People are starting to talk.
One yesterday in Ohio about rigged machines
Today this credible source
The walls are starting to cave in...Bush's house of cards is a crumbling

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050916/ap_on_...ept11_hijackers


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Weldon: Atta Papers Destroyed on Orders By DONNA DE LA CRUZ, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 23 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.



The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to identify the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa.

Weldon declined to identify the employee, citing confidentiality matters. Weldon described the documents as "2.5 terabytes" — as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress, he added.

A Senate Judiciary Committee aide said the witnesses for Wednesday hearing had not been finalized and could not confirm Weldon's comments.

Army Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Pentagon spokesman, said officials have been "fact-finding in earnest for quite some time."

"We've interviewed 80 people involved with Able Danger, combed through hundreds of thousands of documents and millions of e-mails and have still found no documentation of Mohamed Atta," Swiergosz said.

He added that certain data had to be destroyed in accordance with existing regulations regarding "intelligence data on U.S. persons."

Weldon has said that Atta, the mastermind of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and three other hijackers were identified in 1999 by a classified military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger," which determined they could be members of an al-Qaida cell.

On Wednesday, former members of the Sept. 11 commission dismissed the "Able Danger" assertions. One commissioner, ex-Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., said, "Bluntly, it just didn't happen and that's the conclusion of all 10 of us."

Weldon responded angrily to Gorton's assertions.

"It's absolutely unbelievable that a commission would say this program just didn't exist," Weldon said Thursday.

Pentagon officials said this month they had found three more people who recall an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Two military officers, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, have come forward to support Weldon's claims.

This is may be nothing more than tin foil hattery.

But if it is credible, this does not look like Bush's house of cards crumbling.

Look at the timeline, two years before 2001 was 1999, during the Clinton Administration.

The guy pushing this is a Republican. My guess is that he is not a moderate or principled maverick, but a Right-wing robot whose programming might be a bit off. His target seems to be Clinton, not Bush.

That was my very first thought on reading this Arn.

Weldon is partisan to the core.

And who isn't?...You need a program to keep track of the agendas. Good luck on getting any truth out of this political circus.

Not sure,
The crux is, when were the documents destroyed?

Who would be a lifetime pentagon employee though?

Anyone who knows anything will be a republican.

Do you think they got people who were democrats to lie,cheat or steal?

And if Clinton is in on it, big spit
If he is part of it then he goes down too

Who sleeps with Bush41 more than Clinton?

Remember 9-11-2001 happened at the start of the Bush presidency, so it is quite possible things happened earlier

The goal is to proove Bush is bad. Not to protect anyone

Everyone seems to have their priorities wrong. Why do you think DeLay is not in deeper trouble? Because he will take democrats, and maybe Pelosi, down with him.
I say who cares. If it brings him down, take whoever else down too.
The people win in the end and no one is not expendable.

But what's your point? That what he says is just as good as something contradictory said by someone else because that other person is partisan as well? That finding out the truth is just hopeless and should be given up on? Or is truth even a meaningful concept?

The fact that one Republican on the 9/11 Commission specifically contradicted what Weldon is saying is an indication that he very likely is not getting at the truth, but just some half-baked conspiracy theory. Maybe Weldon really has something, but I doubt it.

I have no problem in Clinton going down, if in fact there real dirt on him here. Even if the dirt is just on him, which is what Weldon apparently thinks. If he's right, more power to him, it wouldn't matter to me if the only one getting it is Clinton. And it seems to me on this it would just be Clinton. This happened in 1999, Bush would have had nothing to do with it. Unless there is something else connected to it, that no one has talked about yet. (But the fact is, apparently no one has, so right now that would be no more than baseless speculation.)

So far this seems like little more than a Republican fantasy.

In 1999.

This whole thing, credible or not, is aimed at Clinton.

And civil service employees do what they are told, or are supposed to, whether their bosses up the chain are Republicans or Democrats.

And perhaps, as this major suggests, this is no more than shredding according to standard regulations, and nothing sinister is involved. Perhaps those regulations should have been changed. But shouldn't we be worried about the government keeping too many files on people? There is a balance to be worried about here. Maybe one of my neighbors is a terrorist, and a file on him might come in handy one day. But most likely not, and the government keeping files on many people on the chance that one may be a terrorist is something that should bother us.

Reading this, with the "scalia coca cola" and it makes for one interesting movie, so to say.
Haven't I been saying things like this all along?
In the other a blast from the past Mark Rich (clinton's foolish pardon) comes into view.
Also, remember Oklahoma City and WTC1 happened on Clinton's watch too.
And Clinton was never suppose to win, so Bush41 would have remained in office during some of this time (assuming alot is set up in advance as it is)

And remembering how the Clinton's did nothing to help Al Gore in 2000.

If you put all these type things together, isn't it odd how easy they blend into each other, one story to the next to the next like a jigsaw puzzle?

