'Follow the Money'

What did the President know and when did he know it?

This question, evocative of the Watergate investigation, is now being posed by politicians and punditsseeking to determine what information the Bush Administration had prior to the incidents of September 11,2001. No amount of denial and back-peddling by the Bush Administration can cover up the fact that Bush hadadvance knowledge of possible terror attacks on US targets by the followers of Osama bid Laden. While it'sclear that Bush was personally briefed on August 6, 2001 about the possibility of those attacks, it remainsunclear about the nature and extent of precautions, if any, taken to prevent such attacks.

Nonetheless, there is a welter of material that points to the Bush Administration's obstruction and neglectof important leads to link bin Laden to operations in the United States. Moreover, in the months and weeksleading up to 9/11 there were warnings and signs that some members of the Administration and its nationalsecurity apparatus were anticipating something horrendous. In the aftermath of 9/11 the Bush Administrationmobilized the war machine and repressive legislation to promote policies that secured its economic andideological agenda. Thus, a more intriguing and significant question is: in light of what the BushAdministration gained from the fall-out of 9/11, how was that gain embedded in the actions and inactions bythe Bush Administration prior to 9/11? To ask the question about the reaping of political advantage from thetragedy of 9/11 need not assume that there was a conspiracy by the Bush Administration; merely that certainplayers acted out of their personal interests at the expense of the safety and security of the nation.

To piece together the various activities of these players in the Bush Administration one should recallanother key component of Watergate--the famous advice of "Deep Throat," the Washington insider, toBob Woodward, the investigative reporter from the Washington Post. When Woodward was having trouble connectingall the dots and players, "Deep Throat" intimated: "Follow the money!" The money traillinks Bush's oil background, his family's connections to Saudi investments, the politics of pipelines inCentral Asia, and the military-industrial complex. By detailing Bush's background and fast-forwarding to thedecisions of the Administration in its pursuit of war in Afghanistan, a possible war in Iraq, and a permanentwar agenda, a money trail will unfold that will transform Deep Throat's admonition into a Deep Threat alarmconcerning the lives and liberties of citizens of the United States and the world.

The Bushes, bid Laden and Carlyle

The Bush family's involvement with oil is not only deeply rooted in Texas oil wells, but also in the MiddleEast. George W's first experience in business was in the creation of the Arbusto Oil Company which eventuallymerged into Harken Oil. In 1986 Bahrain came to the rescue of the failing company by accepting a drillingcontract with Harken even though Harken had no real background with drilling. When George W. sold his holdingsin Harken for $848,000 in June of 1990, he cashed in at a point right before the company took a nose-dive inthe aftermath of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in August of 1990. Questions about whether George W. hadbeen given a warning by his father concerning what may have been the entrapment of Saddam Hussein in Kuwaithave never been fully settled.

On the other hand, conflicts of interest were definitely developed in the 1990's by father and son throughtheir involvement with the Carlye Group, an investment group filled with Reagan-Bush cabinet members. In 1990with former Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci, as the CEO of Carlyle, George W. was appointed to the boardof a Carlyle investment, Cateair. After his defeat in the 1992 Presidential election, George H. W. and JamesBaker, became Carlyle advisors and investors. Especially useful were the Bush and Baker connections to theruling elite of Saudi Arabia. Those connections helped to generate large investments in Carlyle from the Saudielite including the bin Laden family, a family made wealthy by an extensive construction business.

Although in the aftermath of 9/11 the bin Laden 2 million dollar investment in Carlyle was withdrawn, priorto that time Goerge W's administration had put up road-blocks to the investigation of the bin Laden family.The lead investigator of Osama bid Laden's involvement in terror actions against the US, from the World TradeCenter bombing in 1993 to the African embassy bombings in 1998 to the assault on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, wasJohn O'Neill, a Deputy Director of the FBI. O'Neill had repeatedly been denied access to questioning the binLaden family, including a January 2001 directive from the White House to desist from investigating two ofOsama's brothers who were residing in Falls Church, Virginia at the time. In the face of such continuingobstruction, O'Neill resigned in protest from the FBI claiming that the "main obstacles to investigatingIslamic terrorism were U.S. oil interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it." Ironically, O'Neillbecame the chief security person at the World Trade Center shortly before 9/11 where he, along with between2-3,000 others, perished in the destruction of the WTC on that fateful and tragic day.

If /911 was a tragedy to thousands of Americans and their families, Bush and his father's Carlyle cronieshit the jackpot, especially with renewed contracts for Carlyle defense investments. In particular, Carlyle hadinvested heavily in United Defense, the primary manufacturer of the Crusader artillery system. Although theCrusader faced a skeptical Congress before 9/11, Carlucci and his lobbyists certainly managed to line-up hisold college buddy, Donald Rumsfeld, behind promoting the outmoded Crusader. When Carlyle went public withUnited Defense stock offerings in the fall of 2001, Carlucci, Bush, Baker, and other investors in Carlyle madeout like bandits. However, when a possible paper trial and conflict-of-interest against Rumsfeld surfacedrecently, he announced his opposition to Crusader. Of course, millions had already been made and Rumsfeld hadto cover his own backside in light of the calls for the resignation of the Secretary of the Army, a formerEnron executive already awash in dubious conflicts-of-interest.

