--- Begin Message ---
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Dick Eastman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Ever see an American "cowboy western" where the
outlaws disguise themselves as Indians when they
commit their crimes to terrorize settlers off their land
so they can buy it up cheap and profit from their
inside information that a railroad is going to be
built there? And it was always the perpetrators
who, back in town and in their respectable clothes,
agitate the town exhorting "The only good Injun
is a dead Injun!" The Lone Ranger was never
fooled. What about us?
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION: EVIDENCE OF U.S. CORPORATION EXECUTIVES'
GUILT IN
WTC DESTRUCTION
(but first this letter:)
Dear Mr. Eastman:
I don't know if you read [website], but I'm the one who posted the
article
"[article]," and I very much agree with your hypothesis. {website] is
where
I found the link to your article. You must be very careful Mr.
Eastman; the
people who did this don't care a whit about anyone but themselves and
wouldn't think twice about neutralizing people like ourselves who are
digging around looking for the truth. So, if you haven't already, get
a very
powerful handgun and learn how to use it well. Learn how to hit the
head
because bodyarmour stops most anything under 10mm nowadays. And
speaking of
bodyarmour, get some yourself. But you probably have already thought
about
these things.
I am a historian who specializes in [ US Empire] and teaches down in
[somewhere]. Ever since 11 September, I have treated it like a
whodoneit
because I knew too much to be convinced by the story we were fed, and
too
much didn't add up. Your article supplied a few more pieces for my own
hypothesis, which is very similar to yours. I listened to the Seymour
Hersh
interview with Amy Goodman, and he sounded scared in the way that a
fearless
and seasoned investigative reporter can be scared when they find out
something they hadn't bargained for and don't know how to deal with
it.
Truth is stranger than fiction, and if you watched The World is not
Enough
or have read any LeCarre, then you know what I mean.
There isn't much for me to tell you that will allow you to add to your
hypothesis. Suffice to say that we have a number of "Irregulars" as
Holmes
would call them working and posting whatever information they find on
indymedia.org, and what they have uncovered so far is outstanding. As
far as
conspiracy theories go, it is clear that this operation was carried
out by
just such an entity; it is who that entity is that concerns us, and it
certainly wasn't bin-Laden. I don't know if you've read the
psychiatric
profiles of the suspected "hijackers" that have been released by the
FBI,
but they certainly aren't those of any heaven seeking martyr. Those
men were
hedonistic to a fault, which is why they're activities prior to 11
September
were so easy to trace. Some of them were even bombastic to the point
of
breaking security; something no dedicated religious martyr would
never do
lest his path to glory become discovered. A common link puts many of
them in
Chechnya. And from all accounts they were just glory hound mercenary
types;
the type easily conscripted into something offering even greater
rewards.
Here the timeline is crucial. It seems they were training at various
flight
schools in the US for more than a year. This would imply that the
plot was
gestating for at least that same amount of time. How long had the
various
investigations been going on, and when did it become clear to the
potentially guilty parties that their game was up? The timeline also
implies
that Chechnya was a rallying/recruiting point. And where did they
enter
Chechnya from?
Another problem is, even if we could establish a chain of evidence to
power
(which if we had the same assets as the FBI or CIA might be
possible), how
would we ensure our case against tampering by those same powers?
Hell, The
World Court found the US guilty of state sponsored terrorism against
Nicaragua and Gary Webb's Dark Alliance was admitted by the CIA, and
see
what good either revelation did to stop elite behavior. We might
convince
some of the world, but unless we convince the heavilly propagandized
US
citizenry, then our efforts will be for naught. Now, I'm not saying we
should give up. On the contrary, I'm saying that we need to consider
these
problems even if they seem minimal at the moment.
I think that's enough for now. Be very careful and practice the best
security you can.
Sincerely,
"Dr. Pierre McWong"
Item #1:
Subject: Destruction of federal "gold case" evidence in WTC
crashbombing
convenient
for defendents Greenspan, Morgan, Chase, Goldman Sachs
[Here are two letters exactly as I put them together in
newsgroup postings on August 13. -- Note: By "fixing the
price of gold" is meant selling of the Federal Reserve gold
stock -- a source of world confidence in the dollar at low
prices, and doing so to keep the price low (i.e., giving away
U.S. monetary strength to suppress the gold value of the dollar --
also this amounts to selling the U.S. Central Bank's gold to foreign
investors at prices deliberately --"gift-ingly" -- far below the price
that could have been obtained in market transaction --DE].
(Remember, the following financial news was circulating in
August, 2001, before the 911 crashbombings and the frame-up theory.)
=============
The defendants in the GATA/Howe lawsuit are: the Bank for
International
Settlements; Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Board of Governors of
the U.S.
Federal Reserve System and a director of the BIS; William J.
McDonough,
president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a director of
the BIS;
five major bullion banks, J.P. Morgan & Co., Chase Manhattan Corp.,
Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Deutsche Bank; and
Lawrence H.
Summers, former secretary of the treasury, who by law exercised
control over
the U.S.Exchange Stabilization Fund, subject only to approval by the
president.
=========^=====================
Full Story by Swedish Economist Boudewijn Wegerif <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers will seek to have a
gold price
fixing lawsuit brought against him dismissed in a Boston court on 9
October,
three days before he is installed as the new president of Harvard
University.
The full story, issued today by Business Wire, appears below. The
action
against the Bank for International Settlements, the U.S. Federal
Reserve and
Treasury Department, and several bullion banks has been brought by a
consultant for the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, GATA, Reginald
H. Howe,
a private shareholder in the BIS.
GATA was formed in January 1999, the same month that the world?s
leading
bullion banks, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and ten others, joined
together to
form a ?Counterparty Risk Management Group? to, as they put it, ?
strengthen
risk management practices?. For six months prior to that, evidence
had been
mounting that whenever the price of gold threatened to rise above
$300 an
ounce the bullion banks moved in to knock the price back again,
mainly by
selling gold borrowed at around 1 percent interest from central banks.
After the formation of the Counterparty Risk Management Group, the
price
fixing became more obvious, and it has continued uninterruptedly to
the
present day, with only one break through the $300 mark, which was
quickly
suppressed by the gold cartel.
The practice has been very profitable for the banks and their
principal
customers, through what is called the ?gold carry trade? (see
www.gata.org
for an explanation). More importantly, for currency speculators, it
has
served to underpin the over-valued dollar.
