| | Yom Ha Shoah - 2004
It always seems a little strange to have an Irish-Catholic talking about Yom
Ha Shoah.
I had an unusual education in the Holocaust. When I was working for the
Attorney General, I was assigned to do the classified research about the
Holocaust, so I went underground to a little town called Suitland, Maryland,
right outside Washington, D.C. and that's where the US Government buries its
secrets - - literally. There are twenty vaults underground and each vault
is one acre in size. Anyone see the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark"? The
last scene of that movie is what the underground vaults are really like,
only not as organized as they are in the movie. And in those underground
vaults I discovered something horrible. I learned that many of the Nazis
that I had been assigned to prosecute were on the CIA payroll, but the CIA
didn't know they were Nazis because the British Intelligence Service had
lied to them. What the British Intelligence Service didn't know was that
their liar was Kim Philby, the Soviet communist double agent - - a little
scandal of the Cold War. But our State Department swept it all under the rug
and allowed the Nazis to stay in America until I was stupid enough to go
public with it.
What do you do when you want to go public with a story like this one? You
call up 60 minutes. We had a great time. Mike Wallace gave me 30 minutes
on his show. For a long time, it was the longest segment that 60 minutes
ever did. When the episode about Nazis in America went on the air back in
1982, it caused a minor national uproar. Congress demanded hearings, Mike
Wallace got the Emmy award, and my family got the death threats. It was a
great trip.
Then a funny thing happened. Over the last 25 years, every retired spy in
the U.S. and Canada and England all wanted me to be their lawyer, for free
of course. So I had 500 clients, they paid me $1 apiece. So I am the worst
paid lawyer in America, but among the better employed.
Let me give you an example. This year a friend of mine from the CIA, named
Bob Baer wrote a very good book about Saudi Arabia and terrorism, it's
called "Sleeping with the Devil". I read the book and I got about a third
of the way through and I stopped. Bob was writing how when he worked for
the CIA how bad the files were. He said, for example, the files for the
Muslim Brotherhood were almost nothing. There were just a few newspaper
clippings. I called Bob up and said, "Bob, that's wrong. The CIA has
enormous files on the Muslim Brotherhood, volumes of them. I know because I
read them a quarter of a century ago." He said, "What do you mean?" Here's
how you can find all of the missing secrets about the Muslim Brotherhood --
and you can do this too. I said, "Bob, go to your computer and type in two
words into the search part. Type the word "Banna," B-a-n-n-a. He said,
"Yeah." Type in "Nazi." Bob typed the two words in, and out came 30 to 40
articles from around the world. He read them and called me back and said,
"Oh my God, what have we done?"
What I'm doing today is doing what I'm doing now: I'm educating a new
generation in the CIA that the Muslim Brotherhood was a fascist organization
that was hired by Western Intelligence that evolved over time into what we
today know as al Qaeda.
Here's how the story began. In the 1920's there was a young Egyptian named
al Bana. And al Bana formed this nationalist group called the Muslim
Brotherhood. Al Bana was a devout admirer of Adolph Hitler and wrote to him
frequently. So persistent was he in his admiration of the new Nazi Party
that in the 1930's, al Bana and the Muslim Brotherhood became a secret arm
of Nazi Intelligence. The Arab Nazis had much in common with the new Nazi
doctrines. They hated Jews; they hated democracy; and they hated the
Western culture. It became the official policy of the Third Reich to
secretly develop the Muslim Brotherhood as the fifth Parliament, an army
inside Egypt.
When war broke out, the Muslim Brotherhood promised in writing that they
would rise up and help General Rommell and make sure that no English or
American soldier was left alive in Cairo or Alexandria.
The Muslim Brotherhood began to expand in scope and influence during World
War II. They even had a Palestinian section headed by the grand Mufti of
Jerusalem, one of the great bigots of all time. Here, too, was a man - -
The grand Mufti of Jerusalem was the Muslim Brotherhood representative for
Palestine. These were undoubtedly Arab Nazis. The Grand Mufti, for
example, went to Germany during the war and helped recruit an international
SS division of Arab Nazis. They based it in Croatia and called it the
"Handjar" Muslim Division, but it was to become the core of Hitler's new
army of Arab fascists that would conquer the Arab peninsula from then on to
Africa - - grand dreams.
