Joe Quinn | Signs of the Times | Thu, 24 May 2007
In 2004, former Wall Street Journal reporter and author Ron Suskind wrote in New York Times Magazine:
"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend - but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.Only a tiny percentage of the world's population were even aware of Suskind's report, and of those few, most have by now probably forgotten about it and the implications that it carries for America and the entire world. Of course, on the one hand, we could simply conclude that the statements made by the unnamed white house adviser are little more than a example of the delusions of grandeur to which the political elite are susceptible - after all, anyone insane enough to believe that they can actually "create reality" would end up in an asylum long before they ever made it to the halls of power in Washington, right?
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"
On the other hand, we have the actual 'reality' that has unfolded before our eyes over the past 6 years - a 'reality' that has been dominated by utter fantasy masquerading as fact.
I speak, of course, of the Ziocon "war on terror", an entirely fictitious construct that billions of people have nevertheless come to accept as real.
The latest in this continuing psychopathic farce concerns the case of the "al-Qaeda doctor" and the "al-Qaeda martial artist".
Rafiq Abdus Sabir, is a 52 year old medical doctor and American citizen from Boca Raton, Florida. On May 22nd 2007, after two years of incarceration in a New York penitentiary (following his arrest in 2005) where he was kept in solitary confinement in a windowless room with the lights constantly on and no opportunity for exercise, he was convicted of "providing material support to al-Qaeda" by "pledging allegiance to the group and agreeing to treat its wounded fighters". He could face up to 30 years in jail when he is sentenced in July this year.
Sabir's co-defendant and long-term friend in the one count complaint brought by the FBI on behalf of the US government is well-known New York jazz musician and self-described martial arts expert, Tariq Shah, also an American citizen, also accused of "providing material support to al-Qaeda" and offering to "train Jihadis in hand to hand combat."
So that's it, another victory in the war on terror and more proof that the US government really is fighting a ruthless Islamic enemy bent on the destruction of the American way of life.
Well...sort of, but not really. In fact, you could say 'not at all'. A more accurate description of the events leading to the conviction of the two men would be "an FBI sting", a classic set up, where two naive American Muslims were used by the psychopathic US government to "create the reality" of an enemy that simply does not exist.
Creating the appearance of a global enemy that is alleged to be real but which in fact does not exist and is instead a cover for the terrorist agenda of the very people who claim to be fighting the "war on terror" is naturally a rather complicated and complex affair. In the next few pages, we will explore this nexus of fantasy and reality, where innocent American and Middle Eastern citizens alike end up serving long sentences for "terrorist offences" in US maximum security prisons, and in doing so expose the lengths to which the US government and its agencies are prepared to go in an effort to substantiate the unreal "war on terror".
The story of Shah and Sabir begins sometime in the 1990's with a petty thief serving time for robbery in a US state penitentiary and known only as Saeed. Saeed, referred to as "Confidential Source 1 or "CS-1" in the official US Attorney General's deposition to the court in the trial of Sabir and Shah, was apparently recruited by the FBI in exchange for early release, and probably a monthly cash retainer as is SOP in such cases. As FBI special agent Brian J Murphy stated in his deposition in the case of Shah and Sabir:
"While serving his sentence, CS-1 agreed to co-operate with the government regarding certain terrorism investigations and, in return, the government wrote the state sentencing judge for sentencing consideration. After serving his [reduced] sentence CS-1 continued to co-operate with the government and currently provides information as a paid informant."Saeed was the initial point of contact with Shah and later Sabir, whom, we are told, he simply "came into contact with about the summer of 2003". In plain, honest English this means that both Shah and Sabir were marked by the FBI as potential terrorist patsies and Saeed was instructed to contact them. Saeed began tape-recording the conversations with the full consent of both men, and (as per his briefing) wasted no time in bringing the discussion around to "jihad", and of course money.
FBI special agent Murphy claimed that Shah responded to Saeed's Jihadist overtures by stating that he was a "professor of the martial arts", specifically Ju-Jitsu. For the US government and FBI agent Murphy however, Ju-Jitsu in the hands of a dedicated "jihadist" becomes something much more sinister than a simple martial art. For example, during one alleged meeting, FBI agent Murphy stated that Shah "physically demonstrated how he had fashioned his prayer beads into a weapon that could be used to strangle a person."
Scary stuff, eh?
But there's more. Shah had suggested to Saeed that he was interested in acquiring a basement somewhere in order to train "brothers". After looking at one place Shah decided it was too far from where he lived. This fact alone has since been reported in the media and presented to the court as Shah having desired to "establish a terrorist training site".
According to New York Times reporter Alan Feuer, the hours of tapes of conversations with Shah leave the impression of a boastful, albeit somewhat bumbling, man, an almost inconceivable mix of bassist, ninja and would-be terrorist.
