PART 7: THE BROTHER-BRUDER-AKH AXIS
By Alex Constantine
Prelude: Abu Sayyaf &
the CIA'S Terror Incubator
in the Philippines
It's generally agreed that the same arm of Al Quaeda responsible for the
1993 WTC bombing returned on 9/11/01 to finish the job. It's a reasonable
assumption that the first attempt to level the towers, and the subsequent
paths of blind cleric Rahman's fellow conspirators, should provide some
answers to questions left in the wake of 911 concerning its obscure history
and sponsorship.
Media histories of al-Queda trace its roots to Saudi Arabia. Founder Osama
Bin Laden pushed early funding through the International Islamic Relief
Organization (IIRO), as arranged in meetings between al Qaeda's inner-circle
and the charity's directors. (The Saudi government funded terrorist attacks
on Israel in utter secrecy throughout most of the 1990's via charities
in
Virginia and Florida.1) Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's lieutenant, was
employed by the IIRO in Albania. The Philippine branch office was run by
Osama's brother-in-law (1986-94), who made a hand-off of cash to the Abu
Sayyaf, an al Quaeda offshoot.2
The DoD, CIA and other opaque branches of government (oh, and the Mafia),
drawn by the lure of Japanese and German gold (see part 5), maintained a
particularly busy presence in the Philippines as the Marcos kleptocracy
declined and fell. Khashoggi's Iran-contra ally, Oliver North, oversaw
"back
door" shipments of the recovered gold, much of it to Arab governments,
some
of it to Middle Eastern terrorists trading on the black market. North met
with Osama Bin Laden's money men often to negotiate exchange of the gold.3
The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), like Al Quaeda, owed its existence to the
intelligence establishment. The ASG was co-founded by Edwin Angeles, an
undercover agent for the Defense Intelligence Group at the Department of
National Defense, Republic of the Philippines. His Muslim handle was
"Ibrahim Yakub" and as the organization's operations officer
and chief
recruiter, he was largely responsible for the spread - and criminalization -
of the Abu Sayyaf.
Filipino television news reporter Arlyn de la Cruz, in her history of the
ASG, writes that Angeles/Yokub "holds the key to the deep intricacies of
how
some government agencies manipulated the rawness of the Abu Sayyaf during
its early years." This observation still applies, and can be said of al
Quaeda, the CIA-bred Taliban mutation, as well.
It was Angeles "who actually introduced the idea of kidnapping as part
of
the fund-raising activities of the Abu Sayyaf," she recalls - this would
be
the abduction of a wealthy woman in Davao. "Edwin planned the abduction
and
even initiated the plan himself." The victim was held not far from the
Brigade Headquarters of the Philippine Marines in Tabuk. She was released
after her family paid the million-pesos ransom to Abu Sayyaf.
The next abductee was Luis "Ton-Ton" Biel, a five year-old child,
and his
grandfather ... then Claretian priest Bernardo Blanco. Soon, the media were
requesting interviews, and "Yokub" stepped before the cameras to act
the
role of lethal but well-spoken religious lunatic. Angeles, according to
Cruz, was a "good speaker, a good actor. He spoke like a Leftist leader
espousing Fundamentalist principles."4
The May 16 2004, an accidental blast at the Evergreen Hotel in Davao was a
clear statement that the "Al Quaeda" offshoot still functions as an
intelligence front, a proxy army of the National Security Council that
exists to justify intervention in the Philippines.
The explosion - publicized in the States as the work of the dread ASG - was
set off by a store of dynamite belonging to one Michael Meiring, an
African-born, naturalized, proverbially Ugly American citizen. Meiring
claimed that Abu Sayyaf's mad dogs had lobbed a grenade into his hotel
room,
an alibi proven to be false upon examination of the scene by local police.
Meiring was so badly injured that both of his legs had to be amputated at
the knees.
The dynamite, the Manila Times reported, also tore off his "mantle of
obscurity," exposing the accident-prone Ugly American "and his numerous
American and Filipino partners, to the public limelight."6 From the rubble
at the Evergreen Hotel emerged the story of "a complex man, whose trail
leads back to South Africa and boxes supposedly containing US Federal
Reserve notes and bonds obtained from the Abu Sayyaf." The Times reported
that employees of the hotel "claimed that while they were cleaning Meiring's
room before the explosion, he warned them not to touch two metal boxes,
which he said contained important documents. Police investigators said they
recovered blasting caps and ammonium nitrate from the room, where Meiring
had stayed since Dec. 14 2001."
Meiring refused to talk to Philipine police. Bloodied and burned by the
explosion, he was whisked out of the country on a chartered plane, according
Col. Lino Calingasan, a local immigratiion official, by agents of the FBI
and NSC. "American David Hawthorn, a close friend of Meiring, claimed the
blast victim had confessed passing to Mandela's government the proceeds
of a
box of old US federal notes." That box was one in a set of twelve,
containing an estimated $500-million in counterfeit American notes.
