-Caveat Lector- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewsoftheForce/message/1297
FBI REPORTEDLY DIDN'T ACT ON P-TECH TIPS by Ralph Ranalli, Boston Globe Staff Dec 8, 2002 The Boston FBI office received two reports that a Quincy software company had financial ties to a suspected terrorist financier but acted on neither, according to law enforcement and government officials and a televised report. A whistle-blower from Ptech, Inc., told the Boston FBI in October 2001 that the company was being financially backed by Yasin al-Qadi, a Saudi businessman whose US assets were frozen after the Sept. 11 attacks amid allegations that he has funded terrorist groups, including al-Qaida and Hamas, a Bush administration official and a former Clinton administration official involved in the case said yesterday. WBZ-TV reported Friday night that a second whistle-blower went to the Boston FBI office this past June with allegations that the company had financial ties to the suspected terrorist financier. A spokeswoman from the FBI's Boston office denied that it had failed to follow up on leads about Ptech's financial backing. ''That is not accurate,'' spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz said. ''This investigation has been going on for quite some time, and it was jointly decided by the FBI and Customs that Customs would take the lead.'' WBZ reported that a former Ptech consultant named Indira Singh came forward this past June. Singh said Friday night in an interview on WBZ that she told the FBI ''in no uncertain terms'' about the connection between Ptech and Qadi. She said that weeks after talking to the Boston FBI, she was ''shocked'' and ''frustrated'' to learn that the FBI still had not alerted any of the government agencies using Ptech software that there were questions about the company's ties to suspected terrorist fund-raisers. Ptech has sold information management software to a range of government agencies, including the Army, Air Force, Congress, the White House, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the FBI. The FBI, the officials said, didn't aggressively pursue the initial October 2001 tip, prompting that whistle-blower to go to other government officials this past summer. The US Customs Service ended up leading the investigation, and the search Thursday night and yesterday of Ptech's headquarters. News that the FBI may have ignored the tips comes after a recent scathing memo from top FBI officials to the bureau's field offices complaining that not enough is being done to combat terrorism. The New York Times reported last month that Bruce Gebhardt, the FBI's deputy director, sent a memo to the FBI's 56 field offices, saying he was ''amazed and astounded'' that field supervisors were not committing essential resources to fighting terrorism. The allegation is the latest in a series of embarrassments for the Boston FBI office, including a failure to follow up on bank robber Gary Sampson's offer to surrender before he went on a killing spree, and the scandal over the agency's coddling of murderous organized crime informants. Documents provided to the Boston Globe by The Investigative Project, a Washington, DC-based terrorism research organization, show that two of Ptech's founding directors were former employees of BMI, a now-defunct collection of Islamic finance companies that was targeted in an investigation by the FBI's Chicago office. ''BMI was an Islamic financial institution that would loan money in an Islamically permissible manner,'' said Matthew Epstein, director of research for The Investigative Project.' 'According to the FBI, they were involved in Hamas financing activities and potentially involved in the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Africa,'' he said. BMI was targeted by the FBI's Chicago office in a probe of alleged money laundering and funneling of funds to terrorist groups like Hamas. BMI also shared office space in Secaucus, NJ, with Qadi International, an organization controlled by Qadi. According to state records, two of Ptech's founding directors were former officials with BMI. One of the directors, Soliman Biheiri, was quoted in Management Review magazine as the ''president of BMI Leasing'' in an article about financial institutions that adhered to Islamic law. Another director, Hussein Ibrahim, is currently listed as Ptech's vice president and chief scientist. Ibrahim's resume, filed with the US General Services Administration as part of the company's application to do business with the US government, lists his prior employment from 1989 to 1995 as a vice president of BMI. See: Resurrecting the Ptech story http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=356997&group=webcast ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.ptechinc.com/01/supp/supp.faqs.asp ~snip~ What is a KnowledgeBase? The KnowledgeBase is Ptech's proprietary central repository, where users can store and track objects, and more importantly, their underlying metadata and the relationships that particular objects have to all other objects in the KnowledgeBase. Because this information is stored in a semantically-linked neural network, queries and reports can be executed to abstract intelligent information about your enterprise. ~snip~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ https://www.qualys.com/research/rnd/knowledge/ ~snip~ Qualys references the vulnerabilities in the QualysGuard KnowledgeBase to the CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) standard, an index of publicly known information security vulnerabilities. The CVE index is the product of the collaborative efforts of the CVE Editorial Board, which is comprised of leading representatives from the information security community, and is maintained by the MITRE Corporation (www.cve.mitre.org). ~snip~ For more on the Ptech-Mitre-9/11 connection, see: Operation Two Towers http://www.angelfire.com/mi/smilinks/conspiracies.html Falls Church, VA and 9-11 http://www.angelfire.com/mi/smilinks/FallsChurch.html www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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