Volume 11 | Issue 29 | Number 1 | Article ID 3971 | Jul 28, 2013 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus US Government Protection of Al-Qaeda Terrorists and the US- Saudi Black Hole 米政府によるアルカイダ擁護と米・サウジアラビ アのブラックホール Peter Dale Scott and suspected Islamic terrorists, to any incipient protest movement that might challenge the policies of the American war For almost two centuries American machine. government, though always imperfect, was also a model for the world of limited government, Americans have by and large not questioned having evolved a system of restraints on this parallel government, accepting that executive power through its constitutional sacrifices of traditional rights and traditional arrangement of checks and balances. transparency are necessary to keep us safe from al-Qaeda attacks. However secret power Since 9/11 however, constitutional practices is unchecked power, and experience of the last have been overshadowed by a series of century has only reinforced the truth of Lord emergency measures to fight terrorism. The latter have mushroomed in size, reach and Acton’s famous dictum that unchecked power budget, while traditional government has always corrupts. It is time to consider the shrunk. As a result we have today what the extent to which American secret agencies have journalist Dana Priest has called twodeveloped a symbiotic relationship with the governments: the one its citizens were familiar forces they are supposed to be fighting – and with, operated more or less in the open: the have even on occasion intervened to let al- other a parallel top secret government whose Qaeda terrorists proceed with their plots. parts had mushroomed in less than a decade into a gigantic, sprawling universe of its own, “Intervened to let al-Qaeda terrorists proceed visible to only a carefully vetted cadre – and its with their plots”? These words as I write them entirety…visible only to God.1 make me wonder yet again, as I so often do, if I am not losing my marbles, and proving myself More and more, it is becoming common to say to be no more than a zany “conspiracy that America, like Turkey before it, now has theorist.” Yet I have to remind myself that my what Marc Ambinder and John Tirman have claim is not one coming from theory, but rests called a deep state behind the public one.2 And on certain undisputed facts about incidents that this parallel government is guided inare true even though they have been surveillance matters by its own Foreignsystematically suppressed or under-reported in Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the the American mainstream media. FISA court, which according to the New York Times, “has quietly become almost a parallel More telling, I am describing a phenomenon Supreme Court.”3 Thanks largely to Edward that occurred not just once, but consistently, Snowden, it is now clear that the FISA Court almost predictably. We shall see that, among has permitted this deep state to expand the al-Qaeda terrorists who were first protected surveillance beyond the tiny number of known and then continued their activities were 1 11 | 29 | 1 APJ | JF 1) Ali Mohamed, identified in the Gorelick), one staff member 9/11 Commission Report (p. 68) as (Dietrich Snell) and one important the leader of the 1998 Nairobi witness (Patrick Fitzgerald) who Embassy bombing; earlier had figured among the terrorists’ protectors. 2) Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s close friend and financier, while in the In the course of writing this essay, I came to Philippines, of Ramzi Yousef another disturbing conclusion I had not (principal architect of the first anticipated. This is that a central feature of the WTC attack) and his uncle Khalid protection has been to defend the 9/11 Sheikh Mohammed; Commission’s false picture of al-Qaeda as an example of non-state terrorism, at odds with 3) Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, not just the CIA but also the royal families of identified in the 9/11 Commission Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In reality, as I shall Report (p. 145) as “the principal show, royal family protection from Qatar and architect of the 9/11 attacks.” Saudi Arabia (concealed by the 9/11 Commission) was repeatedly given to key 4) Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al- figures like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Hazmi, two of the alleged 9/11 alleged “principal architect of the 9/11 hijackers, whose presence in the attacks.” United States was concealed from the FBI by CIA officers for months This finding totally undermines the claim that 4 the wars fought by America in Asia since 9/11 before 9/11. have been part of a global “war on terror.” On the contrary, the result of the wars has been to It might sound from these three citations as if establish a permanent U.S. military presence in the 9/11 Commission marked a new stage