At the end of World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood was wanted for war
crimes. Their German intelligence handlers were captured in Cairo. The
whole net was rolled up by the British Secret Service. Then a horrible
thing happened. Instead of prosecuting the Nazis - - the Muslim
Brotherhood - - the British government hired them.
They brought all the fugitive Nazi war criminals of Arab and Muslim descent
into Egypt, and for three years they were trained on a special mission. The
British Secret Service wanted to use the fascists of the Muslim Brotherhood
to strike down the infant state of Israel in 1948. Only a few people in the
Mossad know this, but many of the members of the Arab Armies and terrorist
groups that tried to strangle the infant State of Israel were the Arab Nazis
of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Britain was not alone. The French Intelligence service cooperated by
releasing the Grand Mufti and smuggling him to Egypt, so all of the Arab
Nazis came together. So, from 1945 to 1948, the British Secret Service
protected every Arab Nazi they could, but they failed to quash the State of
Israel. What the British did then, they sold the Arab Nazis to the
predecessor of what became the CIA. It may sound stupid; it may sound evil,
but it did happen. The idea was that we were going to use the Arab Nazis in
the Middle East as a counterweight to the Arab communists. Just as the
Soviet Union was funding Arab communists, we would fund the Arab Nazis to
fight against. And lots of secret classes took place. We kept the Muslim
Brotherhood on our payroll.
But the Egyptians became nervous. Nasser ordered all of the Muslim
Brotherhood out of Egypt or be imprisoned, and we would execute them all.
During the 1950's, the CIA evacuated the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood to
Saudi Arabia. Now when they arrived in Saudi Arabia, some of the leading
lights of the Muslim Brotherhood like Azzam, became the teachers in the
Madrasas, the religious schools. And there they combined the doctrines of
Nazism with this weird Islamic cult, Wahhabiism. Everyone thinks that Islam
is this fanatical religion, but it is not. They think that Islam - - the
Saudi version of Islam - -is typical, but it's not. The Wahhabi cult was
condemned as a heresy more than 60 times by the Muslim nations. But when
the Saudis got wealthy, they bought a lot of silence. This is a very harsh
cult. The Wahhabiism was only practiced by two nations, the Taliban and
Saudi Arabia. That's how extreme it is. It really has nothing to do with
Islam. Islam is a very peaceful and tolerant religion. It has always had
good relationships with the Jews for the first thousand years of its
existence.
For the Saudis, there was a ruler in charge of Saudi Arabia, and they were
the new home of the Muslim Brotherhood, and fascism and extremism were
mingled in these schools. And there was a young student who paid
attention - - and Azzam's student was named Osama Bin Ladin. Osama Bin
Ladin was taught by the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood who had emigrated to
Saudi Arabia.
In 1979 the CIA decided to take the Arab Nazis out of cold storage. The
Russians had invaded Afghanistan, so we told the Saudis that we would fund
them if they would bring all of the Arab Nazis together and ship them off to
Afghanistan to fight the Russians. We had to rename them. We couldn't call
them the Muslim Brotherhood because that was too sensitive a name. Its Nazi
cast was too known. So we called them the Maktab al Khidimat il Mujahideen,
the MAK. And the CIA lied to Congress and said they didn't know who was on
the payroll in Afghanistan, except the Saudis. But it was not true. A
small section CIA knew perfectly well that we had once again hired the Arab
Nazis and that we were using them to fight our secret wars.
Azzam and his assistant, Osama Bin Ladin, rose to some prominence from 1979
to '89, and they won the war. They drove the Russians out of Afghanistan.
Our CIA said, "We won, let's go home!" and we left this army of Arab
fascists in the field of Afghanistan.
Saudis didn't want to come back. Saudis started paying bribes to Osama Bin
Ladin and his followers to stay out of Saudi Arabia. Now the MAK split in
half. Azzam was mysteriously assassinated apparently by Osama Bin Ladin
himself. The radical group - - the most radical of the merge of the Arab
fascists and religious extremists - - Osama called that al Qaeda. But to
this day there are branches of the Muslim Brotherhood all through al Qaeda.