"Mr. Shah can sound more like an angry braggart than a violent dogmatist, especially when he speaks of his skills as "a master of hand-to-hand combat," a jujitsu expert who is, as he puts it, "doggone deadly." At one point, he lets Saeed in on a secret: His bass's end pin (the sharp spike on which the instrument rests) can be used as a weapon.On another occasion, when the FBI informant pushs Shah to commit to the cause by telling him that this is "the real thing, not a joke", Shah seems to lose his composure:
"All I've got to do is, pop, flick it like, boom, move out the way," he says. "Flip, pop, pop, right in the middle of your head."
"At this point no," he says, "you, you, you, from already, from what I gather from what we've spoken about, you have done some traveling with the brothers, you have been different places, you have seen certain things." Then he adds, "All I've done is listen."Clearly a "terror mastermind".
As part of the case brought against Shah and Sabir, the FBI produced evidence that in December 2003, about 6 months after Shah had first been contacted by Saeed, he was arrested by the city of Yonkers police department for petit larceny in connection with damage to an apartment he had been renting. On conducting a search of Shah's car, police found the telephone number of one Seifullah Chapman. Chapman is one of the "Virginia Jihad Network", 11 young men (mostly from the Washington metropolitan area) who were arrested in the summer of 2003 and charged with conspiring to "wage war against an ally of the United States", namely India. Chief among their alleged crimes was that a number of the men attended training camps in Pakistan run by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Lashkar-e-Taiba has been blamed for several attacks in India and Pakistan over the past few years (including last year's train bombing that killed 200 people). A few days after the train bombing however, Mumbai's police chief claimed to have proof that the Pakistan Intelligence Service, the ISI, had in fact planned the attack with Lashkar-e-Taiba tasked with actually planting the bombs. Indeed, it seems that like most other major "mujahedeen" and Islamic terror groups in SE Asia, including the Taleban, Lashkar-e-Taiba is indeed 'owned' by the Pakistan Intelligence service the ISI.
For example, ex-director general of the ISI, Hamid Gul stated:
"As ISI director, I held the whole Mujahideen movement in the palm of my hands".
(As an aside although directly linked to this investigation, Gul is also on record as having said that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington were the work of renegade U.S. Air Force elements working with the Israelis.")
The Pakistan ISI also appears to play a central role in the establishment and maintenance of "terrorist training camps" or 'Madrassas' that have been linked to many "terrorist attacks" in recent years. For example, in September of last year, the BBC revealed the contents of a leaked copy of a report from the Defense Academy, a think tank run by Britain's Ministry of Defense, that stated:
"indirectly Pakistan (through the ISI) has been supporting terrorism and extremism - whether in London on 7/7, or in Afghanistan, or Iraq."
But if the ISI controls terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, who controls the ISI?
According to Jane's Information Group, the ISI "was modelled on Savak, the Iranian security agency, and like Savak was trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the SDECE, France's external intelligence service."
According to B Raman of the South Asia Analysis Group:
The Afghan war of the 1980s saw the enhancement of the covert action capabilities of the ISI by the CIA. A number of officers from the ISI's Covert Action Division received training in the US and many covert action experts of the CIA were attached to the ISI to guide it in its operations against the Soviet troops by using the Afghan Mujahideen, Islamic fundamentalists of Pakistan and Arab volunteers. Osama bin Laden, Mir Aimal Kansi, who assassinated two CIA officers outside their office in Langley, US, in 1993, Ramzi Yousef and his accomplices involved in the New York World Trade Centre explosion in February, 1993, the leaders of the Muslim separatist movement in the southern Philippines and even many of the narcotics smugglers of Pakistan were the products of the ISI-CIA collaboration in Afghanistan.In 2003, John Pilger reported for the Guardian:
President Carter's national security adviser, admitted in an interview in 1998, "CIA aid to the mojahedin began during 1980, that is, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan... But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." At Brzezinski's urging, in July 1979 Carter authorised $500m to help set up what was basically a terrorist organisation. The goal was to lure Moscow, then deeply troubled by the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the Soviet central Asian republics, into the "trap" of Afghanistan, a source of the contagion.Norm Dixon writing in Australia's the Green Left states:
For 17 years, Washington poured $4bn into the pockets of some of the most brutal men on earth - with the overall aim of exhausting and ultimately destroying the Soviet Union in a futile war. One of them, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord particularly favoured by the CIA, received tens of millions of dollars. His speciality was trafficking opium and throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. In 1994, he agreed to stop attacking Kabul on condition that he was made prime minister - which he was.
Eight years earlier, CIA director William Casey had given his backing to a plan put forward by Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, to recruit people from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. More than 100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan between 1986 and 1992, in camps overseen by the CIA and MI6, with the SAS training future al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in bomb-making and other black arts. Their leaders were trained at a CIA camp in Virginia. This was called Operation Cyclone and continued long after the Soviets had withdrawn in 1989.