-----
There will be an end to what William Krehm, the chairperson of the
Canadian
Committee on Monetary and Economic reform, COMER, has rightly called
the
?cannibalising of the real economy? by the ?financial sector? ? i.e.,
the
transnational bankers, currency and stock exchange speculators and
gold
price manipulators.
In my last two postings I promised an essay on the solar, wind, water
and
earth energy economies of regular renewal that we need to be thinking
about
for when the love of money feast is finally over. The way things are
going,
maybe that day will come before my essay is completed!
Seriously, I am making no obvious progress on the essay, beyond
reading good
literature on the subject, and working with the inspirations arising
from
that. I also have other commitments. So it looks as if the essay that
I said
might take a week to deliver will more likely take a month, or more.
The end
result will be good, I hope.
In the meantime, here are three relevant quotations from two past
presidents
of the United States and the brother of a third. The first quotation
is from
a recent posting to the Earth Rainbow Network e-group by the
moderator Jean
Hudon ? [EMAIL PROTECTED] - the second was in an email from
Dick Eastman - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - and the third came from Larry
Morningstar ? [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
1.
Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Col. William F. Elkins on 21 November
1864:
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and
causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been
enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and
the money
power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working
upon the
prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few
hands and
the Republic is destroyed."
2.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the
people
tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes
stronger
than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism ?
ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any
controlling
private power."
3.
Robert Kennedy, in a speech at the University of Cape Town, South
Africa, on
6 June 1966: "It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and
belief that
human history is shaped. Each time a person stands up for an ideal,
or acts
to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, s/he
sends
forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million
different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current
which
can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
In friendship,
Boudewijn Wegerif
Monetary Studies Programme**
Box 83, 669 22 Deje, Sweden
Tel: +46.552.10327
_______________________
DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 13, 2001
According to a Business Wire release just received, Judge Reginald
Lindsay
of U.S. District Court in Boston has scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Tuesday,
October 9, 2001, a hearing on the defendants' motion to dismiss the
lawsuit
brought by a consultant for the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee,
Reginald
H. Howe, against the Bank for International Settlements, the U.S.
Federal
Reserve and Treasury Department, and several bullion banks.
The lawsuit alleges collusion by the U.S. government, the BIS, and the
bullion banks to suppress the price of gold.
The underlying issue at the hearing Oct. 9, according to Howe, will be
whether the U.S. Constitution and federal law may be enforced in a
federal
court action challenging the authority of former Treasury Secretary
Lawrence
Summers and other American officials, working in part through the
Bank for
International Settlements, to conduct surreptitious gold price-fixing
operations.
"Wonderful news!" says GATA Chairman Bill Murphy, speaking from GATA's
headquarters in Dallas.
"Recent exposes by Reg Howe and James Turk, which can be read at
www.GATA.org, are devastating evidence that the plaintiffs have been
manipulating the gold price for the benefit of the few to the
detriment of
so many, including the poor sub-Saharan gold producing countries in
Africa,"
Murphy says.
In an essay published this week, "Gibson's Paradox Revisited:
Professor
Summers Analyzes Gold Prices," Howe notes that Lawrence Summers, the
new
president of Harvard University, co-authored with Robert B. Barsky
and then
Harvard Professor Nathaniel Ropes an article entitled "Gibson's
Paradox and
the Gold Standard" in the Journal of Political Economy (vol. 96, June
1988,
pp. 528-550). The article, which appears to draw heavily on a 1985
working
paper of the same title by the same authors, reveals Summers'
expertise
regarding gold, gold mining, and the connections among gold prices,
interest
rates, and inflation.
Howe notes in his essay: "The unusual and sharp divergence of real
long-term
interest rates from inverted gold prices that began in 1995 suggests
that
Mr. Summers found an opportunity to do some further applied research
on
these matters during his tenure at the Treasury."
Howe goes on: "Around 1995, real long-term interest rates and
inverted gold
prices began a period of sharp and increasing divergence that has
continued
to the present time. During this period, as real rates have declined
from
the 4 percent level to near 2 percent, gold prices have fallen from
$400/oz.
to around $270 rather than rising toward the $500 level as Gibson's
paradox
and the model of it constructed by Barsky and Summers indicates they
should
have."
"Professor Summers was the youngest tenured professor in Harvard's
modern
history. On Friday, October 12, 2001, in outdoor ceremonies in
Tercentenary
Theatre, he will be formally installed as its 27th president,
entrusted with
the job of leading the nation's oldest university -- where "Veritas"
is the
motto -- into the new millennium. Three days earlier, in Courtroom
No. 11 of
the new U.S. Courthouse on Boston Harbor, the search for the truth
about his
interim service in the highest positions at the U.S. Treasury will
resume."
The defendants in the GATA/Howe lawsuit are: the Bank for
International
Settlements; Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Board of Governors of
the U.S.
Federal Reserve System and a director of the BIS; William J.
McDonough,
president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a director of
the BIS;
five major bullion banks, J.P. Morgan & Co., Chase Manhattan Corp.,
Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Deutsche Bank; and
Lawrence H.
Summers, former secretary of the treasury, who by law exercised
control over
the U.S.Exchange Stabilization Fund, subject only to approval by the
president.
CONTACT: Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee
Bill Murphy, 214/522-3411
Fax: 214/522-4432
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
=============
(end of letter)
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Item #2:
Item #2:
La Jornada (May 19, 2001) has implicated the most powerful
Establishment
banks in laundering and cultivating 'black money' from drug
traffickers and
corrupt government around the world:
"There is a consensus among U.S. Congressional Investigators, former
bankers and international banking experts that U.S. and European banks
launder between $500 billion and $1 trillion of dirty money annually,
half of which is laundered by U.S. banks alone."
http://www.narconews.com/petras1.html
"Former private banker Antonio Geraldi, in testimony before the Senate
Subcommittee projects significant growth in U.S. bank laundering. "The
forecasters also predict the amounts laundered in the trillions of
dollars and growing disproportionately to legitimate funds." The $500
billion of criminal and dirty money flowing into and through the major
U.S. banks far exceeds the net revenues of all the IT companies in the
U.S., not to speak of their profits. These yearly inflows surpass all
the net transfers by the major U.S. oil producers, military industries
and airplane manufacturers."