I may be misreading it...
However, it looks as if the report was done on 1999, not destroyed then.
See?
"Weldon has said that Atta, the mastermind of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and three other hijackers were identified in 1999 by a classified military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger," which determined they could be members of an al-Qaida cell."

tHE OTHER THING IS- MSM is starting to pick this up.
This is from MSNBC(although it is same AP story)
Last year, no one was talking about stories like this


Congressman: Atta papers destroyed on orders
Pentagon denies having any documents on lead hijacker prior to 9/11

Updated: 3:53 a.m. ET Sept. 16, 2005
WASHINGTON - A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.

The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to identify the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa.

Weldon declined to identify the employee, citing confidentiality matters. Weldon described the documents as “2.5 terabytes” — as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress, he added.



A Senate Judiciary Committee aide said the witnesses for Wednesday's hearing had not been finalized and could not confirm Weldon’s comments.

Pentagon: Nothing found
Army Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Pentagon spokesman, said officials have been “fact-finding in earnest for quite some time.”

“We’ve interviewed 80 people involved with Able Danger, combed through hundreds of thousands of documents and millions of e-mails and have still found no documentation of Mohamed Atta,” Swiergosz said.

He added that certain data had to be destroyed in accordance with existing regulations regarding “intelligence data on U.S. persons.”

Did program exist?
Weldon has said that Atta, the mastermind of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and three other hijackers were identified in 1999 by a classified military intelligence unit known as “Able Danger,” which determined they could be members of an al-Qaida cell.

On Wednesday, former members of the Sept. 11 commission dismissed the “Able Danger” assertions. One commissioner, ex-Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., said, “Bluntly, it just didn’t happen and that’s the conclusion of all 10 of us.”

Weldon responded angrily to Gorton’s assertions.

“It’s absolutely unbelievable that a commission would say this program just didn’t exist,” Weldon said Thursday.

Pentagon officials said this month they had found three more people who recall an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Two military officers, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, have come forward to support Weldon’s claims.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Yes, but as I have pointed out before, there is also the coincidence of how every time since my parents started having children, whenever someone in our family was born in an election year, the Republicans won, 1956, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004. (Lucky for John Kennedy that my brother wasn't born one month later!) This pattern was actually at the back of my mind last year, after the birth of my son but before the election.

But sometimes coincidences are just coincidences.

I see your point, I based my conclusion as to the meaning from what I read of the first paragraph, which upon rereading I see as ambiguous as to whether it meant the report was written in 1999 or shredded then. Certainly both could be true.

The other thing is that Weldon is pushing it, and I doubt that he would be pushing this if it pointed to something bad happening on Bush's watch. I really don't know anything about him, but based on the tiny bit that I have heard about him my hunch is that he is a typical pro-Bush partisan as opposed to an independent-minded maverick.

It gives no mention of anything being shredded during the time of Clinton, rather that this investigation happened during Clinton, and for some reason disappeared or was destroyed.

Granted I can understand being cautious as it is Weldon pushing this. Still, I do not know when the documents were shredded. I mean, it makes no sense that it would be Clintonites that would shred this. They have less to lose than this Administration in regards to the contents of such a thing.

Hello????

Isn't ANYBODY interested in getting to the truth about 9/11?

Does anybody really think the public has been told the truth?

Does anybody care if a Rep or Dem goes down?

Our beloved country is going down the crapper; we have been lied to about Iraq; 2,000 dead Americans, 10,000 crippled Americans; 100,000 dead Iraqi's; 1,000,000 crippled Iraqis.

I, for one, would like to hear THE TRUTH.

That's what I want too. The question is, will we know the truth when we hear it?

Maybe they do and maybe they don't! Evidently Weldon thinks that the Clintonites have something to lose. From a partisan perspective I would love to pin something like this on Bush, but Democrats are capable of doing some nefarious things as well.

Now I doubt if Weldon is just making all of this up with a few confederates that he found at the Pentagon. But he could be jumping the gun in concluding that he really has something big. The Pentagon is a huge bureaucracy, with most civilian and military workers going on regardless of which party holds the White House. This could be no more than shredding according to some schedule as specified by regulation, and some disgruntled employee seeing more than there was. People within the government don't always do things strictly on the up and up, but on the other hand some tend to see evil where none is or vastly exaggerate the meaning of some interpretation or arguable "bending" of some rule to something nefarious. I have firsthand experience on some of these things.

Sure, let's hear the truth. I for one would not try to stop Weldon.

He either has the truth and will have done the public a service.

Or he doesn't and will make himself look foolish.

Right now I'm skeptical, but not worried about what he is saying.

how did we find out about the employee?

did he or she just come out and "confess" ?

- perry

ps.
just goes to show, no matter how big the cover up, sooner or later the truth comes out.... sometimes slow, sometimes a down pour, but when it starts, it starts.

