to Al Qaeda, appeared on CNN with al-Thani that night and vouched for the emir when Larry King asked the mayor: "You are a friend of his, are you not?"
"We had a very good meeting yesterday. Very good," said Giuliani, adding that he was "very, very grateful" for al-Thani's generosity. It was no cinch, of course, that Giuliani would take the money: A week later, he famously rejected a $10 million donation from a Saudi prince who advised America that it should "adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause." (Giuliani continues to congratulate himself for that snub on the campaign trail.) Al-Thani waited a month before expressing essentially the same feelings when he returned to New York for a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly and stressed how important it was to "distinguish" between the "phenomenon" of 9/11 and "the legitimate struggles" of the Palestinians "to get rid of the yoke of illegitimate occupation and subjugation." Al-Thani then accused Israel of "state terrorism" against the Palestinians.
But there was another reason to think twice about accepting al-Thani's generosity that Giuliani had to have been aware of, even as he heaped praise on the emir. Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network based in Qatar (pronounced "Cutter"), had been all but created by al-Thani, who was its largest shareholder. The Bush administration was so upset with the coverage of Osama bin Laden's pronouncements and the U.S. threats to bomb Afghanistan that Secretary of State Colin Powell met the emir just hours before Giuliani's on-air endorsement and asked him to tone down the state-subsidized channel's Islamist footage and rhetoric. The six-foot-eight, 350-pound al-Thani, who was pumping about $30 million a year into Al Jazeera at the time, refused Powell's request, citing the need for "a free and credible media." The administration's burgeoning distaste for what it would later brand "Terror TV" was already so palpable that King - hardly a newsman - asked the emir if he would help "spread the word" that the U.S. was "not targeting the average Afghan citizen." Al-Thani ignored the question - right before Giuliani rushed in to praise him again.
In retrospect, Giuliani's embrace of the emir appears peculiar. But it was only a sign of bigger things to come: the launching of a cozy business relationship with terrorist-tolerant Qatar that is inconsistent with the core message of Giuliani's current presidential campaign, namely that his experience and toughness uniquely equip him to protect America from what he tauntingly calls "Islamic terrorists" - an enemy that he always portrays himself as ready to confront, and the Democrats as ready to accommodate.
The contradictory and stunning reality is that Giuliani Partners, the consulting company that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the Qatar trough, doing business with the ministry run by the very member of the royal family identified in news and government reports as having concealed KSM - the terrorist mastermind who wired funds from Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who also sold the idea of a plane attack on the towers to Osama bin Laden - on his Qatar farm in the mid-1990s.
This royal family member is Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani, Qatar's minister of Islamic affairs at the time, who was later installed at the interior ministry in January 2001 and reappointed by the emir during a government shake-up earlier this year. Abdallah al-Thani is also said to have welcomed Osama bin Laden on two visits to the farm, a charge repeated as recently as October 10, 2007, in a Congressional Research Service study. Abdallah al-Thani's interior ministry or the state-owned company it helps oversee, Qatar Petroleum, has worked with Giuliani Security & Safety LLC, a subsidiary of Giuliani Partners, on an undisclosed number of contracts, the value of which neither the government nor the company will release. But there's little question that a security agreement with Qatar's government, or with Qatar Petroleum, would put a company like Giuliani's in direct contact with the ministry run by Abdallah al-Thani: The website of Qatar's government, and the interior ministry's press office, as well as numerous press stories, all confirm that the ministry controls a 2,500-member police force, the General Administration of Public Security, and the Mubahathat, or secret police. The ministry's charge under law is to "create and institute security in this country." Hassan Sidibe, a public-relations officer for the ministry, says that "a company that does security work, they have to get permission from the interior ministry."
What's most shocking is that Abdallah al-Thani has been widely accused of helping to spirit KSM out of Qatar in 1996, just as the FBI was closing in on him. Robert Baer, a former CIA supervisor in the region, contends in a 2003 memoir that the emir himself actually sanctioned tipping KSM. The staff of the 9/11 Commission, meanwhile, noted that the FBI and CIA "were reluctant to seek help from the Qatari government" in the arrest of KSM, "fearing that he might be tipped off." When Qatar's emir was finally "asked for his help" in January 1996, Qatari authorities "first reported that KSM was under surveillance," then "asked for an alternative plan that would conceal their aid to Americans," and finally "reported that KSM had disappeared."
Giuliani's lifelong friend Louis Freeh, the FBI head who talked to Giuliani periodically about terrorist threats during Giuliani's mayoral years and has endorsed him for president, was so outraged that he wrote a formal letter to Qatar's foreign minister complaining that he'd received "disturbing information" that KSM "has again escaped the surveillance of your Security Services and that he appears to be aware of FBI interest in him."