"First thing to note about the money laundering business, whether
criminal or corrupt, is that it is carried out by the most important
banks in the USA. Secondly, the practices of bank officials involved
in money laundering have the backing and encouragement of the highest
levels of the banking institutions - these are not isolated cases by
loose cannons."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Item #3:
On August 14, 2000 this story appeared in a soon-to-be-defunct
populist
newspaper,
famous for exposing the power of the Bilderberg globalists. This
article
puts
Bush and Cheny in intimate business contact with the real prime
suspects of
the
WTC/Pentagon crashbombing frame-up. (Also, below, excerpts from
Seymore
M. Hershe's expose of some of the same people in his New Yorker
article of
August 9, 2001).
=============
The GOP presidential ticket may be fending off questions from
reporters
concerning a Swiss investigation linking George W. Bush and Dick
Cheny to
big oil's bribes and pay-offs to foreign interests.
by Martin Mann
Gov. George W. Bush and Richard Cheny, the Republican presidential
and vice
presidential candidates, known in Washington as the "oil ticket" for
their
intimate connections to the petroleum industry, may face worse
corruption
scandals in coming months than the lewd, mendacious and cash-hungry
Clinton
administration ever did. The Spotlight has learned from European and
U.S.
investigative sources.
As Cheney, a millionaire petroleum executive who served as defense
secretary in the administration of George Bus, the candidate's
father, rose
to accept the vice-presidential nomination from the cheering
Republican
convention in Philadelphia, Swiss prosecutors quietly moved to
impound over
$130 million in allegedly laundered funds depositied in Swiss banks.
According to preliminary findings of the Swiss inquiry, the frozen
funds
represent under-the-table payoffs slipped to the top government
officials of
Kazakhstan by giant U.S. petroleurm companies seeking favored access
to that
oil-rich country, a former Soviet province that attained independence
after
the collapse of communism.
Adised by Swiss authorities that the suspect acounts -- more than
$85
million found hidden in private numbered accounts controlled by Kazakh
President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev in a single Geneva bank, Banque
Pictet --
may violate the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, federal
authorities in
New York launched an investigation of
their own.
The U.S. probe quickly focused on James H. Giffen, head of the
Mercator
Corporation, known as an influential American financial advisor to
Nazarbayev.
Last month, the Justice Department sent Swiss chief prosecutor
Daniel
Devaud a confidential memorandum naming Giffen and his public-
relations
company as targets of a formal federal criminal investigation.
According to this memorandum, the Giffen probe was triggered by the
findings of FBI agents in New York indicating that the millions
impounded at
Banque Pictet and other Swiss money-centers represented illegal
payoffs to
Kazakh officials by three major U.S. oil companies: Exxon Mobil, BP
Amoco,
and Phillips Petroleum.
Giffen's alleged role was that of the go-between who secretly
transferred
these huge bribes from the U.S. oil corporations along circuitous
international money-laundering routes to Kazakhstan's president and
his top
aides.
Spokespersons for Exxon Mobil, BP Amoco and Phillips Petreleum have
denied any wrongdoing. Mark J. MacDougal, a Washington lawyer for
Giffen
also denied the charges.
But the Swiss-American inquiry is continuing. If it turns up solid
evidence of bribery by U.S. oil interests -- sources close to the
case call
it "the most likely outcome" -- the next time-bomb of a question will
be:
How many other petroleum potentates are soiled by this sordid affair?
Until he was offered -- and accepted -- the Republican vice-
presidential
nomination this month, Cheny served as president of the Halliburton
Corporation, the world's largest oil-service, exploration and
engineering
outfit.
A number of Halliburton's field operations have been linked to
Exxon
Mobil's and BP Amoco's overseas ventures in recent years.
Investigators are
poised to explore whether these links involved any operations in
corruption-riddled Kazakhstan.
Washington is buzzing with excited rumors that some major Bush
campaign
contributors -- long time coronies of the presidential candidate --
will
face not just stinging embarrassemtn but criminal indictment when
these
cases hit the headlines, especially if the Republicans fail to gain
the
White House this fall. (end of Martin Mann's article of August 14,
2000)
===================
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Item #4:
ELEVEN MONTHS AFTER MANN'S ARTICLE, THE NEW YORKER
PUBLISHED THIS ONE BY SEMOUR M. HERSH:
(excerpts)
The Price of Oil; What was Mobil uo to in Kazakhstan and Russia?
by Semour M. Hersh
New Yorker (Magazine), July 9, 2001 Pp. 48-65
In the fall of 1997, an international businessman named Farhat Tabbah
filed
suit in London against three American businessmen, the oil minister of
Kazakhstan, and a subsidiary of the Mobil Corporation. He charged
that they
had cheated him out of millions of dollars in commissions on what was
to
have been a ten-year swap of oil between Kazakhstan and Iran. Mobil
and the
other defendent denied the allegations and successfully moved to
suppress
all Tabbah's affidavits and supporting documentation. A few months
after
Tabbah filed his lawsuit, he flew to the United States and gave his
account
of the swap plan to federal authorities. He also turned over
seveeral file
drawers of documents, including internal Mobil faxes and memos, to
agents
of the United States Customs Service.
Mobil conducted an investigation into its own actions and its
potential
liabilities. (American oil companies are forbidden by federal
sanctions
from trading with Iran or facilitating such trades without license
from the
Treasury Department.) That investigation, which lasted more than a
year and
was assisted by Patton Boggs, a Washington law firm, found evidence
that J.
Bryan Williams III, a senior executive in charge of many of the
conmpany's
overseas crude-oil transactions, may have facilitated the planned
Iranian
oil swap. Williams was one of the three businessmen named in
Tabbah's suit.
Mobil's senior management, however, then in the process of
negotiating a
merger with Exxon, concluded that there was no need to report this
evidence
to the Securities and Exchange COmmission or to stockholders. Bryan
WIlliams retired quietly in early 1998, at the age of fifty-eight,
and, the
next year, Mobil and Exxon merged to form ExxonMobil, the world's
largest
and most powerful publically traded oil company.
Mobil investigators also uncovered an array of unseemly business
dealings that took place in Russia and Kazakhstan in the mid-
nineties. MOre
than a billion dollars of Mobil's cash was paid to Russian companies
in
unorthodox transactions; questionable accounting practices were
followed;
and multimillion-dollar transfers were made that, as a Patton Boggs
report
put it in one case, "did not have any apparent valid business
purpose." The
investrigators' working papers and summary reports, many of which were
obtained for this article, suggest that Mobil's activities in Russia
and
Kazakhstan were not driven entirely by the desire for quick profit.
