Our 2021 Spring Sustainer drive ends Sunday—don't miss your chance at our best offer of the year.
Deadline Sunday: Our 2021 Spring Sustainer drive ends Sunday—don't miss your chance at our best offer of the year. Page Not Found |
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Deadline Sunday: Our 2021 Spring Sustainer drive ends Sunday—don't miss your chance at our best offer of the year. Page Not Found |
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Deadline Sunday: Our 2021 Spring Sustainer drive ends Sunday—don't miss your chance at our best offer of the year. Page Not Found |
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Deadline Sunday: Our 2021 Spring Sustainer drive ends Sunday—don't miss your chance at our best offer of the year. Page Not Found
Sandinista Salvation? Old adversaries make a new bid for power. The war that bin Laden wants. Behind the Burka Afghan women who fight the Taliban. Humanitarian aid has become a weapon of war. The terrorist money trail leads back to Midland, Texas. Congress is making the economy worse. Why the Democrats will get trounced in 2002. A New Peace Movement?
Should the government be allowed to hold immigrants on "classified" charges? Citibank attacks money-laundering regulations. Immigration reform is derailed by attacks. Coal Miners' Slaughter Could an Alabama disaster have been prevented? Time Is Tight The cutoff is starting for welfare recipients. FILM: Take a left turn at Mulholland Drive. Shakespeare at the Barricades BOOKS: Insurrections in the mind. Enduring Freedoms. Trading on Terrorism. Give War A Chance Bombs away!
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QUESTIONABLE TIES Tracking bin Laden's money flow leads back to Midland, Texas On September 24, President George W. Bush appeared at a press conference in the White House Rose Garden to announce a crackdown on the financial networks of terrorists and those who support them. U.S. banks that have assets of these groups or individuals must freeze their accounts, Bush declared. And U.S. citizens or businesses are prohibited from doing business with them. But the president, who is now enjoying an astounding 92 percent approval rating, hasnt always practiced what he is now preaching: Bushs own businesses were once tied to financial figures in Saudi Arabia who currently support bin Laden. In 1979, Bushs first business, Arbusto Energy, obtained financing from James Bath, a Houstonian and close family friend. One of many investors, Bath gave Bush $50,000 for a 5 percent stake in Arbusto. At the time, Bath was the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the wealthy Saudi Arabian family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden. It has long been suspected, but never proven, that the Arbusto money came directly from Salem bin Laden. In a statement issued shortly after the September 11 attacks, the White House vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath invested his own money, not Salem bin Ladens, in Arbusto. In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests. In fact, Bath has extensive ties, both to the bin Laden family and major players in the scandal-ridden Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) who have gone on to fund Osama bin Laden. BCCI defrauded depositors of $10 billion in the 80s in what has been called the largest bank fraud in world financial history by former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. During the 80s, BCCI also acted as a main conduit for laundering money intended for clandestine CIA activities, ranging from financial support to the Afghan mujahedin to paying intermediaries in the Iran-Contra affair. When Salem bin Laden died in 1988, powerful Saudi Arabian banker and BCCI principal Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited his interests in Houston. Bath ran a business for bin Mahfouz in Houston and joined a partnership with bin Mahfouz and Gaith Pharaon, BCCIs frontman in Houstons Main Bank. The Arbusto deal wasnt the last time Bush looked to highly questionable sources to invest in his oil dealings. After several incarnations, Arbusto emerged in 1986 as Harken Energy Corporation. When Harken ran into trouble a year later, Saudi Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh purchased a 17.6 percent stake in the company. Bakhsh was a business partner with Pharaon in Saudi Arabia; his banker there just happened to be bin Mahfouz. Though Bush told the Wall Street Journal he had no idea BCCI was involved in Harkens financial dealings, the network of connections between Bush and BCCI is so extensive that the Journal concluded their investigation of the matter in 1991 by stating: The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harkenall since George W. Bush came on boardraises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son. Or even the president: Bath finally came under investigation by the FBI in 1992 for his Saudi business relationships, accused of funneling Saudi money through Houston in order to influence the foreign policies of the Reagan and first Bush administrations. Worst of all, bin Mahfouz allegedly has been financing the bin Laden terrorist networkmaking Bush a U.S. citizen who has done business with those who finance and support terrorists. According to USA Today, bin Mahfouz and other Saudis attempted to transfer $3 million to various bin Laden front operations in Saudi Arabia in 1999. ABC News reported the same year that Saudi officials stopped bin Mahfouz from contributing money directly to bin Laden. (Bin Mahfouzs sister is also a wife of Osama bin Laden, a fact that former CIA Director James Woolsey revealed in 1998 Senate testimony.) When President Bush announced he is hot on the trail of the money used over the years to finance terrorism, he must realize that trail ultimately leads not only to Saudi Arabia, but to some of the same financiers who originally helped propel him into the oil business and later the White House. The ties between bin Laden and the White House may be much closer than he is willing to acknowledge. Wayne Madsen, an investigative journalist based in Washington, is the author of Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999. |
Our 2021 Spring Sustainer drive ends Sunday—don't miss your chance at our best offer of the year.