Abdallah al-Thani remains a named defendant in the 9/11 lawsuits that are still proceeding in Manhattan federal court, but his Washington lawyers declined to address the charges that he shielded KSM, insisting only that he never "supported" any "terrorist acts." Asked if Abdallah al-Thani ever supported any terrorists rather than their acts, his lawyer David Nachman declined to comment further. The Congressional Research Service report summarized the evidence against him: "According to the 9/11 Commission Report and former U.S. government officials, royal family member and current Qatari Interior Minister, Sheikh Abdullah (Abdallah) bin Khalid Al Thani, provided safe harbor and assistance to Al Qaeda leaders during the 1990s," including KSM. While numerous accounts have named Abdallah as the KSM tipster, the report simply says that "a high ranking member of the Qatari government" is believed to have "alerted" KSM "to the impending raid."
Freeh's letter in 1996 highlighted the consequences of this government-orchestrated escape with a prophetic declaration, saying that the "failure to apprehend KSM would allow him and other associates to continue to conduct terrorist operations." Indeed, had KSM, who was even then focused on the use of hijacked planes as weapons, been captured in 1996, 9/11 might well have never happened.
In other words, as incredible as it might seem, Rudy Giuliani - whose presidential candidacy is steeped in 9/11 iconography - has been doing business with a government agency run by the very man who made the attacks on 9/11 possible.
This startling revelation is not a sudden disclosure from new sources. It has, in fact, been staring us in the face for many months.
The Wall Street Journal reported on November 7 that one Giuliani Partners client the former mayor hadn't previously disclosed was, in fact, the government of Qatar. Quoting the recently retired Bush envoy to Qatar, Chase Untermeyer, the Journal reported that state-run Qatar Petroleum had signed a contract with Giuliani Security "around 2005" and that the firm (of which Giuliani has a 30 percent equity stake) is offering security advice to a giant natural-gas processing facility called Ras Laffan. While the interior ministry wouldn't confirm individual contracts, it did tell the Voice that Qatar Petroleum and security "purchasing" are part of its portfolio.
(The Journal story was followed by a similar piece in the Chicago Tribune last week, which revealed that Giuliani's firm has also represented a complex casino partnership seeking to build a $3.5 billion Singapore resort. The partnership included "the family of a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong II and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government.")
The Journal story, however, didn't go into detail about the unsavory connections that Giuliani had made in the Middle East. The Journal wrote that it learned about the Qatar contract after reading a speech that Untermeyer gave in 2006, when he said that Giuliani's firm had "important contracts" in Qatar. In fact, Untermeyer - who returned to Texas when he stepped down as ambassador to join a real-estate firm partnered with the National Bank of Qatar - told the Houston Forum that Giuliani's "security company" has "several" contracts in Qatar, and that Giuliani himself "comes to Doha [Qatar's capital] twice a year." Untermeyer's wife Diana spoke at the same event about their daughter Elly, who she said "makes friends with all she meets - other kids, generals, sheikhs, and even our famous American visitors like former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom she deems 'cool.' "
While it is true that Giuliani hasn't disclosed the particulars of his Qatar business, he and others at the firm have been bragging about it for years, presumably on the assumption that mentioning good-paying clients is the best way to generate more of the same. Giuliani told South Africa's Business Times in June 2006, for example, that he'd "recently helped Qatar" to transform Doha in preparation for the Asian Games, an Olympics- sanctioned, 45-country competition that occurred last December. He was in Johannesburg in part to offer to do the same before South Africa hosts the 2010 World Cup. "They had the same concerns as you," he said at the Global Leaders Africa summit, "and I helped them pull things together. You can see not only how they pulled together physical things that were necessary, such as stadiums, but how they used the plan to improve their security."
Richard Bradshaw, a consulting-services manager for an Australian security firm that played a two-and-a-half-year role in planning the Asian Games, says that "the ministry of the interior is essentially the chief ministry in charge of internal security" - ”for the games and other matters. Bradshaw says that he "heard the name of Giuliani Partners quoted in this town," but that he knew nothing directly about their Asian Games involvement, adding that "maybe they just dealt with high levels in the government." But Hassan Sidibe, the interior ministry's press officer, says that a special organizing committee handled contracts for the Asian Games and that "the minister of interior was part of that committee."