According to Ahmed Rashid, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, in 1986 CIA chief William Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI proposal to recruit from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. At least 100,000 Islamic militants flocked to Pakistan between 1982 and 1992 (some 60,000 attended fundamentalist schools in Pakistan without necessarily taking part in the fighting).So Shah and Sabir were convicted, partly because they had the phone number of Chapman. Chapman was convicted because he was invited to go and train with Lashka-e-Taiba. Lashka-e-Taiba is a phony Islamic terror group controlled by the ISI, and the ISI is essentially run by the CIA.
John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC television network and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, has revealed that Muslims recruited in the US for the mujaheddin were sent to Camp Peary, the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where young Afghans, Arabs from Egypt and Jordan, and even some African-American "black Muslims" were taught "sabotage skills".
The November 1, 1998, British Independent reported that one of those charged with the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Ali Mohammed, had trained "bin Laden's operatives" in 1989.
These "operatives" were recruited at the al Kifah Refugee Centre in Brooklyn, New York, given paramilitary training in the New York area and then sent to Afghanistan with US assistance to join Hekmatyar's forces. Mohammed was a member of the US army's elite Green Berets.
The program, reported the Independent, was part of a Washington-approved plan called "Operation Cyclone".
In Pakistan, recruits, money and equipment were distributed to the mujaheddin factions by an organisation known as Maktab al Khidamar (Office of Services - MAK).
MAK was a front for Pakistan's CIA, the Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate. The ISI was the first recipient of the vast bulk of CIA and Saudi Arabian covert assistance for the Afghan contras. Bin Laden was one of three people who ran MAK. In 1989, he took overall charge of MAK.
Very interesting.
Six of the 11 "Virginia Jihad Network" defendants pleaded guilty to lesser charges in 2005 and received sentences from two to twenty years. Chapman was one the five who maintained their innocence and went to trial in May 2005. Chapman was eventually sentenced to 65 years in prison. Other than the allegation that Chapman attended a training camp in Pakistan (which Chapman claimed was motivated by his desire to get in some tough mountain training) the prosecuting US attorney general also alleged that Chapman and others had played paintball in the Virginia woods which was evidence, he said, of their intent to train in the ways of "Jihad".
Much of government evidence however rested on the claim that Chapman and others had taken instruction in the "ways of Jihad" at the foot of Ali Al-Timimi.
In 2005, Ali Al-Timimi, a scientist and Muslim scholar, was on trial - not for committing acts of terror, but for allegedly encouraging members of the "Virginian Jihad Network" to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Prosecutors alleged that at a dinner on September 16th 2001, Al-Timimi urged the group of men to attend terrorist training camps in Kashmir in order to fight American soldiers in Afghanistan.
At Al-Timimi's trial however, the US government's case began to fall apart:
Throughout the trial the defense constantly denied that Ali Al-Timimi ever urged the Virginia men to go to terrorist camps in Kashmir to train to fight American forces in Afghanistan. Such a denial by Al-Timimi's defense was not only made after his indictment but rather a year before when the 11 Virginia men were first indicted. In May of 2003 Al-Timimi was interviewed by an investigative journalist for NBC, Lisa Myers, in the days immediately following indictment of the 11 men. In the interview with Myers, Al-Timimi denied urging anyone to indulge in Jihad or violence of any kind. What follows is brief portion of the interview:In the end, al-Timimi was sentenced to life in prison plus 70 years without parole for "soliciting others to levy war against the United States and inducing others to use firearms in violation of federal law" even though this could not be established beyond reasonable (if not significant) doubt. Remember, it was largely on the basis of his alleged instruction by al-Timimi (for which there was no convincing evidence) that Chapman was convicted, and partly on the basis that Chapman's phone number was found in Shah's car that both Shah and Sabir were convicted.
Lisa Myers: Did you ever tell these men to go abroad and join in violent jihad?
Ali al-Timimi: "No. Never."
Myers: Why would someone make all this up about you?
Al-Timimi: "Perhaps certain people in the government, in a zeal to silence outspoken Muslims in North America, have pushed an investigation further than it really should go."
This clearly shows that the defense initially did not approach this case as one dealing with the First Amendment - or solely with the First Amendment -- but rather approached it with a different strategy stressing the fact that Ali Al-Timimi never made statements urging anyone, let alone members of the "Virginia 11," to indulge in Jihad (or any acts of violence) but only urged the men to make Hijra - migration - if they felt that they would be unable to deal with the emotional climate against Muslims living in the United States following the September 11th attacks.
Furthermore, two witnesses Masoud Khan and Hammad Abdur-Raheem, who would later be charged and sentenced as being part of the "Virginia Jihad Network" publicly denied that Al-Timimi ever urged members of the group to attend terrorist training camps in Kashmir with the purpose of fighting American soldiers in Afghanistan. As a result of their denials the two were not called by the government to testify against Al-Timimi. Ismail Royer, another key witness in this case, [h]as not been called by the government either which raises significant questions with respect to government claims regarding the validity of the September 16th dinner.