I'm sorry, but shredding documents looks bad when not done under a bonafide document retention policy. Most policies are standard seven years with the primary exception for tax related documents.

Regardless of Weldon's bonafides, these documents were not available to the 9-11 Commission.

Reads like a spy novel. What if there was a plan to sabbotage the Democrats' stronhold in the government and did what it takes to crumble the strong Clinton Administration. There were too many instances that seem to cry out in the attempt to destroy the strong Democrat President, Clinton. What if some of the Democrats or employees were paid off to join in the conspiracy. Why was Zell Miller (D-Ga.) so adamant in trying to accuse his fellow Democrats of trying to undermine the war effort in Iraq and accuse them of doing so "for political purposes." Did someone not like Clinton's call to cut Defense Funding, lest they lose their profits on weapon manufacturing, or that supplies might be too weak for his and his groups' intention to sell arms to foreign nations?

Don't forget, Chalabi has friends in the Defense Dept. and at Penatagon. And there were spies in the Penatagon as the media later acknowleged.

http://www.kentimmerman.com/2003_11_24planning1.htm

Chalabi indeed did visit once with Luti at the OSP in fall 2002, according to the visitor sign-in sheet in Luti's front office. Chalabi also visited with the secretary of defense, the deputy secretary and a host of other top officials and members of Congress. And Chalabi proudly has acknowledged to this reporter and many others the INC's role in recruiting defectors and presenting them to the U.S. government. In the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, being able to recruit defectors was literally priceless.

The INC's intelligence-collection program, run for years on a shoestring by Chalabi and a few top aides, was taken over by the Pentagon in 2002 and handed over to the Defense Human Service - the human intelligence (HUMINT) side of the DIA - not the Office of Special Plans. "DHS established rules and regulations and put it on a professional basis," a Pentagon official told Insight before the war.

Luti's office now stands accused by Sens. Rockefeller and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) of illegally organizing clandestine intelligence operations overseas. In an Oct. 1 request for documents to Undersecretary Feith on behalf of Democrats sitting on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, Rockefeller quoted an article in the left-wing weekly The Nation alleging that Feith's staff "have been coordinating their terrorism assessments with 'a rump unit established last year in the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.'" The letter also alleged that Luti's staff had been "sent abroad to meet with defectors produced by the INC," and had held unauthorized meetings with "Iranians" in Western Europe.

"This is Church committee stuff," an administration official tells Insight, referring to the disastrous Senate Select Intelligence Committee of the mid-1970s that was responsible for gutting the CIA's clandestine services. "The SSIC is more worried about getting the president than it is in fixing the intelligence mess," this source says. Little wonder that Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) has said that if what his fellow Democrats have done on the SSIC to try to undermine the war effort in Iraq for political purposes is not treason, then "it is its first cousin." As election fever takes hold of the most partisan Democrats, many expect it to get worse.

And of course all those money feeding out of Riggs Bank to fund terrorist movements by the Saudi Embassy:

http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?f...0Crime%20Family

Repost: The Saudi Money Trail

December 02, 2002

By: Staff
Newsweek

Dec. 2 issue — When the two Qaeda operatives arrived at Los Angeles International Airport around New Year's 2000, they were warmly welcomed. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar would help hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and crash it into the Pentagon a year and a half later, but that January in Los Angeles, they were just a couple of young Saudi men who barely spoke English and needed a place to stay.
AT THE AIRPORT, THEY were swept up by a gregarious fellow Saudi, Omar al-Bayoumi, who had been living in the United States for several years. Al-Bayoumi drove the two men to San Diego, threw a welcoming party and arranged for the visitors to get an apartment next to his. He guaranteed the lease, and plunked down $1,550 in cash to cover the first two months' rent. His hospitality did not end there.

Al-Bayoumi also aided Alhazmi and Almihdhar as they opened a bank account, and recruited a friend to help them obtain Social Security cards and call flight schools in Florida to arrange flying lessons, according to law-enforcement officials. Two months before 9-11, al-Bayoumi moved to England; several months later, he disappeared. He is believed to be somewhere in Saudi Arabia.

MYSTERY MAN Who is al-Bayoumi? At various times, the affable father of four told people that he was getting his doctorate at San Diego State, though the school has no record he ever attended. He told others that he was a pilot for the Saudi national airline. He apparently did work for Dallah Avco, an aviation-services company with extensive contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, headed by Prince Sultan, the father of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar. According to informed sources, some federal investigators suspect that al-Bayoumi could have been an advance man for the 9-11 hijackers, sent by Al Qaeda to assist the plot that ultimately claimed 3,000 lives.

The Feds' interest in al-Bayoumi has been heightened by a money trail that could be perfectly innocent, but is nonetheless intriguing—and could ultimately expose the Saudi government to some of the blame for 9-11 and seriously strain U.S.-Saudi ties. It is too soon to say where the trail will wind up, but it begins with a very surprising name on a Washington bank account.