End Part I
Giuliani's business contracts tie him to the man who let 9/11's mastermind escape the FBI
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0748,barrett,78478,6.html
by Wayne Barrett
November 27th, 2007 3:39 PM
Three weeks after 9/11, when the roar of fighter jets still haunted the city's skyline, the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, toured Ground Zero. Although a member of the emir's own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the attack - a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM - al-Thani rushed to New York in its aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, principally to the families of its victims. Rudy Giuliani, apparently unaware of what the FBI and CIA had long known about Qatari links to Al Qaeda, appeared on CNN with al-Thani that night and vouched for the emir when Larry King asked the mayor: "You are a friend of his, are you not?"
"We had a very good meeting yesterday. Very good," said Giuliani, adding that he was "very, very grateful" for al-Thani's generosity. It was no cinch, of course, that Giuliani would take the money: A week later, he famously rejected a $10 million donation from a Saudi prince who advised America that it should "adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause." (Giuliani continues to congratulate himself for that snub on the campaign trail.) Al-Thani waited a month before expressing essentially the same feelings when he returned to New York for a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly and stressed how important it was to "distinguish" between the "phenomenon" of 9/11 and "the legitimate struggles" of the Palestinians "to get rid of the yoke of illegitimate occupation and subjugation." Al-Thani then accused Israel of "state terrorism" against the Palestinians.
But there was another reason to think twice about accepting al-Thani's generosity that Giuliani had to have been aware of, even as he heaped praise on the emir. Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network based in Qatar (pronounced "Cutter"), had been all but created by al-Thani, who was its largest shareholder. The Bush administration was so upset with the coverage of Osama bin Laden's pronouncements and the U.S. threats to bomb Afghanistan that Secretary of State Colin Powell met the emir just hours before Giuliani's on-air endorsement and asked him to tone down the state-subsidized channel's Islamist footage and rhetoric. The six-foot-eight, 350-pound al-Thani, who was pumping about $30 million a year into Al Jazeera at the time, refused Powell's request, citing the need for "a free and credible media." The administration's burgeoning distaste for what it would later brand "Terror TV" was already so palpable that King - hardly a newsman - asked the emir if he would help "spread the word" that the U.S. was "not targeting the average Afghan citizen." Al-Thani ignored the question - right before Giuliani rushed in to praise him again.
In retrospect, Giuliani's embrace of the emir appears peculiar. But it was only a sign of bigger things to come: the launching of a cozy business relationship with terrorist-tolerant Qatar that is inconsistent with the core message of Giuliani's current presidential campaign, namely that his experience and toughness uniquely equip him to protect America from what he tauntingly calls "Islamic terrorists" - an enemy that he always portrays himself as ready to confront, and the Democrats as ready to accommodate.
The contradictory and stunning reality is that Giuliani Partners, the consulting company that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the Qatar trough, doing business with the ministry run by the very member of the royal family identified in news and government reports as having concealed KSM - the terrorist mastermind who wired funds from Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who also sold the idea of a plane attack on the towers to Osama bin Laden - on his Qatar farm in the mid-1990s.
This royal family member is Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani, Qatar's minister of Islamic affairs at the time, who was later installed at the interior ministry in January 2001 and reappointed by the emir during a government shake-up earlier this year. Abdallah al-Thani is also said to have welcomed Osama bin Laden on two visits to the farm, a charge repeated as recently as October 10, 2007, in a Congressional Research Service study. Abdallah al-Thani's interior ministry or the state-owned company it helps oversee, Qatar Petroleum, has worked with Giuliani Security & Safety LLC, a subsidiary of Giuliani Partners, on an undisclosed number of contracts, the value of which neither the government nor the company will release. But there's little question that a security agreement with Qatar's government, or with Qatar Petroleum, would put a company like Giuliani's in direct contact with the ministry run by Abdallah al-Thani: The website of Qatar's government, and the interior ministry's press office, as well as numerous press stories, all confirm that the ministry controls a 2,500-member police force, the General Administration of Public Security, and the Mubahathat, or secret police. The ministry's charge under law is to "create and institute security in this country." Hassan Sidibe, a public-relations officer for the ministry, says that "a company that does security work, they have to get permission from the interior ministry."
What's most shocking is that Abdallah al-Thani has been widely accused of helping to spirit KSM out of Qatar in 1996, just as the FBI was closing in on him. Robert Baer, a former CIA supervisor in the region, contends in a 2003 memoir that the emir himself actually sanctioned tipping KSM. The staff of the 9/11 Commission, meanwhile, noted that the FBI and CIA "were reluctant to seek help from the Qatari government" in the arrest of KSM, "fearing that he might be tipped off." When Qatar's emir was finally "asked for his help" in January 1996, Qatari authorities "first reported that KSM was under surveillance," then "asked for an alternative plan that would conceal their aid to Americans," and finally "reported that KSM had disappeared."