Caliph Basha, an aquitted member of the "Virginia 11," was present for the dinner but fell asleep which the defense argued was undoubtedly quite peculiar. The defense mentioned that the alleged Al-Timimi September 16th address was referred to as "barn-burning" speech. It would be quite strange for Basha to go to sleep if in fact such a "barn-burning" speech was being delivered and all those in attendance were being riled up.
Getting back to the trial of Shah and Sabir; at the beginning of 2004, FBI undercover agent Saeed (CS-1) met with Shah and told him that he was in contact with a "recruiter for Jihad in the Middle East". This "recruiter" was in fact another FBI paid informer who Murphy calls UC-1 or "undercover capacity 1" but who has since been revealed as Mohammed Alanssi.
Saeed informed Shah that Alanssi was, coincidentally enough, "interested in someone who could train a small number of individuals in hand to hand combat and martial arts. Imagine that! Clearly a match made in heaven, Shah must surely have been thinking that he had at last found favor with Allah (little did he know it was only the FBI).
At this point Shah, in an attempt to convince the FBI informer/Jihad recruiter to take him on, and recognising an opportunity to get rich quick, suggested to Saeed that his long term friend Sabir would also be interested and that as a medical doctor could provide medical services to the "brothers". Sabir had also worked intermittently in a military hospital in Saudi Arabia and suggested to Saeed that he could travel freely around the country.
At some point during the sting, Alanssi (UC-1) took over as the lead contact with Shah and Sabir, culminating finally in an alleged oath that both men swore to "al-Qaeda". In making the case that both men provided "material support to "al-Qaeda", FBI agent Murphy states:
During the course of the investigation Shah and Sabir engaged in multiple meetings in which they discussed providing material support to al-Qaeda. Specifically, Shah agreed to provide training in martial arts and hand to hand combat to al-qaeda members while Sabir agreed to provide medical assistants to wounded jihadists. Ultimately, in order to express their loyalty to al-qaeda, Shah and Sabir pledged an oath [administered to them by an undercover FBI informant] to Osama bin laden, thereby essentially become members of the organisation.The exact words of the oath that was taken by Shah and Sabir and allegedly administered by a seasoned FBI agent (who should have known better after his experiences with the investigation of the bombing of the USS Cole), Ali Soufan, are:
"God's pledge is upon me and so is his covenant to commit myself to the orders of the guardians of the agreement, for the misfortune and for the prosperity. And to be a loyalist to the path of jihad, and to my brothers, until God's word is exalted. And to be protective of the secrecy of the oath and to the directives of Al Qaeda."Pretty amazing, eh? Who'd have thought it was so easy to become a member of the most evil terrorist group in the world? And the oath taken right there in the US and administered by the FBI no less!
All of this should remind you of last year's Miami Seven fiasco where an undercover FBI agent, also posing as an 'al-Qaeda' operative, approached a group of apparently incompetent half-wits living in a warehouse in Florida. The group's name is "the Sea of David" and far from having anything to do with 'Islamic terrorism' they all claimed to be Christians who "trained through the bible". On that occasion, the undercover FBI "al-qaeda" man:
approached the group and asked them if they wanted to join 'al-Qaeda',Several mainstream press reports on the Shah and Sabir case make it clear that both men were very susceptible to the lure of money and it seems that it was precisely the lure of money that led them to agree to whatever the FBI's informants wanted. At one point Shah told Saeed that he was unable to leave the US because he "had no papers". Shah was in fact subject to a court order due to his failure to pay child support and the New York State family court had prevented him from leaving the country. Shah, 42, is also a well-known New York city jazz musician who has backed greats like Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter, and played bass at local clubs for years. Fellow musicians said they've never heard him espouse an allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
'swore one of them in' as an 'al-Qaeda' member,
offered them $50,000,
provided them with army boots and a video camera,
suggested that they might want to blow up some government buildings,
suggested that they wanted to blow up the Sears tower,
suggested to them that they wanted to wage "full ground war against the United States",
identified that one of them knew what the Sears tower was and had actually been to Chicago - once.
"This man talks about music. That's all he talks about," said pianist Donald Smith, 61, who last month played with Shah at St. Nick's Pub in Harlem.
According to prosecuting Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Brown, Sabir was a man deeply in debt, 750,000 in student loans, child support payments and taxes to be precise. Sabir is an Ivy league doctor who got his degree from the prestigious Columbia university Medical school and treated the poor for free. Sabir's defense attorney said his client has been actively trying to pay his debts with money he earned working in hospitals in Palm Beach County and, in the past two years, Saudi Arabia.
"This is like the Crusades all over again," Sabir's cousin, Leroy Walker, 62, said, "The man isn't political or fanatical. He doesn't push his faith on anyone."