About two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar, NEWSWEEK has learned, al-Bayoumi's wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars. The money came in the form of cashier's checks, purchased from Washington's Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family. The checks were sent to a woman named Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat, who in turn signed over many of them to al-Bayoumi's wife (and her friend), Manal Ahmed Bagader. The Feds want to know: Was this well-meaning charity gone awry? Or some elaborate money-laundering scheme? A scam? Or just a coincidence?

A spokesperson for Princess Haifa told NEWSWEEK that she had no idea the money was going to the al-Bayoumi family or that it might in any way be used for some nefarious purpose. Saudi officials and members of the royal family routinely give money to supplicants who need medical or financial help and write the embassy. Dweikat's husband, Osama Basnan, had first pleaded to the Saudi Embassy for help in 1998, saying that he needed money to treat his wife's thyroid condition. At the time, Prince Bandar wrote Basnan a $15,000 check. The monthly payments to his wife, Majeda, began in January 1999 and ended only last summer. Until she was contacted late last week by NEWSWEEK, Princess Haifa was unaware that the payments are being investigated by U.S. authorities, according to the spokesperson.

9-11 FAILURES? Questions over the money trail have enflamed a fierce, behind-the-scenes struggle between two congressional committees looking into 9-11 and the Bush administration. Senate Intelligence Committee co-chairman Robert Graham of Florida, a Democrat, and Richard Shelby of Alabama, a Republican, believe that the FBI failed to fully investigate 9-11. The lawmakers suspect that the administration does not want to look too closely at Saudi connections to the hijackers. The White House clearly fears jeopardizing U.S.-Saudi relations. In addition to Saudi oil, the United States needs Saudi bases to stage a possible invasion of Iraq. Administration officials reluctantly confirmed to NEWSWEEK that money had moved from Princess Haifa's account to al- Bayoumi, but they stressed that they do not know the purpose of the payments or whether any Saudi officials were even aware of them. "The facts are unclear, and there's no need to rush to judgment," said one administration official. In meetings with intelligence committee leaders, Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft and others have adamantly rejected attempts to declassify the information, citing national-security concerns.

There have long been persistent suspicions of Saudi financial involvement with Al Qaeda. Of the 9-11 hijackers themselves, 15 of 19 came from Saudi Arabia. Some American intelligence officials say the Saudis have been less than fully cooperative in the war on terror. Some wealthy Saudis have long been known to fund charities that are used as fronts to support terrorists. It would be shocking indeed if the Saudi government or members of the royal family were supporting Al Qaeda. Saudi officials insist that any such suggestion is preposterous. After all, Osama bin Laden's stated aim is to overthrow the House of Saud as lackeys for the Americans. But many investigators suspect that the Saudi royals wish to hold their enemies close, to learn what they are up to and, possibly, to buy insurance. The Saudi government, as well as many wealthy Saudi businessmen with close ties to the government, generously support radical imams who preach Wahhabism, a very conservative form of Islam, not just in Saudi Arabia but all over the world, including in the United States. The potential for mischief is great. Rogue elements could be secretly funding terrorists, perhaps by scamming unwitting members of the royal family. There is a thin line between militant Islam and terrorism, and the Saudis have not always been mindful of the difference. Saudi intelligence officials scoff, however, at the suggestion that Prince Bandar's wife is being used to provide a slush fund for black ops. "To think that my government uses the bank account of the ambassadress to pay informants is both ludicrous and insulting," said Turki Al Faisal, former chief of Saudi intelligence.

A LOOK UNDER THE FLOORBOARDS The FBI is still trying to figure out if al-Bayoumi played a role in the 9-11 plot. Within a few days of the attacks last fall, New Scotland Yard, working with the FBI, had found him enrolled in a business graduate program at Birmingham, England's Aston University. The British investigators arrested al-Bayoumi, and tore up the floorboards in his house. They discovered records of phone calls to two diplomats in the Saudi Embassy in Washington. The officials, who worked in the Islamic section of the embassy, which supports mosques and Islamic charities, apparently offered innocent explanations to FBI investigators. Al-Bayoumi, who adamantly denied any connection to the attacks or knowledge of the hijackers' links to Al Qaeda, was released after a week without charge, and is believed to have disappeared to Saudi Arabia. Now the gumshoes "are desperate to find out whatever they can about this guy," says Kerry Steigerwalt, a lawyer for a young Yemeni student recently grilled by the FBI about al-Bayoumi.

Before he vanished, al-Bayoumi offered a benign explanation of how he met with Almihdhar and Alhazmi. He told investigators that he just happened to be in a restaurant at the Los Angeles airport and overheard the two men talking in Arabic. He introduced himself and offered to help the two newcomers get settled and adjust to life in southern California. It was a chance meeting, he insisted to the skeptical agents. His offer of help was nothing more than the usual charity extended by one Muslim "brother" to another.