Osama Bin Ladin's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, came from the
Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the
results of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad. There are many flavors and
branches, but they are all Muslim Brotherhoods. There is one in Israel.
The organization you know as "Hammas" is actually a secret chapter of the
Muslim Brotherhood. When Israel assassinated Sheik Yassin a month ago, the
Muslim Brotherhood published his obituary in a Cairo newspaper in Arabic and
revealed that he was actually the secret leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in
Gaza. So the Muslim Brotherhood became this poison that spread throughout
the Middle East and on 911, it began to spread around the world.
I know this sounds like some sort of a sick fantasy, but go to your computer
and type in the words "Vanna," V-a-n-n-a and the word "Nazi," N-a-z-i, and
you will see all of the articles come up. Those are all the pieces of
information that the CIA was trying to hide from its employees. It did not
want them to know the awful past.
So, in 1984, when I was exposing European Nazis on the CIA payroll, at the
same time they were trying to hide from Congress the fact that they had Arab
Nazis back on the payroll to fight the Russians - - a stupid and corrupt
program.
So, when Bob Baer studied his files, he was just stunned. A whole
generation: the current CIA people know nothing about this. And believe
me, the current generation CIA are good and decent Americans and I like them
a lot. They're trying to do a good job, but part of their problem is their
files have been shredded. All of these secrets have to come out.
So, of course, my clients in the intelligence community said, "Well, what
are you doing?" They gave me an example. They said, "Here's how the Saudis
finance these groups. The Saudis have established a group of charities on a
street in Virginia. It's 555 Grove St., Herndon, Virginia." So I said,
"OK the Saudis are terrorists, so what?" These charities fund Muslim
Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda. The Saudis are getting tax
deductions for terrorism. They have set up front groups so all the
terrorists groups in the U.S. and the front groups get the Saudi money as a
charitable donation.
I said, "You're kidding me." Nope. And they told me that right near where I
lived in Tampa, Florida was one of the leading terrorists in the world.
There were these two professors at the University of South Florida. One had
just left - - and he was now in Syria - - and he was the world head of
Islamic Jihad. His number two, the head of Islamic Jihad in the Western
Hemisphere, was Dr. Sami al-Arian, who is still employed as a professor at
the University of South Florida. You've got to be kidding. This can't be
true. Yes, these guys are raising money all across America and shipping it
to Syria to go down to Palestine, the Palestinian areas, and hire suicide
bombers to kill Jews.
They sent me the video tapes. There was Professor al-Arian on stage and one
of his friends gets up and says, "Now, who will give me $500 to kill a Jew?
There are people standing by in Jerusalem who will go out in the street and
stab a Jew with a knife, but we need $500." And he said, "All of this money
will go to the Islamic committee for Palestine." And that is the front
group in the United States for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
So I had all my friends in the FBI and CIA send in these files. I said,
"Why haven't you prosecuted this guy? You've known about him since 1989."
"We'd love to. We've tried to prosecute him but we were told we couldn't
touch him because he gets all of his money from the Saudis, and we are all
under orders not to do anything to embarrass the Saudi government." I said,
"I don't mind embarrassing them."
You know what I did? I donated money to the charity that was the terrorist
fund, because under Florida law, that gave me the right to sue the charity
to find out where my money was going. It was hilarious. In early March,
2002, I drafted a long lawsuit exposing Professor Sami al-Arian, naming all
the crimes he'd committed, all the bombings in Israel, the fundraising in
America with terrorism. I mentioned how his money got to him from the
Saudis and how the Saudis had convinced our government not to prosecute him
for political reasons. Because of my high-level security clearances,
everything I write is sort of classified material and has to be sent back to
the government before publication, for censorship. So I sent my long
lawsuit complaint to the CIA, and they loved it. They said, "Oh, great. We
don't like the Saudis either. Go sue them."
Three days later two FBI Agents showed up at my door, saying, "You know,
there are only 21 people in the U.S. government that knew some of this
information, and now you're 22. How did you find out?" I said, "I'm
sorry, I can't tell you, attorney-client privilege." That's why my clients
pay me $1.00 each.