The
company also had a strategic goal: access to Kazakhstan's rich
Tengiz oil
field.
Tabbah's court papers and the internal Mobil documents gathered
for this
account provide an unparralled view of a major American oil company's
dealings in the former Soviet Union. They raise questions about the
company's decisions to enter deals that ultimately benefitted powerful
figures in the region, including President Nursultan Nazarbayev, of
Kazakhstan, and former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, of Russia.
A federal grand jury in Washington has been hearing evidence on
the swap
allecgations, along with allegations of money laundering and bribery,
since
last year. Before a second grand jury, in New York, Mobil and other
American oil companies that do business in Kazakhstan were being
questioned
about possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Under the
F.C.P.A., which was passed in 1997, it is unlawful for any American
to bribe
foreign officials, either directly or through an agent, "for the
purpose of
obtaining or retaining business."
ExxonMobil has refused to permit any of its employees to be
interviewed
for this account, and has asked former Mobil employees not to
cooperate.
The company has stated that it was not involved in the awap, did not
own any
of the oil that was swapped, and did not authorize any employees to
participate in the planning and excecution of the swap. Bryan
WIlliams
refuses to be interviewed, but, in a written statement, he denied any
involvement in the swap. Williams also declared that Mobil had
approved all
the deals and contracts he worked on. When The New Yorker sent
details of
the allegations to ExxonMobil for comment, an outside attorney, Martin
London, responded on the company's behalf, stating that many of the
allegations were erroneous," and that the "broad theme of your attack
on
Mobil's business integrity is both incorrect and actionable." It
would be
"innapropriate" for ExxonMobil to discuss the allegations
specifically,
London wrote, because "there are ongoing grand-jury investigations
relating
to the matters addressed in your letter."
The oil industry has long been swapping as a way to reduce the
cost of
transporting crude oil, by pipeline or other menas, to refineries.
The
arrangement also provides a way to get oil from remote oil fields and
isolated nations, such as Kazakhstan, to market. In a swap, the
title to
oil in one location is transferred to oil of an equivalent value that
may be
hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away. Because of the potential
for
abuse in such complicated transactions, major oil companies carefully
monitor and record their swaps.
"It's extrememly rare for a legitimate company to play pricing
games in a
transfer," said Thomas Stauffer, a retired economics professor at
Harvard
and Georgetown who specializes in oil and taxation issues. "But in
the
Third World --and especially in places like Kazakhstan -- its an
invitation
to corruption. You can hide a lot of sins in an oil swap. Title to
oil in
any tanker might change a dozen times before it gets to port." Such
sins
include oil laundering -- concealing an illegal source of oil -- and
sanctions busting. "Oil is oil," Stauffer said. It can be sold
in any
given market at any time." Men like Marc Rich, the fugitive
financier who
was pardoned by Presidnet Clinton in January, have earned hundreds of
millions of dollars over the years by brokering oil deals with pariah
nations such as Iran and the former regime in South Africa.
In Mobil's case, the company's inhouse investigators came to believe
that
the proposed swap between Kazakhstan and Iran was but one element in a
complex of seemingly high-risk business deals that were devised by
Bryan
Williams. The investigation also led to the two other Americans
named in
the Tabbah's suit: James H. Griffen, a New York merchant banker and
advisor
to Kazakhstan's President Nazarbayev; and Friedhelm Eronat, a
businessman
who often acted on behalf of Mobil overseas. The business dealings
and
friendships among these three men date back many years, and they have
done
billions of dollars worth of deals worldwide. The three might nver
have
become the focus of grand-jury scrutiny if they hadn't fallen out with
Farhat Tabbah.
I - GETTING IN
Kazakhstan and the other former Soviet Republics in the Caspian Sea
region
(Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan) have become notorious for
exploitation, corruption, and seemingly bottomless fields of oil whose
boundary seldom benefits the average citizen. Almaty, the business
capital
of Kazakhstan, still has the solid look, the unemployment, the
pollution of
the Soviet days, despite a decade of increasing oil and gas
production.
Close to the Presidential palace, however, two new luxury hotels have
been
built for the foreign businessmen drawn by the country's natural
resources.
The Tengiz oil field is one of the most important finds since
Alaska's
Prudhoe Bay, in 1968. The Soivets tried to develop it in the
nineteen-eighties, but instead triggered a gigantic blowout and a
fire that
burned for a year, with a column of flame six hundred feet high.
Tengiz was
not put into systematic production until the early nineteen-
nineties, when
newly independent Kazakhstan sold a half interest of the field to
Chevron,
the American oil company. Tengiz's output has steadily expanded
since then.
"It's a geologist's dream -- the sort of field you see once in a
generation," Edward C. Chow, a retired Chevron executive,
said. "It's a
mother of an oil field, and we still don't know how much oil is in
it."
Bryan Williams turned out to be crucial to Mobil's efforts to get
into
Tengiz. As executive vice-president of Mobil Sales and Supply, he
bought
crude oil from oil companies controlled by foreign governments. A
lawyer
turned oil man, WIlliams had graduated from the University of North
Carolina
and New York University Law School and spent several years at Sherman
&
Sterling, a prominent New York firm. In the early nineteen-
seventies, he
joined Mobil. His first major assignment was in Saudi Arabia, where
Lucio
A. Noto, who later became Mobil's C.E.O., was in charge of company
operations.
At Mobil, Williams was respected by his peers for his ability, his
panache, and his daring. One retired Mobil senior executive said he
was
widely known as a "cowboy" -- a high-flier in a high-flying business.
International spot-market crude-oil prices are extremely volatile --
the
price of oil varies constantly from country to country -- and narrow
profit
margins can change within minutes, necessitating snap judgements. It
was
accepted at Mobil that successful oil man like Williams needed
autonomy,
with no second-guessing, as they routinely committed millions in the
hunt
for profits. Williams repaid the trust with smart deals.
He consistenly produced high profits, former Mobil officials told
me, and
eventually became a favorite of Noto. "Noto and Bryan were
close," DOn
Voelte, a former vice-president who left Mobil in 1997, recalled.