"He was a down-the-middle, hard-working guy who worked long hours to keep up his profession and expenses," said Dr. Faroque Kahn, a lung specialist who knew Sabir in New York. "I can't imagine him getting involved in chaos and destruction."
Sabir's story paints the picture of a troubled man who found comfort in Islam but who grew angry at the treatment he received in post 9-11 America. Dan McBride, who became friends with Sabir at the Islamic Center of Boca Raton, said the doctor worked in Saudi Arabia to expose his children to a different culture. Others have said medical practice paid well there, where U.S.-trained doctors are in demand.
Sabir was born Rafael Wright into a catholic family in the Bronx. Sabir's father, Norman Wright, left the family, and his mentally ill mother and put Sabir in a home, according to news reports. But Sabir went on to attend City College of New York and Columbia University. Along the way, he converted from his family's Catholic faith to Islam and changed his name to Rafiq Sabir. Married twice with four children, Sabir is described as a wonderful and dedicated father who never really achieved the success to which he aspired.
Sabir's neighbors in the middle-class Villa San Remo gated community in Florida where he lived with his second wife, Arlene Morgan and their two children were awakened about 5 a.m. May 28 2005, when FBI agents came to arrest Sabir. The next day, his wife calmly explained to a neighbor that her husband's arrest was a mistake. Arlene and her sons, Isa, 6, and Amir, 4, disappeared the next day. Alberto Montes, who lived next door to the Sabirs, said he never could figure out why, if Sabir was a doctor and his wife worked as a nurse at West Boca Medical Center, they rented a house, euphemistically called an "attached villa," in the neighborhood, which is pleasant but far from upscale.
The furnishings were as modest as the home itself, Montes said. In retrospect, he said, only one of their belongings stands out: a framed copy of a letter to their young son, congratulating him for doing so well in school. It was signed by President Bush.
Not exactly your average anti-American "jihadist".
According to his lawyer, Sabir was exploited by Shah who was willing to say anything to anyone who would offer him large sums of money, even pledging allegiance to "al-qaeda". Both men however, are clearly innocent of any terrorist offences or "al-qaeda" connections, apart from "al-qaeda" connections foisted upon them by the FBI. The US government however, had invested many man hours and a significant amount of money to get Sabir and Shah where they wanted them, and there was American public opinion and the war on terror to consider. To entrap the two men, the FBI used the aforementioned undercover informant, Mohammed Alanssi or "UC-1".
Mohamed Alanssi is a Yemeni national, a failed businessman, and a former employee of the US embassy in Yemen in the 1980's from where he was fired twice because the embassy "found him to be untrustworthy" according to a former embassy accountant.
In Yemen in the 1990's, he became enmeshed in a bizarre confrontation over a $71,700 loan he took out by mortgaging his house. He fell behind on the payments. A bank repossessed it, and his family, including several of his six children, was evicted. Days later, court records show, Mr. Alanssi broke into the house and the family remained there for the next four years in spite of repeated eviction notices. Twice, Yemeni officials filed warrants for his arrest. "The man ignored and evaded the legal authorities," said Mohammed Ahmed Taher al-Hassani, the Sana judge who handled the case.Alanssi first came to the United States from Yemen on July 23, 2001, arriving on a tourist visa in New York, and left on January 7, 2002. When he returned from Yemen on October 21, 2002, he was met at New York's JFK Airport by the FBI, which took custody of him, took his Yemeni passport and granted him "humanitarian parole."
Some of the family members Mr. Alanssi left behind say they grew weary of his perilous way of life. Reached at his house in a Sana suburb, a brother, Abdullah Alanssi, said Mohamed had been a long-running source of aggravation.
"We have spent years trying to distance ourselves from him," he said.
Such unusual status is generally given to people who are in the United States for urgent medical reasons but may also be granted to someone who will provide a "significant public benefit," which sources said could include assisting law enforcement agencies.
According to interviews and documents in New York, Washington and Yemen, Alanssi was a striving dreamer with an appetite for cash and detective work who often left a trail of unpaid bills and bounced checks. Characterised as a man who desired to live the American dream, the real picture that emerges of Alanssi however is that of a serial con artist who manipulated almost everyone with whom he crossed paths in an effort to extract money from them:
According to three people who met Alanssi in the United States, he used the same talents that made him a capable FBI informant for other purposes. Three immigrants from Peru, Egypt and Eritrea said in interviews that Alanssi exploited their sympathy, bilking them out of several thousand dollars with his teary stories about medical and family problems and his promises of quick repayment.In 2001, either Alanssi himself or one of his contacts in Brooklyn came up with the idea that, if he really wanted to make some easy money, he could become an FBI informer. Given his history as a US embassy worker in Yemen and the paranoid nature of the US national security state immediately before and after the 9/11 attacks, it is highly likely that Alanssi, in the US on a visitor's visa, was already on an FBI list of "people to contact".