Al-Bayoumi was a familiar figure in San Diego's burgeoning Islamic community. He was often seen at the mosque or at social functions, chatting amiably, almost always holding a video camera. Al-Bayoumi seemed to pay so much attention to the comings and goings of young Saudi college students that some were convinced that he was a Saudi government spy. "He was always watching them, always checking up on them, literally following them around and then apparently reporting their activities back to Saudi Arabia," said Henry Bagadan, a Pakistani businessman who worships at the San Diego Islamic Center.

A VOCAL QAEDA SYMPATHIZER After al-Bayoumi left San Diego in July 2001, the cashier's checks purchased by Princess Haifa continued to flow to Majeda Dweikat, who in turn signed many of them over to her husband, Osama. Basnan also befriended the two hijackers, Almihdhar and Alhazmi. After the terrorist attacks, Basnan, who was known as a vocal Qaeda sympathizer, "celebrated the heroes of September 11" and talked about "what a wonderful, glorious day it had been," according to a law-enforcement official. Wife Dweikat appears to have been at least a minor scamster. She was convicted of marriage fraud to obtain immigration papers and pleaded guilty—along with al-Bayoumi's wife, Manal—to shoplifting in April 2001. The checks from Princess Haifa stopped when Basnan was arrested for visa fraud last August. (He told a judge, "I love this country," but was ordered deported to Saudi Arabia.) Interestingly, Osama Basnan showed up in Houston last April when Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah came to town with a vast entourage en route to President George W. Bush's ranch. According to informed sources, Basnan met with a high Saudi prince who has responsibilities for intelligence matters and is known to bring suitcases full of cash into the United States—a practice not unheard-of among the Saudi elite. A Houston police report obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that Basnan complained he had been robbed of his Saudi passport and $400. It is dated April 25, the same week the crown prince was in town.

The congressional investigators looking into 9-11 argue that the Feds aren't doing enough to stop another attack. The FBI's failure to thoroughly investigate the Saudi connection reveals the bureau's inherent weakness as a counterterror organization, these investigators tell NEWSWEEK. Senator Graham has been pushing for a new domestic-intelligence service, modeled on Britain's M.I.5, to track terror cells in this country. Graham says he fears that a concealed terrorist "infrastructure" set up to support the 19 hijackers is still in place—waiting for a new call to action.

The Bush administration has been reluctant to give the congressional committee investigating 9-11 everything it asks for. Cheney and others believe that Congress is intruding on the executive branch's intelligence-gathering and foreign-policy-making powers and that a "witch hunt" will distract and hobble the CIA and FBI. But the administration may also worry that if investigators keep digging, the U.S.-Saudi relationship will wind up in a deep hole.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

At Riggs Bank, a Tangled Path Led to Scandal

July 19, 2004

By: Timothy O'Brien
New York Times

ASHINGTON, July 18 — Riggs Bank, which for years billed itself as "the most important bank in the most important city in the world," now finds itself the most scrutinized bank in the most unforgiving city in the world.
The Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has concluded that Riggs executives and bank regulators, even after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, failed to monitor suspicious financial transactions involving hundreds of millions of dollars.

A report it released last week in connection with a hearing on the bank's operations gives a detailed picture of events that snowballed into a financial scandal and appear to have ended the venerable bank's independence. On Friday, the parent of Riggs announced that PNC Financial Services of Pittsburgh had agreed to buy it for $779 million. Still, Riggs, and those who ran it, face more regulatory, Congressional and law enforcement investigations.

The controversy that has shaken Riggs has sent tremors through the industry. Regulators acknowledge that, despite the impetus provided by the terrorist attacks, there are holes in their ability to analyze and prevent possible abuses of the nation's financial system.

To seal those holes, the federal government is considering overhauling the way it polices the activities of banks. Such changes might involve investing a single agency with greater authority to enforce laws against money laundering and terrorist financing, according to regulators and Congressional leaders. At present, a hodgepodge of agencies that do not share information or coordinate activities effectively are charged with overseeing banks.

"9/11 changed my world and changed our world in the regulatory agencies, just like it changed the world of every American," said Daniel P. Stipano, deputy chief counsel at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Riggs's lead regulator. "What happened with Riggs is unacceptable. It cannot be repeated."

In the hearing, Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the investigative subcommittee, pointed out Riggs executives' own responsibility for preventing abuses. "Freedom always implies a corresponding responsibility to respect the rules that society imposes on the market," he said. "Top officials did not always justify their freedom from aggressive oversight with a willingness to respect and implement their social duties."