ALthough
Williams reported not directly to Noto but to the head of sales at
Mobil
headquarters, Voelte said that "Bryan was the go-to guy in the
international
trading area." Noto would "always chastize other Mobil folks,
saying, "Just
go to Bryan. He knows how to handle these things.'" ANother Mobil
insider
tells of a high-level meeting at which Noto signaled out Williams
as "the
only entrepreneur in the whole business."
To get into Tengiz, Mobil needed the help of James Giffen, who
represented
the Kazahk government. (giffen was identified in press reports last
summer
as a target of a federal investigation into corruption and money
laundering.) Giffen grew up in Stocton, California, where his father
ran a
men's clothing store. He was graduated from the U.C.L.A. law school
in
19654 and spent eleven years with the Armco Steel Corporation, which
struggled during the COld War to gain export approval for the slae of
oil-drilling equipment and steel goods to the Soviet Union. In the
mid-eighties, Giffen set up a banking company called Mercator, based
in New
York City. He was brash, intelligent, eager to make money. "I nver
had any
evidence that he was anything more than a smart operator," Jack F.
Matlock,
Jr., who was the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991
recalled. "He was always working for No. 1 -- Jim Giffen. But I could
understand that. I didn't detect anything irregular.
Giffen spent years cultivating senior officials of the COmmunist
PArty,
such as Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was the Party's rising star in
Kazakhstan.
In the late eighties, Nazarbayev, a former steel worker and engineer,
became
First Secretary of the Kazahk Communist Party. After the Soviet
collapse,
in 1991, he won the Presidency of the country. Giffen then became an
important Presidential adviser.
Nazarbayev's regime was quick to cooperate with the first Bush
Administration's plans to denuclearize the breakaway Soviet
republics; more
than a thousand warheads that had been deployed by the Kremlin in
Kazakhstan
at the height of the Cold War were sent back to Russia, without
incident.
The CLinton Administration's initial approach was to emphasize the
building
of democratic institutions -- a largely futile effort--but it soon
turned to
security issues, such as reducing drug trafficking. Diplomacy
concentrated
for the most part on providing opportunities for American oil
companies
seeking to do business in Kazakhstan, and on plans to build pipelines
that
would allow the new republics to deliver their oil and natural gas
directly
to the West by way of a Black Sea port in Turkey, thus bypassing both
Russia, to the north, and Iran, to the south.
AMerican officials say that Nazarbayev has misappropriated
hundreds of
millions of dollars. He has also shared generously the perrequisites
of his
office (as he defined them) with his immediate family. His eldest
daughter,
Dariga, controls the national televeision network, and a son-in-law
is the
presidnet of a state oil-and-gas pipeline. The country has not
prospered
under Nazarbayev's rule. Social conditions have deteriorated
steadily;
per-capita G.N.P. is just thirteen hundred dollars a year. The
nation is
so burdened with an external debt of more than eight billion dollars,
and
with a huge and rapidly growing level of capital flight: a fifth of
the
country's total money supply is now stashed in Swiss banks.
Nonetheless,
Nazarbayev has been viewed by many in Washington not as a despot but
as a
charismatic political leader who could hold his nation together.
According to William Courtney, who was the first American
Ambassador to
Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev became "more authoritarian as his power grew,
and
came to depend on Jim Giffen more and more." By 1995, Courtney syas,
"Nazarbayev had inserted Giffen as an indispensable go-between for
some key
projects."
IN the late nineteen-eighties, Giffen had helped Chevron buy
into the
Tengiz field. But a new president of Chevron's overseas division,
Richard
Matxke, decided not to deal further with Giffen, and Chevron's
relationships
inside Kazakhstan quickely soured. Matzke is said to have proudly
told one
colleague that his company "didn't pay a nickle" in middleman's fees
after
getting into Tengiz. However, Giffen subsequently demanded
a "success" fee
and received it -- seven and a half cents per barrel of Chevron's
share of
the Tengiz oil. It earned him millions of dollars in royalties --at
least
three million last year alone.
More and more, Kazakhstan insiders told me, Giffen's power became
tied to
his ability to help Nazarbayev and his government cronies, including
Nurlan
Balgymbayev, the oil-and-gas minister, benefit from the oil business.
Balgymbayev, wh was named as a defendant in Tabbah's suit, began his
career,
in the nineteen-seventies, as an engineer in the Soviet oil fields.
He
became friendly in those years with Viktor Chernomyrdin and the other
men
who created Gazprom, the powerful Russian energy consortium. In
1994, after
an unhappy year with Chevron, Balgymbayev was appointed Kazakhstan's
oil-and-gas minister. He routinely told foreign oil companies
seeking to do
business in Kazakhstan that any prosepctive deal had to involve
Giffen and
Mercator, which had offices there.
Dan White, a former ARCO executive, siad that when, in late 1995,
he
arrived to open an ARCO office in the former Soviet Union a senior
American
diplomat in Kazakhstan told him, "The best way to get what you want
is to
see Giffen." One afternoon, White happened to encounter the Kazakh
oil
minister in a hotel lobby. They exchanged a few pleasantries, and
then
Balgymbayev raced off to the airport. At that moment, White
recalled, "the
fellow next to him says, 'I'm Jim Giffen,'" and told him, "Dan,
nobody gets
to Balgymbayev without coming through me." Giffen paused, White told
me,
and said, "You know this is a strange place here. A lot of people
carry
guns, and bad things happen to people."
(end of excerpt, at end of page 51 of an article that continues to p.
65) The New Yorker article must be the starting point for any
man seeing to expose the true authors of the crashbombing terror
acts of September 11th, the Great Frame-Up.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Item #5:
(intro and second Hersh excerpt)
Seymore Hersh has presented us with a clear picture of ruthless and
bold
super rogues, bred of anarcho-capitalist moral laissez-faire, men
who both
stand to make billions by framing the Taliban, but who also, at the
same
time, as desperate as cornered rats as they face a New York grand
jury
over the illegal swaps, the bribes and the other crimes Hersh has
documented.
The suspects include James W. Giffen, the man who accuaratley boasts
that
everyone and everything must go through to get to the Pesident of
Kazakhstan
(Nazarbayev). In play, also, are transnational oil firms wanting a
pipeline
for
Kazakh oil through Afganistan, an undertaking that had to be in
partnership
with Giffen to even be discussed with the Afgan government. And
there is
a New York grand jury that likely will bring serious criminal
charges and
civil liability exposure to not one, but several major oil companies
and
investment bankers -- a case that would undermine all of
international
globalization as these crimes were made public.