Hawthorn had been shown a letter from the South African government and a US
Treasury permit to support his story. Hawthorn also saw a packing list'
that had "a cover sheet printed with the words US ARMY,' the
Army seal,
some numbers and a group of upper case letters. Meiring, he said, claimed
the list represented the serial numbers of the missing notes, dating back to
1937. Similar boxes' were recovered by United States Secret Service
and the
Philippine Central Bank late last year. Other counterfeit bonds and currency
were also recovered from a hotel in Davao a few months ago. It has been
reported that these were to be ... shipped to Las Vegas, Nevada."
Philippine police discovered that Meiring, the NSC amputee, had run with
neo-nazis and Islamic radicals alike, including the Abu Sayyaf and other
radical fronts. His key contact in Nevada was financier James Rowe of
Nevada, an executive producer for Wild Rose Productions, an independent
documentary production company in New Green Valley, near Las Vegas. Rowe, in
turn, ran with white supremacists and tax rebels in Nevada, also neo-nazis
in the United States and Germany. Another of Meiring's contacts back home
was Chuck Ager, an ultracon mining engineer in Colorado. Another was Nina
North (possibly an alias), a CIA operative who took over "back door"
financial transactions in black market gold formerly conducted by Oliver
North. Another was Filipino-American Bob Gould, a tax protester from
Hayward, California in league with Fred Obado, leader of the Kodar Kiram
terrorist cell, son of Sultan Jumalul Kiram.
Meiring operated a shell company called PAROUSIA - a term used by right-wing
Christian evangelicals, a reference to the second coming of Christ.
But Meiers wasn't the only home-grown terrorist running loose in the
Philippines: "Three Vietnamese terrorists arrested last year for plotting
to
blow up the Vietnamese Embassy here were assets of the US intelligence
community," the Times reported.7
KAHANA
Robert J. Freidman, a journalist for the Village Voice, wrote one of the
most signally important articles of the previous decade, "The CIA and the
Sheikh."5 The feature was an inventory of critical leads, eroded over time,
sadly, by opportunities lost.
If the killers of Rabbi Meir Kahana, the vitriolic leader of the Jewish
Defense League, had been captured and sentenced, Freidman contends, the 1993
World Trade Center bombing - and by extension, 911 - would have never have
occurred.
"On November 5, 1990," Freidman wrote, "El Sayyid Nosair, a
pudgy, bearded
34-year-old Egyptian American and a core member of the El Salaam Mosque,
calmly walked up to the podium of a conference room in the Halloran House, a
midtown Manhattan hotel, after Kahane had finished a one-hour speech.
Moments later, Kahane was shot once in the throat at point-blank range with
a .357 magnum, and Nosair bolted outside. During a running gun battle down
Lexington Avenue, Nosair was wounded by an off-duty postal inspector and
finally captured by New York City police."
An FBI informant told Freidman that Nosair frequented the El Salaam Mosque
in Jersey City. Nosair was close with Sheikh Abdel Rahman. "I told them
that, four days before, I saw with my own eyes the Sheikh meeting with
Nosair at a Lebanese restaurant on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. It was 7
p.m. There was Nosair, the Sheikh, a person escorting the Sheikh, and
another person I don't know. They were deep in conversation."
After the arrest of Kahane's assailant, police found evidence that Kahane's
murder "was just the first in a planned spree. Scrawled on a bank calendar
in Nosair's home was a hit list' that included the names of a U.S.
representative, two federal judges, and a former assistant U.S. Attorney."
The secretive clutch of Muslims from the Mosque often met with Nosair to
discuss means of destroying symbols of the Israeli-loving Babylon they
despised, "the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty." The
World
Trade Center.
"Many are wondering why there wasn't a comprehensive, wide-ranging
investigation of Meir Kahane's murder," Friedman reported. "What
investigators would have found if they had done their job thoroughly is that
Sheikh Abdel Rahman and El Sayyid Nosair were at the heart of a far-flung
terrorist conspiracy."
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1) John Loftus, "What Congress does not know about Enron and 9/11,"
May 31,
2002, http://www.john-loftus.com/enron3.asp#congress
2) Dore Gold, "The Suicide Bombing Attacks in Saudi Arabia: A Preliminary
Assessment," Jerusalem Issue Brief, Institute for Contemporary Affairs,
Vol.
2, No. 28, May 13, 2003, http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief2-28.htm
3) Edith Regalado, "CIA whisks away Brit-Am blast victim; now in US,"
Philippine Star, July 9, 2002.
4) Anon., "Edwin Angeles: The spy
who came in from the cold," INQ7.net,
http://www.inq7.net/specials/inside_abusayyaf/2001/features/spy_turns_bandit.htm
5) Robert J. Freidman, "The CIA and the Sheikh," Village Voice, March
30,
1993.
6) See, http://www.voxfux.com/archives/00000105.htm
for a summary of the Manila Times series written by Dorian Zumel-Sicat and
Jeannette Andrade, May 29, 2002 through May 31, 2002. Also see, Manila
Times' news reports to June 19, 2002.
7) Ibid.