The scrutiny of the bank involves accounts it held for Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, and for the Saudi Arabian Embassy. It comes at a time when several new books and the documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" have put a spotlight on the kingdom's ties to the Bush administration. The sources of about $700 million in cash and investment accounts at Riggs Bank owned by the African nation of Equatorial Guinea or some of its leaders are also being examined, at a time when American companies have been courting that oil-rich nation to secure petroleum sources outside the Middle East.

The Chilean Congress, reacting to disclosures about General Pinochet's accounts at Riggs, said that on Tuesday it would consider establishing a commission to determine if the accounts contained looted government money. In August, the Chilean Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether General Pinochet, who is 88 and said to be in poor health, must stand trial on charges stemming from a wave of murders and disappearances that swept across the southern cone of South America in the 1970's and 1980's.

Riggs and its senior executives have for months denied any wrongdoing, although one former executive is the subject of a grand jury inquiry. Riggs and its executives now face the possibility of criminal charges. Spokesmen for the Saudi Arabian Embassy have also denied wrongdoing; the Equatorial Guinean Embassy has repeatedly declined to comment. People close to General Pinochet, including his son, have told news services in Chile that he has never had secret bank accounts and that money in the Riggs accounts may be donations from supporters sponsoring his legal defense.

Nonetheless, the actions of everyone associated with the Riggs scandal have set in motion a reappraisal of the guardians of the American financial system.

"Despite all the money laundering laws that Congress has passed, the structural defects are so bad that there's no one implementing them," said Charles Intriago, publisher of Money Laundering Alert, a newsletter. The United States is "on the brink of trying to fix a financial regulatory system that's in a state of great disrepair."

A Dictator's Cash

At a meeting with regulators at the headquarters of Riggs Bank two years ago, Barbara B. Allbritton, a Riggs board member, was offended that the bank had to end its relationship with a valued client, General Pinochet, according to the report and testimony at the Senate hearing.

Mrs. Allbritton, who had a board seat by virtue of her marriage to Joe L. Allbritton, Riggs's former chief executive and single largest shareholder, did not mince her words.

"Why did the Pinochet accounts have to be closed?" she asked, according to testimony in the Senate hearing on Thursday by Lester J. Miller, a federal regulator who monitored Riggs accounts and attended the meeting with her.

Bank regulators, who stumbled across the Pinochet funds during a Riggs review in early 2002, could have given Mrs. Allbritton compelling reasons for closing the accounts. Even at a time when the general was detained on charges of human rights abuses and his assets had been frozen by court orders, Riggs helped him disguise millions of dollars in suspect funds and wire the money worldwide, the Senate report says.

"In 1994, top Riggs officials traveled to Chile and asked General Pinochet, a notorious military leader accused of involvement with death squads, corruption, arms sales and drug trafficking, if he would like to open an account at Riggs Bank here in Washington," Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, observed in the hearing. "Mr. Pinochet said yes."

Mr. Allbritton, who secured a controlling stake in Riggs in 1981, coveted the bank's international cachet and made regular business trips abroad, including to Chile. Raymond M. Lund, a former Riggs executive who opened General Pinochet's accounts at the bank in the mid-1990's, said in Senate testimony that Mr. Allbritton had a "professional business relationship" with the dictator. Carol Thompson, who oversaw Riggs's Latin American business, told Senate investigators that she occasionally briefed Mr. Allbritton directly on General Pinochet's finances. The Allbrittons have not responded to interview requests.

While General Pinochet's accounts at Riggs may have gone unnoticed by United States regulators until 2002, they were not a secret to the rest of the world. The Associated Press wrote about them as early as 1999, when judicial proceedings began in Spain against General Pinochet. On Dec. 10, 2000, The Observer, a British paper, also mentioned them in connection with possible drug trafficking. Senate records show that the Riggs accounts held $4 million to $8 million from 1994 to 2002.

When regulators asked Riggs in 2000 for a list of its accounts controlled by political figures, the roster provided by the bank did not include General Pinochet's name. Shortly after The Observer article was published, the bank - in a move that it acknowledged last week was improper - changed the name on accounts of the general and his wife from "Augusto Pinochet Ugarte & Lucia Hiriart de Pinochet" to "L. Hiriart &/or A. Ugarte," ensuring that searches for Riggs accounts named "Pinochet" would draw a blank.

General Pinochet was arrested in Chile in early 2001, causing Riggs officers and its board to review whether it was proper to maintain his accounts. The accounts remained open, and the general's arrest was later overshadowed in the news by the terrorist attacks in the United States.

Regulators began vetting American banks more thoroughly after Sept. 11. During a review of Riggs's international operations in April 2002, examiners with the Comptroller of the Currency came across the Pinochet accounts. Overtaxed to complete the international review and a subsequent review of terrorist financing, regulators notified Riggs that they would return in June for a closer look.

On April 8, 2002, Riggs sent $500,000 in cashiers' checks to the general. Later analyses by Senate investigators indicated he cashed them to pay personal expenses. Sometime between the spring and summer of 2002, according to the Senate report and testimony last week, Riggs tried to withhold information about the Pinochet accounts from regulators and then, rather than freeze the accounts as is customary, closed them and returned the money to General Pinochet.