But what about September 11?
We also find in Hersh's article grand jury hearings under way that
require
evidence of the criminal swap transactions, evidence stored in several
computers in the World Trade Center where certainly some of the
swaptions
and derivatives trades were crafted and processed, as well as
traders --
potential incriminating witnesses -- who were involved in those deals,
who work at the World Trade Center.
(It is a simple matter to get the names of all the firms referred to
in this
article and see which had offices in the WTC, and which people who
might
have testified before that grand jury worked there.)
The Taliban, despite the propaganda-war-machine portrayals are a
fiercly independent people (like the Montana militias, only ten
times that) -- but are a desperate criminal seeking to retain his
vast ill-gotten wealth, his great despotic power and to stay out
of jail and disgrace (both disgrace before society, and disgrace
before admiring criminals impressed with his boldness and flair)
as James W. Giffen, certainly appears from Hersh's account.
I am not claiming that Hersh has enough here to convict Giffen.
I am saying that this information about him and about all of the
circumstances and players certainly kicks Osama aside as
prime suspect number one. (And note that the investment bankers
and the Russian and Kazakh mafias are also interested in the
continuance of the Afgan opium that the American-backed
Northern druglords (called "anti-terrorists" in our newspapers
and television) provide the Chinese triads and, presumably,
the various mafias of the former Soviet Union.
Certainly what Seymore Hersh has provided lends more than "the shadow
of
doubt" needed to reopen the 9-11 investigation books that have been
closed
with no compelling evidence whatsoever, in an obvious frame-up
kangaroo
public-opinion court, on Osama bin Ladin, his organization, and even
the
Taliban WHICH HAS NO MORE OR LESS CONNECTION TO BIN LADIN
than the Repbulicans have to the John Birch Society or Democrats to
the
American Way. Everything is based on bin Ladin's past record and
status as "terror suspect No. 1 (a status that also makes Osama
frame-up target No. 1 too, we should realize).
At any rate, here is more from the New Yorker article:
Excerpts from the last two pages (64-65) of Hershe's 7-9-01 story on
Giffen
and the crimes of Mobil, the Kazakhstan's all-mafia government,
pipelines
through
Afganistan and motives for super-terror in people demonstrably
physically
and mentally able able to follow through:
"...A few months later, Mobil went to federal court in northern
Virginia to
compel William's testimony. The internal documents reflected the
growing
anxiety at headquarters about just what Williams -- identified in the
papers
as "JBW" -- would say. The fear was that he would try to help Wronat
get
compensation for his lost business. Williams "can't help Eronat win
it
while at the same time screwing Mobil," a memorandum noted. "He
can't say
my buddy wasn't involved at all" --in the illegal swap--"because his
buddy
has already admitted involvement. If Williams tries to sneak in that
Mobil
was involved, he contradicts himself because he's already sworn that
Mobil
wasn't. In so contradicting himself, he destroys his credibility."
...By early summer, documents show, a solution had been proposed --
Mobil
would offer Eronat 2.4 million. Eronat would not pursue his complaints
against Mobila nd would support the settlement with Tabbah. If the
company
decided to act on the proposal to pay Eronat something, a Mobil
document
reasoned, that paymenbt should be delayed, so that there could be no
suggestion that it was being made "to avoid troubling testimony." It
is
unclear whether Mobil actually paid Eronat any money.
There was one further step. A few months before the merger, Mobil
notified
Patton Boggs, which had been involved in at least two other sensitive
inquiries for the company in the late nineteen-ninties, that its work
on the
matter was done. A senior Patton Boggs lawyer later complained to a
colleague in Washington that Mobil's top management had "deep-sixed"
the
investigation into its dealings with Kazakhstan.
WIlliam's view today of his former employer is not known. He and
Mobil
agreed, in negotiations over his retirement, that neither would
publically
disparage the other.
In 1999, Swiss banking officials discovered that about eighty-five
million
dollars that was destined for a Kazakhstan government account had been
shifted to what to what seemed to be a personal account belonging to
President Nazarbayev. SOme of the money had been transferred there
through
accounts linked to James Giffen. The evidence was passed on to the
Department of Justice -- Giffen was, after all, an American citizen --
and
the U.S. investigation got under way.
There were published reports last summer that payments of more
than sixty
million dollars from three American oil companies -- Mobil, Amoco, and
Phillips -- operating directly through foreign subsidiaries, had
allegedly
been made to Swiss bank accounts linked to Giffen. SOme thirty
million
dollars of that money, Swiss officials say, was subsequently shifted
by
Giffen into acconts controlled by Nazarbayev; his oil minister,
Balgymbayev; and the opposition leader, Kazhegeldin. Kazhegeldin
publically admitted that he had received six million dollars via the
bank
transfers, but insisted through his attorney that he had returned the
money.
Later, it became known that a second federal investigation, focussing
on the
swap, had begun in Washington.
Giffen's attorney told the Wall Street Journal last year that his
client
"has served as an official of the Republic of Kazakhstan since 1992,
and has
always acted lawfully and at the direction of that nation's
leadership."
ANy funds that Giffen disbursed, he added, were used in developing
Kazakh
natural resources, promoting democracy, and building public works.
Giffen and Eronat, through a lawyer, Thomas Yannucci, refused to be
interviewed for this article. In statements relayed by Yannucci,
both men
were evasive. Documents made available for this article demonstrate
that
Giffen and Eronat were intimately involved in the proposed oil swap
between
Iran and Kazakhstan. Giffen's statement to The NEw Yorker said that,
as
"Counselor to the President of Kazakhstan," he, "obviously was aware
that
the swap transaction was under negotiation." Nevertheless, he said,
at no
time did he or any of the companies with which he was
associated "violate
any law of the United States, including the sanctions regulations."
Eronat
answered a list of specific questions about his role with a general
assault
on Tabbah's credibility. This response was accompanied by a three-
page
letter from Peter Felter, the London lawyer who was the attorney for
several
of the parties in the Iran-Kazakhstan swap talks, including API.
Felter,
too, denounced Tabbah as a fraud and a thief, and "an unreliable and
discredited witness," and added, "As far as we are concerned, there
is no
comparison between the credibility, standing and veracity of Mr.
Tabbah as
compared with Mobil." William's responses to questions from the New
Yorker,
as conveyed by his attorney, David Schertler, denigrate Tabbah as
well.