The Taliban and Pipeline Politics

However, if the Saudi and Carlyle connections to father and son Bush don't raise alarms, then the wholehistory of the Bush Administration's dealings with the Taliban should. The primary focus of these dealings wasthe renewal of a planned pipeline from the natural gas rich fields of Turkmenistan through Afghanistan andPakistan to other Asian markets. Behind this whole operation was the Unocal company. Among the advisors toUnocal was Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American academic, who in addition to being an advisor to Unocal in the1990's was also part of the foreign policy think-tanks that included Frank Carlucci. Khalilzad joined theTaliban's lobbyist, Laila Helms (a relative of former CIA director, Richard Helms) in direct talks betweenrepresentatives of the Taliban and the Bush Administration right up through July of 2001. When the Talibanbroke off the talks, refusing the pipeline offers, the Bush Administration made known it's efforts to strikeback at the Taliban as early as August of 2001.

Ostensibly attacking the Taliban for it's refusal to hand over Osama bid Laden, the Bush Administrationrefused any alternatives to the military option. During the whole military operation, the Pentagon has triedto establish security points that reflect the route of the proposed pipeline. Moreover, Harmid Karzai, thehand-picked US leader of Afghanistan, was, at one time, also a consultant for Unocal. Along with Khalilzad,who now is the US representative to Afghanistan's interim government, plans for the pipeline seem closer torealization.

The CIA and Other Deep Pockets

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 a number of news stories appeared concerning investments in"put" options in United and American Airlines. Put options are shares that are bets on fallingmarket prices for specific stocks. In the week before September 11 put options in United and American Airlineswent through a furious and unprecedented spasm of investment. In addition put options for Morgan Stanley andMerrill Lynch, two of the biggest occupants of the World Trade Center, also saw abnormal activity. Most of theinvestments in these put options originated in Germany through the Deutsche Bank. Deutshce Bank had earlieracquired Banker's Trust, a investment banking firm whose Vice Chairman in charge of "private clientrelations" in the late 1990's was A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard. In March of 2001, Krongard wasappointed Executive Director of the CIA.

Certainly, the CIA has a history of laundering money and dealings with shady investment characters. Whatbecomes particularly relevant in the lead-up to 9/11 is the August CIA briefing of Bush concerning thepotential threat of attacks by bid Laden using hijacked planes on certain sites, such as the Pentagon andWorld Trade Center, and the fact that the CIA had bugging equipment on bid Laden messages and internationalbanking operations. Although no one has apparently claimed the money from the put options, questions remainabout Krongard and the CIA's involvement.

Warning Signals and Criminal Negligence

The CIA's briefing for Bush wasn't the only warning coming from intelligence agencies about the possibleattack by hijacked planes on targets like the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Both German and Russianintelligence agencies picked up signals during the summer of 2001 about bin Laden plans. The FBI in itsinvestigation of Zacarias Moussaoui's activities documented his desire to fly a plane into the World TradeCenter. When those FBI agents requested a warrant to search Moussaoui's personal computer, the civilliberties-minded Attorney General, John Ashcroft, turned them down. On the other hand, Ashcroft was worriedenough about the hijacking of commercial airplanes that starting on July 26, 2001 he stopped flying oncommercial aircraft. Of course, neither Aschroft nor anyone else in the Bush Administration bothered to warnairport authorities to be on heightened alert and to tighten airport security in the face of such warningsignals.

To suggest that the Bush Administration arranged the 9/11 tragedy is to resort to wildly speculativeconspiracy theories. On the other hand, there is a substantive and documented record of neglect andobstruction to warrant a charge of criminal negligence by Bush and his national security state apparatus. Itmay be that part of that apparatus, especially elements within the FBI, are angered by how they and theirreports were cavalierly treated by the White House. They and other congressional sources may be leaking thekind of information that was essential in bringing down President Nixon. Instead of waiting, however, for whatappears as inevitable congressional investigations, we should be doing everything in our power to raisequestions in public forums and the courts, if possible, about the criminal negligence of the BushAdministration. Before another pretext is created for another war for oil and the advancement of themilitary-industrial complex, this Administration needs to be confronted for the duplicitous and corruptself-serving elite they are.

(Fran Shor teaches at Wayne State University in Detroit. He is an anti-war activist and member ofthe Michigan Coalition on Human Rights. He can be reached at: aa2439@wayne.edu)