Although Mr. Lund said last week that Riggs executives had documented the source of the general's wealth, Senate investigators say the bank never made any sincere effort to do so, as required by law. Moreover, regulators never considered fining Riggs in 2002 or referring the Pinochet accounts to law enforcement officials, according to Senate records and testimony. The comptroller's lead Riggs examiner at the time, R. Ashley Lee, took an executive position at Riggs later that year.

Mr. Lee said last week that he never made any effort to water down regulatory oversight of Riggs. Senator Levin said that his committee's evidence suggested otherwise and that he planned to ask the Justice Department to investigate.

The Saudi Funds

By October 2002, when Mrs. Allbritton voiced her resentment to regulators about losing General Pinochet's business, another problem was about to engulf Riggs. In November, Newsweek magazine reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was examining Saudi Arabian Embassy accounts at the bank in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.

The F.B.I. investigation, focusing on accounts controlled by the wife of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's longtime ambassador to the United States, was news to regulators. Once again, as the Senate report showed, outside forces were making them examine Riggs more closely and Riggs executives were proving to be, at best, indifferent gatekeepers.

Although the F.B.I. told The New York Times in late 2002 that it had no evidence that money from Prince Bandar's wife went to the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks - a conclusion that the 9/11 commission also reached last month - news reports prompted regulators to scrutinize Prince Bandar's transactions at Riggs. The F.B.I. briefed them on the Saudi funds in December 2002, and bank regulators told Riggs a month later that they would examine the accounts.

What regulators expected to be a one-month examination lasted five months as regulators uncovered improprieties in some of 150 Saudi accounts at Riggs. Under law, banks are required to vet the background of their customers, report outsized movements of cash and alert regulators when any banking activities are suspicious. Regulators and members of Congress said Riggs frequently failed to carry out these duties, and the Saudi accounts were no exception.

Last week's Senate report said that the Saudi accounts were "equally troubling" as other accounts at Riggs that have come under scrutiny, but noted that a more thorough Congressional examination of the Saudi accounts was under way at the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

Federal investigators and people close to Riggs said regulators had concluded that Riggs inadequately monitored the destinations and uses of large amounts of cash, often more than $1 million at a time, in the Saudi accounts. Many of these transactions involved Prince Bandar personally, these people said.

A member of Saudi Arabia's diplomatic corps said in a recent interview that the prince often made up large shortfalls in the embassy's budget out of his own pocket, which could account for some of the heavy cash movements through the Riggs accounts. Spokesmen for the Saudi embassy have said that the F.B.I. told the embassy that there were no concerns that its Riggs accounts involved money laundering or terrorist financing.

Cease and Desist

Problems with the Saudi accounts led regulators to issue a rare and public cease-and-desist order against Riggs early last year, requiring it to clean up its practices or face further penalties. But unexplained transactions continued to flow through the Saudi accounts late last year, and Prince Bandar refused to provide information about them to Riggs, according to people with direct knowledge of the discussions.

Last March, the same month regulators told the bank it would receive a heavy fine, Riggs said it had closed all Saudi accounts. Minutes of a Riggs meeting on April 7 noted that Prince Bandar had recently requested "$2 million in cash for traveling expenses," a request the bank denied.

"Prince Bandar then asked that Riggs wire $2 million to another bank, which was done," the minutes said, adding that the bank notified regulators about the transaction. In May, regulators fined Riggs $25 million for failing to adequately monitor suspicious activities, the largest such penalty ever imposed on an American bank.

Suitcases of Cash

When regulators began scouring the Saudi accounts in January 2003, yet another media report raised questions about the bank's behavior. The Los Angeles Times reported suspicious activities in Riggs accounts controlled by the government of Equatorial Guinea, and a questionable relationship between a Riggs executive and that country's leader, sparking another regulatory examination of the bank's intersection with a dictator.

Simon Kareri, a Kenyan who oversaw the Equatorial Guinean money at Riggs, liked to serve his bank's clients the old-fashioned way, according to the Senate report: he carried large amounts of money around in suitcases.

The report said that Mr. Kareri, who is the subject of a grand jury investigation, packed up to $3 million in shrink-wrapped bills obtained from Equatorial Guinean leaders into suitcases and walked them through Riggs's front door. Riggs, according to the Senate report, never made any effort to inquire about the source of the money, as it is required to do by law, even though the money was openly tabulated by high-speed counting machines inside the bank.

Three investigators with direct knowledge of the transactions said officials were looking into accusations that Mr. Kareri took bank money for his own use. Riggs fired him earlier this year. His lawyer has declined to comment. Mr. Kareri asserted his right against self-incrimination and declined to answer questions during last week's Senate hearing. But Mr. Kareri was not the only one at Riggs wooing the Equatorial Guineans.