"He tells everyone different stories. He never tells the truth," said Sayed Mahmoud Aly, a limousine driver at the Holiday Inn on The Hill who said Alanssi owes him $4,000. "He started crying, and when he cry . . . it broke my heart."
In Brooklyn, he kept at his big plans. But they sputtered out. He could spin a sympathetic story about his travails, sometimes literally through tears. But the sympathy often curdled after he borrowed money and disappeared.
He was able to win confidence among Yemenis in Brooklyn, some of them said in interviews. He spoke excellent English; there was a mature look about his jowly face.
"You would trust him," said Nasr Hussain, the owner of a print shop along an Arab stretch of Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn. Mr. Alanssi hired him to make brochures for a planned new travel agency and gave him a photograph to include that he said showed him receiving an award back home. The printing job was soon canceled. Mr. Hussain said he never got back $100 he lent Mr. Alanssi, ostensibly for heart medicine.
In October 2001 a Yemeni man who, according to Mr. Hussain, the printer, had briefly been a partner in one of Mr. Alanssi's failed ventures was arrested and charged with currency violations for trying to ship $140,000 in boxes of honey jars to Yemen. Soon, court filings show, the former partner agreed to cooperate in an investigation of Yemeni money handlers in Brooklyn. It is possible that Alanssi's name was flagged again as a result of this investigation.
Within a month, Alanssi had been recruited by the FBI and was promising to deliver big names in the "war on terror" to the FBI, specifically a Yemeni Cleric by the name of Mohammed Ali Hassan Al-Moayad. To the excitement of his FBI handlers, Alanssi claimed that Moayad had connections with al-Qaeda and Hamas and that he had funded both groups. The FBI was interested. Alanssi claims that, funded by the CIA, he travelled back and forth to Yemen for about a year and used his Yemeni nationality and the fact that he had once lived near Moayad's mosque in Yemen's capital of Sanaa to ingratiate himself with Moayad. The FBI then hatched a plot whereby Alanssi would tell Moayad that he knew "a former Black Panther member" who wanted to "donate $2 million to the jihad". The "former Black Panther member" was in fact yet another FBI informant and the meeting, which was to be recorded to ensnare Moayad, was set up in a hotel room in Frankfurt, Germany.
Before the meeting FBI agents, who would be listening in on the conversation, impressed upon Alanssi that they needed Moayad to make statements that could be used to convince a court that he "provided material support to terrorist organizations". Now, one would think that if Moayad really was a provider of "material support to terrorist organisations", and if he was not overly suspicious of Alanssi or the "former black panther" (the fact that he turned up suggests that he was not), you would think it would be easy, with $2 million up for grabs, to get him to say something incriminating. Getting Moayad to state unequivocally what exactly his relationship with "terrorism" (if any) actually was, was like pulling teeth. For a start, Moayad talked of using the money to help impoverished Muslim children in Yemen. Moayad did not speak English and the "Black Panther" did not speak Arabic, leaving the translation of the proceedings in the hands of Alanssi. As the meeting progressed, Alanssi, eager to seal the deal, impress his FBI handlers and secure the big payoff he expected, was getting a little frantic. He began asking more direct questions:
The supposed Black Panther did not speak Arabic, so Mr. Alanssi translated, placing him in the center of the action. In a transcript prepared by the defense, the Black Panther seemed impatient. He asked directly if the next attack would be against Israel or the United States.Moayad's statements were interesting, but not enough, especially in light of the fact that in an interview with Yemeni reporters after his arrest, Moayad stated that Mr. Alanssi had told him prior to the meeting with the "Black Panther" in Frankfurt that Moayad needed to agree with the "Black Panther" "in whatever he says in order to get the $2 million". Furthermore, shortly after the arrest of Moayad, then Attorney General John Ashcroft's public claim that Moayad had delivered $20 million to Osama himself, (an attempt at 'trial by public'), was an uncorroborated claim made by Alanssi that was not recorded.
"So do you have any plan for that?" Mr. Alanssi translated eagerly.
For now no, the sheik answered. "We want to rearrange our papers," he added somewhat inscrutably.
In Mr. Alanssi's translation, that odd comment became a startling admission. "They will start planning where it's going to be," he said.
The sheik often slipped through their grasp. He flatly denied that he had had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks. Asked if he knew of Islamic warriors in New York who might do battle against "the big Satan," his answer was, "We'll talk about this in its proper time."
But the prosecutors' transcripts are studded with comments that seemed to bolster their charges. The sheik said Osama bin Laden called him his sheik. "Regarding training in Palestine, I can call Hamas and arrange things," he said.
When Mr. Alanssi excitedly stressed the notion of blessing Osama bin Laden, Yasir Arafat and "their efforts against the Jews," the sheik answered, "We ask God for that."
