Sherlock Sam in Pakistan (by Latuff)

Al-Qaeda the Database Unbound

In a lengthy excerpt posted on Wayne Madsen’s site, Pierre-Henry Bunel, a former agent for French military intelligence, explains the origins of the word “al-Qaeda.” As previously noted by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, “al-Qaeda” has nothing to do with a terrorist organization, as the neocons and the corporate media tell us over and over, ad infinitum, but is in fact a database.

“In the early 1980s the Islamic Bank for Development, which is located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, like the Permanent Secretariat of the Islamic Conference Organization, bought a new computerized system to cope with its accounting and communication requirements,” Bunel explains. “It was decided to use a part of the system’s memory to host the Islamic Conference’s database. It was possible for the countries attending to access the database by telephone: an Intranet, in modern language. The governments of the member-countries as well as some of their embassies in the world were connected to that network.” Files associated to the database were called “Q eidat il-Maaloomaat” and “Q eidat i-Taaleemaat” in Arabic. “Those two files were kept in one file called in Arabic ‘Q eidat ilmu’ti’aat’ which is the exact translation of the English word database.

But the Arabs commonly used the short word Al Qaida which is the Arabic word for ‘base.’”

Because of the presence of ‘rogue states,’ it became easy for terrorist groups to use the email of the database. Hence, the email of Al Qaida was used, with some interface system, providing secrecy, for the families of the mujaheddin to keep links with their children undergoing training in Afghanistan, or in Libya or in the Beqaa valley, Lebanon. Or in action anywhere in the battlefields where the extremists sponsored by all the ‘rogue states’ used to fight. And the ‘rogue states’ included Saudi Arabia.

When Osama bin Laden was an American agent in Afghanistan, the Al Qaida Intranet was a good communication system through coded or covert messages…. Al Qaida was neither a terrorist group nor Osama bin Laden’s personal property.

In short, “al-Qaeda” was in essence an email designation and had nothing to do with the “American agent in Afghanistan,” Osama bin Laden. In fact, “al-Qaeda,” the terrorist organization, is a creation of the United States government and the corporate media.

Pierre-Henry Bunel concludes:

The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the ‘TV watcher’ to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism.

The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money.

Bunel, according to Madsen, was punished for his heresy. In December, 2001, the former French military intelligence agent was “convicted by a secret French military court of passing classified documents that identified potential NATO bombing targets in Serbia to a Serbian agent during the Kosovo war in 1998…. Bunel’s character witnesses and psychologists notwithstanding, the system ‘got him’ for telling the truth about Al Qaeda and who has actually been behind the terrorist attacks commonly blamed on that group.”

It is noteworthy that that Yugoslav government, the government with whom Bunel was asserted by the French government to have shared information, claimed that Albanian and Bosnian guerrillas in the Balkans were being backed by elements of “Al Qaeda.” We now know that these guerrillas were being backed by money provided by the Bosnian Defense Fund, an entity established as a special fund at Bush-influenced Riggs Bank and directed by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.

Riggs Bank was used for “the dubious financial machinations of Saudi diplomats and despots from Africa and South America, including Chile’s former maximum leader, Gen. Augusto Pinochet,” according to Jack Shafer, writing for Slate, and citing Glenn R. Simpson of the War Street Journal. Moreover, the Riggs Bank “enjoyed a ‘relationship’ with the CIA for some time.” As noted by Madsen, Riggs Bank hosted the Bosnian Defense Fund and this financial assistance was tapped by “al-Qaeda” in Bosnia.

On October 3, Madsen wrote:

The Muslim operation in the Balkans was largely supported by official (CIA, DIA, and Special Operations) U.S. assistance but also by unofficial help. This was mainly carried out by private military contractors like MPRI and financial support networks like the Bosnia Defense Fund, established in the mid-1990s at a Riggs Bank account in Washington, DC.

The principal movers behind the Bosnian Defense Fund were Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. In fact, Feith’s law firm, Feith and Zell (FANZ) set up the Bosnia Defense Fund.

According to a former Riggs legal adviser, when objections were raised about the hundreds of millions of dollars collected from such countries as Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Malaysia, the UAE, Iran, Jordan, and Egypt that were being detected by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) being sent from Washington to Sarajevo, Bosnia, and reports that there was “spillage” of these funds into the hands of Al Qaeda units in the country, Perle’s response at one contentious meeting was, “just make it fu*king happen.”

Indeed, Perle and the Straussian neocons just made it f-ing happen on September 11, 2001, although the money trail is studiously avoided and swept under the rug by the corporate media.

It is no secret Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Bander bin Sultan, had accounts at Riggs Bank and money from these accounts allegedly found its way to two of the nine eleven hijackers. Of course, the Bush nine eleven whitewash commission denied this ever happened and thus this suspicious bit of information found its way to the memory hole (see Dr. David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie). It should be noted here that the Bush-ites redacted 28 pages from the Congressional Joint Inquiry Report on 9-11 and those pages are assumed to have contained information on the role of Saudi Arabia and another unnamed country (more than likely Pakistan, or Israel, perhaps?) in financing Osama.

Interestingly, however, a reference to a relationship between the supposed hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi and the FBI was allowed to remain in the report (the report states that the putative hijackers “had numerous contacts with a long time FBI counterterrorism informant in California and that a third future hijacker, Hani Hanjour, apparently had more limited contact with the same informant,” see Allan P. Duncan, Bush Should Cry Uncle and Release Saudi Info).

In summary, “al-Qaeda” never existed in the form now claimed by the Bush-ites and the corporate media, “al-Qaeda” was in fact a database of CIA recruited and trained mujahideen and an email connected to that database, Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with that database and thus all references in the corporate media claiming he is the leader of “al-Qaeda” the fantastical terrorist organization are false (if not deliberately contrived lies), terrorists falsely attributed to “al-Qaeda” were organized by the U.S. military and NATO and financed by a CIA front bank in Washington (connected to two principal Straussian neocon criminals) and unleashed in Bosnia (assisting the drug-running KLA mafia), and the CIA front bank later shared a connection with prominent Saudi Arabians who are suspected of financing the nine eleven hijackers (since the hijackers did not actually exist, this money was probably used elsewhere in the nine eleven operation).

All of this information was predictably discarded by the nine eleven whitewash commission. Or perhaps never came to their attention, as they now say the CIA obstructed their investigations, and kept vital information and documents from them.

Of course, none of this arcane information means squat to the American people, many whom believe Osama teamed up with Saddam to pull of nine eleven and “al-Qaeda” is a real terrorist organization run by the elusive “devils” (in Bush’s Manichean parlance) Bin Laden and his murderous cohort, al-Zarqawi.

In fact, the official Conspiracy Theory is so embedded in the American psyche, thanks to the relentless efforts of the corporate media, it may never be possible for the truth to emerge.

Sooner or later, the neocons and their cardboard cut-out of a half-witted president will chime their Pavlovian bells—bells associated with the explosion of a “radiological device” or a series of black op suicide bombings in the American heartland—and our Emmanuel Goldstein du jour will be blamed and the process will start anew, with shock and awe in Syria or Iran.

- I wonder how much of the Pentagon's trillions that 'went missing' under Dov Zakheim can be found in accounts at Riggs Bank.