Richard Lilley, Tabbah's soliciter, responded to the attacks on his
client by describing him as "keen to cooperate with the U.S>
government, not
out of vengence but because he wants the matter to be investigated so
that
the truth about this extraordinary matter can be told." Lilley has
been
retained by the justice Department in a continuing effort to
persuade the
British court to permit Tabbah to testify before an American grand
jury.
The government's sanctions case may yet hinge on his testimony.
Today, President Nazarbayev is said by State Department officials
to be
anxious about the inquiries, which he views as politically
motivated. "He
brings up the investigation with everybody," a former American
Ambassador to
Kazakhstan said. Last summer, the Kazakh parliament passed a law
granting
Nazarbayev lifetime immunity from any legal liability stemming from
his
actions in office, with the exception of high treason. More
recently, the
President angered his critics by pushing through passage of a bill
that gave
all Kazakh citizens the right to bring money into the country with no
questions asked -- and no tax assessed. Opposition leaders --
delcaring
that the legislation amounted to little more than the legalization of
money
laundering -- suggested that the biggest benefactors would be
Nazarbayev
and his intimates.
Nazarbayev has been cracking down on the press and on opposition
political parties. During a visit to Almaty last winter, I met with
dissident editors, who told of newspapers and radio stations being
closed.
One prominent journalist was convicted of insulting the President in
print.
AN AMerican lawyer who has practiced in the booming oil economy of
Kazakhstan for the past five years explained that corruption had
spread
throughout the society: "Every act is something you have to pay for,
and
every job is bought and sold." HE provided some going prices -- three
thousand dollars to become a policeman and the same amount to join the
state customs service. It would cost hundreds of thousands to become
a
supreme-court justice.
In a speech at the Hague at the end of May, John Ashcroft, the U.S>
Attorney General, said, "We must come to a recognition, personally and
culturally, that corruption is not just a violation of the law, not
just an
economic disadvantage, and not merely a political problem, but that
it is
morally wrong." It should be "no longer seen as an accepted cost of
doing
business," he went on. "It is now widely recognized that the
consequences
of corruption can be devastating to the poor, devastating to the
economies,
devastating to the legitimacy and stability of government and
deestating to
the moral fabrick of society."
Ashcroft's concerns apparently are not shared by all of the
international
oil community. It may never be known why Mobil's leadership
exercised so
little oversight on the executives who delt with Russian and
Kazakhstan, and
whose activities posed such enormous legal and financial risks.
Indeed the
actions alleged in connection with the Tabbah case "bet the company,"
in the
words of one person close to the Mobil investigation, "with maximum
criminal
and civil exposure." This person has concluded that people in the
industry
believed that the importance of oil in the national and world economy
would
insulate them from any complaints of wrongdoing. He summed up the
oilmen's
attitude this way: "what's man afraid of? The cold and the dark. We
make
it warm and we make it light."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
This is merely a sampling -- sufficient to make the case --
sufficient
for me to know that Tony Blair, Joh Ashcroft, Collin Powell and a
dozen
others have a lot to answer for -- either in terms of competence or of
complicity.
And who will "bell the cat?" Why all of us together, of course.
There is a
war to be stopped and a future to be saved. (And don't worry about
Arab
terrorists -- they don't exist.)
Dick Eastman
Yakima, Washington
Every man is responsible to every other man.
Newly received and possibly relevant:
Addemdum #1:
(Notice that a heavy equipment operator is the only one making
statements
about this:
"On Saturday, the feds finally reached the vaults where millions of
dollars
worth of powder and crack cocaine, heroin, Ecstasy and other
narcotics were
stashed - along with millions in ill-gotten cash.
"They knew it was there and wanted to get it out," said Richard
Ricciardi,
45, a heavy-equipment operator for Seasons Construction. "The face of
the
building was blown off and they asked us to remove the piles of debris
around it. There were big boxes and bags of evidence."
Lucchese, 40, of the Bronx, said the feds filled a truck with loot and
drugs. "The stuff had DEA evidence tags on it," he said. "They said
it was a
DEA vault."
==
Addendum #2:
The best lead on who was behind this was the puts purchased (stock
option
contracts betting the price will fall). On one of the cable shows on
finance
a analysist said the number of puts in United Airlines, American
Airlines
(only in the airlines used by the hijackers) and businesses in the
WTC that
were going to be substantially impacted, was 90 times the number of
puts
purchase on a daily average THE DAY BEFORE THE ATTACK and this was
WORLDWIDE
purchases. He gave some examples of a put purchased for $375,000 that
was
worth $2.4 million the day after the attack. Who would gamble that
much
without insider knowledge? The numbers of puts purchased, in addition
to the
size of the investments, indicate that an extremely large number of
people,
possibly thousands, knew the exact day of the attack, the exact
target, and
the exact means.
The "money trail" was a big story for a day and then very suddenly no
further mention has been made of it. It was used just long enough to
secure
the seizure of money from targeted groups and additions to the
anti-terrorist legislation.
I look forward to seeing the information I am providing you included
in your
posts
One more thing I picked up on the news. Some bigwig in the military,
I don't
remember his name, was being interviewed on the 17th day following the
attack. He was asked "when can we expect some action in Afganistan".
His
reply "The buildup there has been going on for several weeks so it
could be
very soon." 17 days is a little short of "several weeks". The quick
response
indicates the buildup was beginning even before the attack took place.
A thought I had - If you know, or suspect, you are going to be
attacked, it
might be strategic to stage an attack on yourself so you can be ready
with
the response. Thus catching your enemy off-guard and unprepared. When
comparing this operation with the attack on WTC in 1993 it appears
far too
sophisticated and effective for the type of group it is being blamed
on. It
would seem that Some intellegence would have been picked up on an
operation
of this size. It could be that some in the intellegence community
allowed,
or even assisted, in it happening for the strategic purposes of those
they
answer to.
If not guilty for the actual attack there are those in the US
governmnet
that are guilty of knowing about it and letting, if not aiding and
abetting,
in making it happen. It is interesting to note how little criticizm
there
has been of the CIA, FBI, or the intellegence community for letting
this
happen. Rather they have been rewarded with bigger budgets and more
power.
What people need to continue to ask themselves is not just "who had
motive"
but WHO BENEFITED THE MOST.