in the oil- and gas-rich regions of Central Asia, in the U.S. treatment of these terrorists, and that alliance with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan the Report now exposed those terrorists who in – the principal backers of the jihadi terrorist the past had been protected. On the contrary, a networks the U.S. has been supposedly principal purpose of my essay is to show that fighting. Meanwhile the most authentic opponents in the region of these Sunni jihadi terrorists – the governments of Iraq, Libya, 1) one purpose of protecting these Syria, and Iran – have been overthrown by U.S. individuals had been to protect a invasion or military support (in the case of Iraq valued intelligence connection (the and Libya) subverted with U.S. support (in the “Al-Qaeda connection” if you will); case of Syria), or sanctioned and threatened as part of an “axis of evil” (in the case of Iran). 2) one major intention of the 9/11 Commission Report was to The protection to terrorists described in this continue protecting this essay, in other words, has been sustained connection; partly in order to support the false premises that have underlain U.S. Asian wars for more 3) those on the 9/11 Commission than a decade. And the blame cannot be staff who were charged with this assigned all to the Saudis. Two months before protection included at least one 9/11, FBI counterterrorism expert John O’Neill commission member (Jamie described to the French journalist Jean-Charles 2 11 | 29 | 1 APJ | JF Brisard America’s “impotence” in getting help from Saudi Arabia concerning terrorist networks. The reason? In Brisard’s paraphrase, “Just one: the petroleum interests.”5 Former CIA officer Robert Baer voiced a similar complaint about the lobbying influence of “the Foreign Oil Companies Group, a cover for a cartel of major petroleum companies doing business in the Caspian. The deeper I got, the more Caspian oil money I found sloshing around Washington.”6 The decade of protection for terrorists demonstrates the power of this secretive dimension of the American deep state: the dark Ali Mohamed forces in our society responsible for protecting terrorists, over and above the parallelIn early 1993 a wanted Egyptian terrorist 7 government institutionalized on and after 9/11. named Essam Hafez Marzouk, a close ally of Although I cannot securely define these dark Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, forces, I hope to demonstrate that they are arrived at Canada’s Vancouver Airport and was related to the black hole at the heart of the promptly detained by the Royal Canadian complex U.S-Saudi connection, a complex that Mounted Police (RCMP). A second terrorist involves oil majors like Exxon, the military named Mohamed Ali, “the primary U.S. coordination of oil and gas movements from the intelligence agent for Ayman al-Zawahiri and Persian Gulf and Central Asia, offsetting arms Osama bin Laden,” came from California to the sales, Saudi investments in major U.S.airport to meet him; and, not finding him, made corporations like Citibank and the Carlyle the mistake of asking about his friend at the Group, and above all the ultimate United States Vancouver airport customs office. As a result dependency on Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and OPEC, the RCMP interrogated Mohamed Ali for two 8 days, but finally released him, even though Ali for the defense of the petrodollar. had clearly come in order to smuggle a wanted 9 This deeper dimension of the deep state, terrorist into the United States. behind its institutional manifestation in our If the RCMP had detained Mohamed Ali, who parallel government, is a far greater threat was much bigger game than the first terrorist, than foreign terrorism to the preservation of hundreds of lives might have been saved. After U.S. democracy. being released, Ali went on to Nairobi, Kenya. There in December 1993 he and his team The FBI’s Intervention with the RCMP to photographed the U.S. Embassy, and then Release Ali Mohamed, 1993 delivered the photos to Osama bin Laden in Khartoum, leading to the Embassy bombing of Consider the FBI’s instruction in 1993 to the 1998.10 Ali later told an FBI agent that at some Canadian RCMP to release the al-Qaeda point he also trained al-Qaeda terrorists in how organizer Mohamed Ali, who then proceeded to to hijack airplanes using box cutters.11 Nairobi in the same year to begin planning the U.S. Embassy bombing of 1998. The RCMP release of Ali Mohamed was 3 11 | 29 | 1 APJ | JF unjustified, clearly had historic consequences, Nexis) the Vancouver release incident, well and may have contributed to 9/11. Yet the covered in Canada’s leading newspaperThe release was done for a bureaucratic reason: Ali Toronto Globe and Mail (December 22, 2001), Mohamed gave the RCMP the phone number of has never been mentioned inany major an FBI agent, John Zent, in the San Francisco American newspaper.