The US government and justice system was not to be deterred by mere trifles such as these and Moayad was extradited to the US in January 2003. During Moyad's trial in 2005 the judge called the secretly recorded conversations "chilling" and drew a connection between Moayad's desire to fund terrorism, the Sept. 11 attacks and a suicide bus bombing in Israel that was described during the trial by one of the survivors, and in the end, despite the serious problems with the evidence and the nature in which it was collected, Moayad was convicted in 2005, receiving a 75 year sentence for "helping to finance Al Qaeda and Hamas. "Your honor, what have I done?" Moayad said in Arabic as he was led away.
Moayad is now in Colorado's supermax prison known as ADX Florence in a solitary confinement for 22 - 23 hours each day in a 7-by-12 ft cell. No communal dining, exercising, or religious services are allowed and inmates' only direct human interaction is with correctional officers who deliver their food. One famous inmate, Eric Rudolph, the alleged "Olympic Park bomber" (likely a mind-controlled patsy) lamented in a series of 2006 letters to a Colorado Springs newspaper that the ADX Florence facility is meant to "inflict misery and pain."
Alanssi was paid $100,000 for his services to the FBI in manufacturing the reality of the war on terror, although he was expecting $5 million. After the arrest of Moayad in 2003, Alanssi burned through his pay off money, spent some time trying to defraud several other unfortunate acquaintances out of their hard earned cash and finally, on November 15th 2004, sent a letter to the FBI complaining about his treatment by the government and threatening that he would burn himself in an "unexpected place." A short time later, at 1:57 in the afternoon, according to the police, "a Middle Eastern man" approached a White House gate with a letter for the president. He was turned away. "After a conversation with Secret Service officers," the statement said, "the subject pulled a lighter from his pocket and ignited his jacket.
Defense lawyers in the al-Moayad case say Alanssi's attempted suicide and his allegations reveal the tremendous pressure he was under to produce evidence against al-Moayad and his Yemeni assistant, Zayed.Alanssi was taken to hospital with burns over 30% of his body (mainly his midriff) where his condition was soon downgraded from critical to "reasonable". He was to appear at Moyad's trial as a star witness but in the end failed to do so.
"This was a manufactured crime and Alanssi had a very strong motive to ensnare these people," said Zayed's attorney, Jonathan Marks. "They promised to make him a millionaire on the one hand if he went along with the program and if he didn't they were going to put him in jail and torture him."
Marks wrote in documents filed in federal court on Monday that Alanssi's translations were "inaccurate, incomplete and frequently embellished." He often introduced baseless statements about terror links that a jury could mistakenly attribute to the defendants, Marks said.
The time frame for Alanssi's work in providing false accusations against the Yemeni cleric (2001 - late 2004) coincide with his meetings as "UC-1" or the Jihadi recruiter, with Shah and Sabir. Indeed, in FBI agent Murphy's deposition in the trial of Shah and Sabir, he stated:
"Between about October 2004 and early May 2005, there was a gap in communications between UC-1 (Alanssi) and Shah as UC-1 informed Shah that he would be travelling frequently and spending time in the Arabian Peninsula."As we can now safely conclude, during that "gap in communications" with Shah, rather than travelling in the Middle East, Alanssi was in fact a little closer to home, recovering in a DC hospital from burn wounds incurred in his most extravagant plea to the FBI for more money in the form of his suicide attempt at the gates of the White House on November 15th 2004.
The point in this somewhat involved dissection of the case of Mohammed Alanssi is to show the duplicitous nature of the modus operandi used by the FBI (and surely other intelligence agencies around the world) in their 'no holds barred' attempt to fabricate evidence that can then be used by US government to create the reality of a "war on terror."
Alanssi was (and probably remains) a dupe for the FBI. He has a natural gift for manipulating people, either by appealing to their sense of empathy or by holding out the lure of untold riches. In this respect he fits perfectly the role of FBI informant in the war on terror - and the FBI knew it the first time they met him. At the same time that he was entrapping Sheik Moayad with the offer of $2million of US taxpayer's money on behalf of the US government and fabricating "terrorist" statements that he attributed to him, he was also entrapping Tarik Shah and Rafiq Sabir. It is of no surprise therefore that many aspects of both sting operations bear striking similarities, including the claim by Sabir's defence attorney that the more serious charges against Sabir that arose from comments that Alanssi claimed Sabir made did not even appear on the tapes of the conversations:
"There is no instance on those tapes where Sabir says, 'Oh yes, I want to treat wounded jihadists.' That's just spin," he said.It would appear that a standard operating procedure is employed by intelligence agents in their now never-ending search for ever more grist for the Islamic terror patsy mill. From the details of the cases discussed here we can come up with a rough outline of this procedure:
Identify financially troubled/mentally unstable informant A,This, dear readers, is in essence how the "war on terror" is being fabricated, not fought. "Al-Qaeda" exists, but not in the form that the US government alleges. As explained above, "al-Qaeda" began in the late 1970's as a network of Muslim mercenaries from countries around the Middle East and SE Asia, all of them hired, trained and directed by Pakistani intelligence and Saudi Arabia on behalf of the CIA in the US government's war to stop Soviet Russia from gaining a foothold in strategically important Afghanistan.