Oil Money From Africa

Although the country's dictator, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasago, had a long record of amply documented human rights abuses, he also presided over a wildly lucrative oil boom that Western companies coveted. Riggs began dealing with him in 1995, and by this year the country had become the bank's largest client, with accounts of $700 million. In turn, Mr. Obiang became a lunch guest at Riggs.

Shortly after one lunch, on May 17, 2001, Robert L. Allbritton, who is Mr. Allbritton's son and chief executive of Riggs National Corporation; the Riggs Bank president and chief executive, Lawrence I. Hebert; and Mr. Kareri all signed a letter to Mr. Obiang. The letter said that Riggs could help Mr. Obiang "reinforce your reputation for prudent leadership" and asked him "how best we can serve you."

According to federal investigators and the Senate report, that service mirrored what the bank provided General Pinochet: massive, no-questions-asked transfers of cash into offshore shell corporations that Riggs created.

Some of the millions of dollars that went into Mr. Obiang's personal accounts came from oil funds established to benefit Equatorial Guineans, according to the Senate report. Last week, Senator Levin noted charges of corruption and abuses against Mr. Obiang and berated Riggs's relationship with the dictator as "abominable."

Mr. Hebert had a different view.

"It's prudent on any bank's part to try to meet the people. They had a lot of money in the account," he testified. "I wanted to hear this fellow talk about his country, talk about what he was trying to do with all this wealth."

A number of American oil companies, especially Exxon Mobil, Amerada Hess and Marathon Oil, had numerous outside business ventures and other financial relationships with Mr. Obiang and his government, in addition to the companies' oil pursuits in the country. Executives from the companies testified last week. Senate records of Riggs accounts show large payments by American oil companies into accounts of Equatorial Guinean officials and their relatives, sometimes in increments as high as $250,000.

Oil industry executives at last week's hearings said that they had gone to great lengths to have honest business relationships in Equatorial Guinea and had not knowingly engaged in corrupt practices.

By the time news reports spurred bank regulators in early 2003 to examine Riggs's involvement with the country, regulators were already consumed by their examination of the Saudi accounts. Nearly a year would pass before they were able to investigate the Equatorial Guinean accounts in any detail. As late as last December, according to the Senate report, Joe L. Allbritton continued to tell regulators that "the bank had no intention of closing the E.G. accounts."

Matters soon escalated beyond Mr. Allbritton's control. Shortly after he dug in his heels, the accounts were closed. Not long after that, Riggs was fined and then, last week, was sold.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/19/business...08a8a1f42b78e94

Right. That's the way I'm reading it. The data was compiled in 1999...it doesn't say when it was destroyed.

Found this in Snuffy's thread "Secret News"


ABLE DANGER: WELDON UNLEASHED

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) caused a stir lately by alleging that a
classified military intelligence data mining program codenamed ABLE
DANGER had identified September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta as a
threat as early as summer of 2000 and that the 9/11 Commission had
been so informed but had chosen to suppress the information.

In an official statement on the matter, former Commission Chair and
Vice Chair Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton disputed Weldon's account,
and Weldon himself has begun to backtrack, stating that he is no
longer certain that a chart he obtained from the military in 2001
actually named Atta.

A copy of the August 12 Kean-Hamilton statement is here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/08/pdp081205.pdf

Curt Weldon -R-PA, held a press conference yesterday - see
http://www.c-span.org
for video - do search

He said they will hold hearings next week. He says he now has 5 witnesses. He was told by the pentagon that they deleted the files (very large amount) as a routine practice. One witness does still have some emails about this.

Weldon said he briefed Stephen Hadley, then assistent to Rice at NSC and now the NS Advisor, two weeks after 9-11 and gave him the "poster" with the connections to ATTA. Hadley remembers the meeting but not the poster and now all the posters are missing.

He just wants to know why the records were destroyed by the Pentagon and why the 9-11 commission said the records were not important to mention in their report.

But do we know what the schedule would be for the kinds of documents that were shredded? (I'm assuming this much of the story is most likely true.)

I used to work at Navy personnel, and for certain kinds of recruitment files we could shred them two years after the case closed. I'm no expert on document retention policies and know little about them otherwise, but I know enough to say that such policies appear to be a lot more complicated than one might think. (One thing about working in personnel, you learn a little bit about what a lot of government jobs are.)

Arne - We don't know what the schedule would be, or precisely the type of document involved - some articles refer to "posters" whatever those are and - the articles don't address document retention issues. But there are schedules.

I know that there are schedules. I once audited the job of someone who helped set policy for document retention for the Air Force. So while I'm no expert, I know a tiny bit about this.

I think that the point is that these are some of the kinds of issues that would have to be explored in figuring out whether there really was something fishy going on. I don't think that we'd disagree on that.