The day before I went to file the lawsuit, I got a frantic phone call from
the United States Department of Justice. They said, "John, please don't
file the lawsuit tomorrow. We really are going to raid these Saudi
charities. We're going to close them down. Just give us more time." "Oh
yeah, you're going to raid them. That's what you told me in January - -
and again in February, and now it's March. You want more time? I'll give
you until 4:00 o'clock tomorrow. I'm filing my complaint at 10:00 a.m., so
that at 4:00 p.m., I'm going to release the address of the Saudi charities.
Back tomorrow. I filed my lawsuit at 10:00 o'clock, and told the press I
was going to hold something back for a little bit. At 10:15, the U.S.
Government launched Operation Greenquest, a massive raid on all the Saudi
charities in homes and businesses, and in one hour we shut down the entire
Saudi money- laundering network in America.
From March 20, 2002 to the present, the government has found more and more
evidence seized in those archives on that single raid that day. The
evidence was so compelling that Professor al-Arian is no longer giving his
speeches. He is now in federal prison awaiting trial. His accomplice,
Hammoudeh, has also been indicted. Some 32 different people have been
indicted in the United States as a direct result of these efforts.
But not the Saudis - - not the Saudis. A month after I filed my lawsuit
against al-Arian, I did it: I caused some trouble. I invited some 40 of the
top trial lawyers in America to come down to St. Petersburg, Florida. Boy,
did I have a deal for them. I wanted them to put up millions of dollars of
their own money - I'm poor, I had no money to give them - - but I wanted to
do something for America. These are lawyers like Ron Motley that had won
billions of dollars in their lawsuits against the tobacco industry and the
asbestos industry. I said, "What I want you to do is look at the evidence I
've collected. It's the same Saudi banks and charities that funded Sami
al-Arian that also funded al Qaeda." I said, "I want you to bring a class
action in Federal Court in Washington on behalf of everyone who died on
Sept. 11th. I'm going to work for free and collect all the evidence,
introduce you to the experts, provide all the exhibits and documents . . .
and we have to do this for America." The lawyers studied all the documents
I collected, and on August 15, 2002, they filed the largest class-action
lawsuit in American history in the Federal District Court in Washington
D.C., asking for one trillion dollars damages against the Saudis.
The lawsuit said essentially that all these Saudi banks had one thing in
common. They were bribing Osama bin Ladin 300 million dollars a year to stay
out of Saudi Arabia and go blow up someone else. Well, on 911, we found out
we were someone else, and the Saudis had to pay for their negligence. So
that lawsuit is coming along very well.
And more and more people in the CIA and FBI are sort of using me as a back
channel to get our information. So, believe it or not, they've actually
given me my own TV show now on Sunday mornings on FOX TV nationwide. I'm
on at 11:20 eastern standard time. And ABC Radio has given me a national
radio program, but I'm on at 10:30 at night and it's past your bedtime.
What I've become in my old age is a teacher. Twenty-five years ago I was a
lot younger, a lot thinner, but now every day I get 500 to 1,000 e-mails
from honest men and women around the world from the intelligence community.
And we have to end the evil in this world. We have to recognize that al
Qaeda simply didn't spring up on its own. The evil route was Nazism. The
al Qaeda Doctrine is the same as the Arab Nazis held. They hated Jews, they
hate democracy, and they hate Westerners for Western culture. Al Qaeda is
nothing more than the religious expression of Arab Fascism. We allowed
this branch of the Nazi trunk to survive, to flourish, and it has come back
to haunt us.
We must do a better job. Look at these children. They are our legacy. If
we are to keep our children safe, we must teach them the lessons of the
past. Every generation should know what these candles mean. Not only that
one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the world really happened,
but the evil that caused it - - Nazism - - survived because we didn't fight
hard enough. We didn't finish the job. But we must tell our children that
in every generation the men and women of America have stood side by side
with our Jewish, Christian, and Moslem brothers. We have risen up together
against hatred. America is united now.
We will win the war on terror, and we will finish the job that these
soldiers and survivors started more than a half century ago. We must set
the standard that to teach a child to hate is the worst form of child abuse.
We must work together to end racism in our children's lifetime. We must
teach our children to remember the Holocaust and be proud, so proud of those
who survived and inspired us with their courage. In their name, in their
honor, let us go forward and fight together. NEVER AGAIN. |