Identify financially troubled/mentally unstable target A,
Develop detailed profile on each.
Promise informant A that he will be paid large sums of money if he will establish contact with target A and portray himself to target A as an "al-Qaeda" recruiter.
Instruct informant A to tape record all conversations and to tell target A that "Sheik Osama himself" will listen to them.
Instruct informant A to tell target A that he knows someone in the Middle East that is looking for "brothers" to train other "brothers" in camps in Pakistan and that they will be rewarded with large sums of money for their work.
Instruct informant A to establish a relationship with target A in terms of their Muslim faith. Instruct informant A to lead the conversations towards discussions of "Jihad".
Instruct informant A that Target A must declare his support for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda and his desire to wage holy war and that this is required before the process can be taken further (and the money given).
When enough "evidence" has been collected, officially arrest target A and bring him to court where he is later convicted of "providing material support to al-Qaeda".
Ensure the story of the arrest and later the conviction is hyped up to the point of hysteria on the front pages of mainstream media newspapers.
Have a member of the Bush administration declare that they have prevented another "Muslim terrorist cell" in America from "harming the American people".
Since then, as the need for an ever more omnipresent terrorist enemy evolved in order to allow the US, British and Israeli elite to wage their war of domination on the people of the earth grew, the network has been nurtured into a veritable industry with Pakistani intelligence service the ISI, under the full control of the US government, playing a leading role in providing training camps into which naïve young Muslims are sucked, to later be churned out as "evidence" of the monolithic "Islamic terrorist threat" to the peoples of the free world. With these young men and women constituting evidence prepared in advance, the US, British and Israeli governments and their agencies are free to carry out the larger terror attacks, such as 9/11, and the London and Madrid train bombings, themselves.
Once this is understood as the ACTUAL reality, the template used to produce false flag Islamic terrorist attacks and the trial of the patsies that are later blamed is easily seen for the Ziocons' attempt at "reality creation" that it is. It is happening today in Palestine with the alleged "clashes" between "Palestinian factions" - in Lebanon with the recent attacks by "Fatah Islam" on Lebanese soldiers and citizens. There is however, a simple solution: Stop believing in fantasy masquerading as reality.
A final note:
Last week, Joseph L Galloway, a former senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young" in an opinion piece for McClatchy newspapers entitled: Hang In There, America: Competent Leadership Is Just 600-Plus Days Away, wrote:
As of May 17th, there were 613 days left until Jan. 20, 2009, and the end of our long national nightmare as President George W. Bush and his Rasputin, Vice President Dick Cheney, shuffle off to their necessarily well-guarded retirement homes and onto the ash heap of history.If only this were true. Bush, and those pulling his strings, are the architects of everything that I have described above. They have invested too much to ever consider retirement. They're only getting started. The Bush cabal stole two elections, they killed 3,000 people on 9/11 and unleashed a fabricated war on terror on the Middle East that will soon engulf the world. So far, they have killed over 1 million Iraqi civilians and destroyed a once prosperous and secular-leaning Iraq.
Next time you get a chance, take a look at a map of the Middle East and SE Asia. Unless you are in the US military, not shown on your map are the large US military bases in countries that completely encircle Iran. Currently, off the coast of Iran sit two US aircraft carriers and many more US Navy war ships. Afghanistan was taken in 2002. Iraq in 2003, both are essentially massive US military bases on Iran's doorstep. Make no mistake, before Bush leaves, Iran will be attacked, and the ensuing backlash will be used as cover under which yet another false flag "Islamic terror" attack will be perpetrated on American soil by the Ziocon "reality creators". When that happens, all bets in terms of the US constitution and the rights it allegedly affords US citizens are decidedly off.
In short, Bush is not leaving on Jan 20. 2009. One way or another, he and his handlers mean to stay the course and finish the job they started.
They mean to create a new reality for us all, a reality based on the rule of the psychopath, and what is that rule? Andrew Lobaczewski, author of Political Ponerology states:
What happens if ... psychopaths achieve power in leadership positions with international exposure? ... Goaded by their character, such people thirst for just that even though it would conflict with their own life interest.... They do not understand that a catastrophe will ensue. Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.Or as Laura Knight-Jadczyk recently wrote:
Goaded by their character, psychopaths thirst for global power even though it ultimately condemns them to death along with millions - or billions - of others. Psychopaths do not have the capacity to understand the catastrophes that they repeatedly bring on themselves and the world. Just as germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing, so the psychopath does not understand that the only reality he is creating is the reality of his own ultimate destruction.But in a world where such people possess enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet many times over, it is not merely their own destruction that is at risk, but the destruction of the better part of human life on planet earth.
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