QUESTIONABLE TIES

Tracking bin Laden's money flow leads back to Midland, Texas

by Wayne Madsen
In These Times

On September 24, President George W. Bush appeared at a press conference in the White House Rose Garden to announce a crackdown on the financial networks of terrorists and those who support them. “U.S. banks that have assets of these groups or individuals must freeze their accounts,” Bush declared. “And U.S. citizens or businesses are prohibited from doing business with them.”

But the president, who is now enjoying an astounding 92 percent approval rating, hasn’t always practiced what he is now preaching: Bush’s own businesses were once tied to financial figures in Saudi Arabia who currently support bin Laden.

In 1979, Bush’s first business, Arbusto Energy, obtained financing from James Bath, a Houstonian and close family friend. One of many investors, Bath gave Bush $50,000 for a 5 percent stake in Arbusto. At the time, Bath was the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the wealthy Saudi Arabian family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden. It has long been suspected, but never proven, that the Arbusto money came directly from Salem bin Laden. In a statement issued shortly after the September 11 attacks, the White House vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath invested his own money, not Salem bin Laden’s, in Arbusto.

In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests. In fact, Bath has extensive ties, both to the bin Laden family and major players in the scandal-ridden Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) who have gone on to fund Osama bin Laden. BCCI defrauded depositors of $10 billion in the ’80s in what has been called the “largest bank fraud in world financial history” by former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. During the ’80s, BCCI also acted as a main conduit for laundering money intended for clandestine CIA activities, ranging from financial support to the Afghan mujahedin to paying intermediaries in the Iran-Contra affair.

When Salem bin Laden died in 1988, powerful Saudi Arabian banker and BCCI principal Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited his interests in Houston. Bath ran a business for bin Mahfouz in Houston and joined a partnership with bin Mahfouz and Gaith Pharaon, BCCI’s frontman in Houston’s Main Bank.

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http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/25/feature3.shtml

FBI Aids Terrorist Death Ray Plot to Foil Terrorist Death Ray Plot

Why are undercover FBI agents always actively setting up terrorist plots and foiling them?

Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton
Activist Post

Well, it appears they may be running out of new ideas. The most recent to come out in the mainstream media actually involved a death ray.

That’s right — a death ray.

The Atlantic Wire reports:

First, the plan allegedly crafted by [Glendon] Crawford and alleged co-conspirator Eric J. Feight was ridiculous — the death ray wouldn’t work. The plan involved mounting a remote-control operated X-ray laser on top of a truck to kill people without them noticing. 

Second, the death ray was inoperable. Crawford and Feight never got a real radiation source. 

Third, the death ray was built with the help of the FBI. The undercover FBI agents or informants gave Crawford the tools to build his death ray — X-ray tubes — and technical specs on how to use it. (The specs were altered to change their output capacity.) Crawford had some engineering experience, and was trying to figure out how to make them more powerful. An FBI informant also financed the plot, giving Feight $1,000 to build the remote control device. Undercover agents told Feight they’d get him access to an X-ray assembly facility…

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http://www.activistpost.com/2013/06/fbi-aids-terrorist-death-ray-plot-to.html?m=1

The Assassination of Robert Kennedy

BY JESSE VENTURA WITH DICK RUSSELL
TruTV.com

The LAPD, a CIA Lapdog

According to the LAPD logs, the cops were looking for two suspects besides Sirhan within minutes of the assassination. Then they stopped searching within the hour, because "they only have one man and don't want them to get anything started on a big conspiracy. This could be somebody that was getting out of the way so they wouldn't get shot." Huh? That makes no sense at all for an honest investigator to reason.

The fact is, the LAPD had a long history of a "special relationship" with the CIA, from helping out with clandestine activities to training certain officers for double duty. When they formed Special Unit Senator (SUS) to look into the assassination, the two main cops through which all information flowed both had ties to the CIA. "In retrospect it seems odd that… policemen who doubled as CIA agents occupied key positions in SUS, where they were able to seal off avenues that led in the direction of conspiracy."13 They also badgered any witness who didn't support the Sirhan-did-it-alone scenario.

Manuel Pena, a multilingual fellow who'd done special ops for the CIA, saw all the SUS reports and was the man responsible for approving all interviews. His partner, Sergeant Enrique "Hank" Hernandez, handled all the polygraph work, which he'd also done in Vietnam, South America and Europe. Both Pena and Hernandez had been undercover CIA with the Agency for International Development (AID). Later, Hernandez started his own security firm and got rich handling big government contracts.

As soon as Sirhan's trial ended, the LAPD got busy destroying evidence, including the ceiling panels and door frames from the pantry that they'd taken pictures of showing extra bullet holes. Their rationale, when asked later, was that these were "too large to fit into a card file"! Once again, we've got the authorities destroying evidence at a crime scene, just like with the King case. They also burned some 2,400 photographs, supposedly all duplicates, but we know some important ones are still missing—like the pictures taken by a 15-year-old kid named Scott Enyart. He was standing on a table so he could get a good view of Kennedy as he came in and took three rolls of Kodak film that the cops confiscated afterwards and said he could get back—if he came around in twenty years! Enyart had to fight in court to eventually be returned only 18 prints (no negatives), which were then promptly stolen out of the back seat of a car.

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http://www.trutv.com/conspiracy/assassinations/rfk/lapd-cia-lapdog.html