(end of letter)
==
Addendum #3:
Terror attack link in alleged $100m fraud probe
By Patrick Jenkins in London
Published: October 25 2001 20:32 | Last Updated: October 26 2001 08:30
US federal crime investigators are probing an alleged $100m fraud by
an
investment company that had its offices in the World Trade Center and
exploited the September 11 terrorist attacks on the buildings to
divert
attention from the crime.
The US Attorney-General's Office and the US Postal Inspection Service
are
looking into the disappearance of three or four managers from First
Equity
Enterprises, the sales and accounting arm of Evergreen International
Spot
Trading, a foreign exchange broker for private investors.
First Equity offices in were destroyed on September 11 but no
employees were
killed, according to Evergreen. The company ceased operating on
September
24.
Investigators are trying to locate $106m held by Equity on behalf of
investors.
The US fraud agencies refused to comment on their findings so far but
private
investigators are understood to have tracked some of the missing
money to
Swiss bank accounts.
Evergreen, a New York-based private company owned by Russian-born
entrepreneur Andre Koudachev, has laid off 100 employees since
September 11,
following the closure of two offices damaged by the blasts. Several
senior
executives have disappeared.
Albert Guglielmo, Evergreen president and one of only four remaining
staff,
said: "Lawyers are crawling all over this. There are banks involved
and they
don't want to be stung."
JP Morgan Chase, Bank One, National Australia Bank and Bank of New
Zealand
were the main account intermediaries, handling clients' transactions,
he
said.
Evergreen and First Equity have been operating for four years, selling
foreign exchange investments around the world. The companies had 1,500
private investor clients in 14 countries.
One British private investor said: "I invested £20,000 18 months ago
and
within a year it had generated 27 per cent growth. I was so
encouraged, I
put
in a further £20,000. Now I've lost nearly £50,000."
Other investors have been far harder hit. Evergreen said one
individual had
$12m invested.
Additional reporting by Gary Silverman
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,581252,00.html
====
Here is an article from July 26, 2001, 41 days before the
crashbombing that set in motion military operations in Afganistan:
>From http://www.indiareacts.com/Story33.htm
In this article published in India last summer, the Indian Government
announces that it will support America's PLANNED military incursion
into
afghanistan in an anti-Taliban military plan. India and Iran will
"facilitate" the planned US-Russia hostilities against the Taliban.
(We see
here the Establishment's intentions, but what is missing of course is
the
will of the
American People to spill their children's blood to force pipelines,
safeguard
opium production, and remove veils. Yet they expended all the effort
and
resources anyway! As if they expected that the attitude of the
American
people would change!!! Here is evidence for the these claims:
------
By Our Correspondent
26 June 2001: India and Iran will "facilitate" US and Russian plans
for
"limited military action" against the Taliban if the contemplated
tough new
economic sanctions don't bend Afghanistan's fundamentalist regime.
The Taliban controls 90 per cent of Afghanistan and is advancing
northward
along the Salang highway and preparing for a rear attack on the
opposition
Northern Alliance from Tajikistan-Afghanistan border positions.
Indian foreign secretary Chokila Iyer attended a crucial session of
the
second Indo-Russian joint working group on Afghanistan in Moscow
amidst
increase of Taliban's military activity near the Tajikistan border.
And,
Russia's Federal Security Bureau (the former KGB) chief Nicolai
Patroshev is
visiting Teheran this week in connection with Taliban's military
build-up.
Indian officials say that India and Iran will only play the role of
"facilitator" while the US and Russia will combat the Taliban from
the front
with the help of two Central Asian countries, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan, to
push Taliban lines back to the 1998 position 50 km away from Mazar-e-
Sharief
city in northern Afghanistan.
Military action will be the last option though it now seems scarcely
avoidable with the UN banned from Taliban-controlled areas. The UN
which
adopted various means in the last four years to resolve the Afghan
problem
is now being suspected by the Taliban and refused entry into Taliban
areas
of the war-ravaged nation through a decree issued by Taliban chief
Mullah
Mohammad Omar last month.
========
"Parallel Propaganda"
by Jackson Diehl
October 15, 2001; Page A19
Six days before Sept. 11, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and
Russian
President Vladimir Putin -- the leaders of two countries that never
used to
get along -- met in Moscow and found one strong area of
agreement: "the
danger," as Sharon put it, "of fundamentalist, extremist Islamic
terror." It
was the beginning of what is becoming a beautiful friendship -- and
one of
the most dangerous points of weakness within the U.S. counterterrorist
alliance.
With their handshake in the Kremlin, Sharon and Putin exchanged a
common
falsehood about the wars their armies are fighting against rebels in
Chechnya and the West Bank and Gaza. In both cases, the underlying
conflict
is about national self-determination: statehood for the Palestinians,
self-rule for Chechnya. The world is inclined to agree that both
causes are
just. But mixed among the insurgents in both places are Islamic
extremists,
including some who share the ideology and methods or even the funding
of
Osama bin Laden. Sharon and Putin both have tried to convince the
world that
all of their opponents are terrorists, which implies that the
solution need
not involve political concessions but merely a vigorous
counterterrorism
campaign.
Before Sept. 11 their parallel propaganda may not have been
persuasive even
with each other. But in the past five weeks, the two have been
emboldened to
believe that they can force the world to accept a new understanding
of the
Chechens and Palestinians -- and though the logic is no better than
before,
the power of Sept. 11 is working for them. Last week President Bush
again
agreed that al Qaeda was operating in Chechnya and that its fighters
there
should be "brought to justice"; meanwhile, bin Laden did Sharon a
favor by
trumpeting the cause of the Palestinians, forcing Yasser Arafat to
open fire
on pro-bin Laden demonstrators in Gaza.
In one sense the events of Sept. 11 created an opportunity to break
what
have been dismal and bloody stalemates in both Chechnya and the
Palestinian
territories. Since neither the Chechen rebel government of Aslan
Maskhadov
nor Arafat's Palestinian authority really is pro-bin Laden -- and in
fact
both have long been under threat themselves from the Islamic
extremists --
there is a chance to split them off from the terrorists. That would
both
weaken bin Laden's organization and make possible a peaceful
settlement with
the nationalists -- a double blow to the Islamic extremist cause. The
Bush
administration has tried to do just that, pressuring both Arafat and
Maskhadov to make a clean break with the terrorists, while urging
Putin and
Sharon to open political negotiations.
--- End forwarded message ---
--- End Message ---