Giuliani's lifelong friend Louis Freeh, the FBI head who talked to Giuliani periodically about terrorist threats during Giuliani's mayoral years and has endorsed him for president, was so outraged that he wrote a formal letter to Qatar's foreign minister complaining that he'd received "disturbing information" that KSM "has again escaped the surveillance of your Security Services and that he appears to be aware of FBI interest in him."
Abdallah al-Thani remains a named defendant in the 9/11 lawsuits that are still proceeding in Manhattan federal court, but his Washington lawyers declined to address the charges that he shielded KSM, insisting only that he never "supported" any "terrorist acts." Asked if Abdallah al-Thani ever supported any terrorists rather than their acts, his lawyer David Nachman declined to comment further. The Congressional Research Service report summarized the evidence against him: "According to the 9/11 Commission Report and former U.S. government officials, royal family member and current Qatari Interior Minister, Sheikh Abdullah (Abdallah) bin Khalid Al Thani, provided safe harbor and assistance to Al Qaeda leaders during the 1990s," including KSM. While numerous accounts have named Abdallah as the KSM tipster, the report simply says that "a high ranking member of the Qatari government" is believed to have "alerted" KSM "to the impending raid."
Freeh's letter in 1996 highlighted the consequences of this government-orchestrated escape with a prophetic declaration, saying that the "failure to apprehend KSM would allow him and other associates to continue to conduct terrorist operations." Indeed, had KSM, who was even then focused on the use of hijacked planes as weapons, been captured in 1996, 9/11 might well have never happened.
In other words, as incredible as it might seem, Rudy Giuliani - whose presidential candidacy is steeped in 9/11 iconography - has been doing business with a government agency run by the very man who made the attacks on 9/11 possible.
This startling revelation is not a sudden disclosure from new sources. It has, in fact, been staring us in the face for many months.
The Wall Street Journal reported on November 7 that one Giuliani Partners client the former mayor hadn't previously disclosed was, in fact, the government of Qatar. Quoting the recently retired Bush envoy to Qatar, Chase Untermeyer, the Journal reported that state-run Qatar Petroleum had signed a contract with Giuliani Security "around 2005" and that the firm (of which Giuliani has a 30 percent equity stake) is offering security advice to a giant natural-gas processing facility called Ras Laffan. While the interior ministry wouldn't confirm individual contracts, it did tell the Voice that Qatar Petroleum and security "purchasing" are part of its portfolio.
(The Journal story was followed by a similar piece in the Chicago Tribune last week, which revealed that Giuliani's firm has also represented a complex casino partnership seeking to build a $3.5 billion Singapore resort. The partnership included "the family of a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong II and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government.")
The Journal story, however, didn't go into detail about the unsavory connections that Giuliani had made in the Middle East. The Journal wrote that it learned about the Qatar contract after reading a speech that Untermeyer gave in 2006, when he said that Giuliani's firm had "important contracts" in Qatar. In fact, Untermeyer - who returned to Texas when he stepped down as ambassador to join a real-estate firm partnered with the National Bank of Qatar - told the Houston Forum that Giuliani's "security company" has "several" contracts in Qatar, and that Giuliani himself "comes to Doha [Qatar's capital] twice a year." Untermeyer's wife Diana spoke at the same event about their daughter Elly, who she said "makes friends with all she meets - other kids, generals, sheikhs, and even our famous American visitors like former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom she deems 'cool.' "
While it is true that Giuliani hasn't disclosed the particulars of his Qatar business, he and others at the firm have been bragging about it for years, presumably on the assumption that mentioning good-paying clients is the best way to generate more of the same. Giuliani told South Africa's Business Times in June 2006, for example, that he'd "recently helped Qatar" to transform Doha in preparation for the Asian Games, an Olympics- sanctioned, 45-country competition that occurred last December. He was in Johannesburg in part to offer to do the same before South Africa hosts the 2010 World Cup. "They had the same concerns as you," he said at the Global Leaders Africa summit, "and I helped them pull things together. You can see not only how they pulled together physical things that were necessary, such as stadiums, but how they used the plan to improve their security."
Richard Bradshaw, a consulting-services manager for an Australian security firm that played a two-and-a-half-year role in planning the Asian Games, says that "the ministry of the interior is essentially the chief ministry in charge of internal security" - ”for the games and other matters. Bradshaw says that he "heard the name of Giuliani Partners quoted in this town," but that he knew nothing directly about their Asian Games involvement, adding that "maybe they just dealt with high levels in the government." But Hassan Sidibe, the interior ministry's press officer, says that a special organizing committee handled contracts for the Asian Games and that "the minister of interior was part of that committee."
End Part I