WTC Security Firm Held Its Meetings in Saudi Offices

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Kevin Ryan

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/04/wtc-security-firm-saudi-offices.html
There continues to be some limited interest in the many links between Saudi Arabia and the crimes of 9/11. Although those links often point back to powerful people in the U.S., the mainstream media tends to focus the story on Saudi Arabia alone. That seems to be due to the fact that control of natural resources in the Middle East is what really drives terrorism. Nonetheless, it’s important to continue revealing Saudi connections to 9/11 because they can help us understand what really happened.
One very interesting link is that Stratesec, the security company for the World Trade Center and other 9/11-impacted facilities, held its annual meetings in offices leased by Saudi Arabia. That fact highlights the glaring lack of investigation into the men who ran Stratesec.
For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission suspected Stratesec’s CEO, Wirt D. Walker, of 9/11 insider trading. Despite that documented suspicion and the SEC’s call for FBI investigation of Walker’s trades, neither the FBI nor the 9/11 Commission questioned Walker at all.
Stratesec had security contracts not only for the WTC complex, but also for Dulles airport—where American Airlines Flight 77 took off—and United Airlines, which owned two of the other three hijacked planes. The company’s directors and investors were an interesting group as was the chief operating officer, Barry McDaniel.

Walker was the son of a CIA officer and his activities paralleled those of known CIA operatives. Today, many of Walker’s colleagues have top-secret clearances, suggesting that, like his father, Walker has ties to U.S. intelligence.
Stratesec held its annual meetings in office space leased by the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission. This was at the Watergate office building in Washington DC (2600 Virginia Ave, NW), in suite 900. Stratesec’s parent company, the Kuwait-American Corporation used that Saudi-leased office as its business address.
Some of Walker’s other businesses listed the Saudi Cultural Mission’s offices as their primary business address in SEC filings. This included Prism Entertainment, which made and distributed movies, and ILC Technology, a maker of “high intensity lamps.” Coincidentally, ILC’s subsidiary United Detector Technology made flash detectors that could be used for igniting explosives.
Walker’s company Aviation General also held its annual meetings in the Saudi-leased offices. What’s more, the operational offices for Aviation General are now occupied by Zacarias Moussaoui’s flight trainer.
U.S. politicians and media have no interest in these and other facts that link Saudi Arabia and the U.S. deep state to the crimes of 9/11. Apparently, it’s not the truth that drives the calls for more information about Saudi connections to 9/11, it’s only the possibility of gaining more control over Saudi resources.
Kevin Ryan blogs at Dig Within.

Why Saudi Ties to 9/11 Mean U.S. Ties to 9/11

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Kevin Ryan

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/ 

Media interest in Saudi Arabian connections to the crimes of 9/11 has centered on calls for the release of the 28 missing pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry’s report. However, those calls focus on the question of hijacker financing and omit the most interesting links between the 9/11 attacks and Saudi Arabia—links that implicate powerful people in the United States. Here are twenty examples.

1. When two of the alleged 9/11 hijackers, Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi, came to the U.S. in January 2000, they immediately met with Omar Al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi spy and an employee of a Saudi aviation company. Al-Bayoumi, who was the target of FBI investigations in the two years before 9/11, became a good friend to the two 9/11 suspects, setting them up in an apartment and paying their rent.
2. Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi then moved in with a long-time FBI asset, Abdussattar Shaikh, who was said to be a teacher of the Saudi language. Shaikh allowed them to live in his home for at least seven months, later saying that he thought they were only Saudi students. In an unlikely coincidence, both Al-Bayoumi and Shaikh also knew Hani Hanjour, the alleged pilot of Flight 77. Although Shaikh was reported to be a retired professor at San Diego State University, the university had no records of him. He was then said to be a professor at American Commonwealth University but that turned out to be a phony institution. During the 9/11 investigations, the FBI refused to allow Shaikh to be interviewed or deposed. The FBI also tried to prevent the testimony of Shaikh’s FBI handler, which occurred only secretly at a later date. Despite having a very suspicious background, the FBI gave Shaikh $100,000 and closed his contract.
3. Journalist Joseph Trento claimed that an unnamed former CIA officer, who worked in Saudi Arabia, told him that Alhazmi and Almihdhar were Saudi spies protected by U.S. authorities.
4. After being appointed CIA Director in 1997, George Tenet began to cultivate close personal relationships with officials in Saudi Arabia. Tenet grew especially close to Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Bandar and Tenet often met at Bandar’s home near Washington. Tenet did not share information from those meetings with his own CIA officers who were handling Saudi issues at the agency. These facts are among the reasons to suspect that Tenet facilitated the crimes of 9/11.
5. Bernard Kerik, the New York City police commissioner at the time of 9/11, spent three years working in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s. He then spent another three years in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s as the “chief investigator for the royal family.” It was Kerik who first told the public that explosives were not used at the World Trade Center (WTC) in a news conference. It was also his police department that was said to have discovered a passport that fell from one of the burning towers, providing dubious evidence identifying one of the alleged hijackers.
6. After 9/11, former FBI director Louis Freeh, whose agency failed to stop Al Qaeda-attributed terrorism from 1993 to 2001, became the personal attorney for Tenet’s dubious cohort, Prince Bandar. Sometimes called “Bandar Bush” for his close relationship to the Bush family, Bandar was the Saudi intelligence director from 2005 to 2015.
7. The company that designed the security system for the WTC complex, Kroll Associates, had strong connections to Saudi Arabia. For example, Kroll board member Raymond Mabus, now Secretary of the Navy, was the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the 1990s. Control of WTC security speaks to the question of how explosives could have been placed in the three tall buildings that were demolished on 9/11.
8. All four of the contractors that were involved in implementing Kroll’s security design for the WTC had done significant business in the Saudi kingdom. Stratesec, the company that installed the overall electronic security system at the WTC complex, had also managed security for Dulles airport, where Flight 77 took off, and for United Airlines, which owned two of the three other planes. For many reasons, the company’s managers should be primary suspects in the crimes of 9/11. Stratesec was in partnership with a large Saudi engineering and construction company to develop and conduct business in Saudi Arabia.
9. Another interesting connection between Stratesec and Saudi Arabia was that, in the years leading up to 9/11, Stratesec held its annual shareholders’ meetings in an office that was leased by Saudi Arabia. This was an office in the Watergate Hotel occupied by the Saudi Embassy (run by Prince Bandar).
10. The Bush and Bin Laden-financed Carlyle Group owned, through BDM International, the Vinnell Corporation, a mercenary operation that had extensive contracts and trained the Saudi Arabian National Guard. Several of Stratesec’s key employees, including its operating manager Barry McDaniel, came from BDM. In 1995, BDM’s Vinnell was one of the first targets of Al Qaeda, in Saudi Arabia.
11. One of the two major contractors hired to manage the cleanup of debris at Ground Zero—Bovis Lend Lease—had previously built the Riyadh Olympic stadium in Saudi Arabia.
12. The other primary cleanup company at Ground Zero—AMEC Construction—had just completed a $258 million refurbishment of Wedge 1 of the Pentagon, which is exactly where Flight 77 was said to impact that building. AMEC had a significant presence in Saudi Arabia for decades, working for the national oil company, Saudi Aramco.
13. In the 1990s, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), run by Dick Cheney’s protégé Duane Andrews, trained the Saudi Navy and instructed Saudi military personnel at its company headquarters in San Diego. SAIC had a greater impact on counterterrorism programs in the United States than any other non-government entity and it profited greatly from 9/11.
14. While SAIC was training the Saudi Navy, the Carlyle/BDM subsidiary Vinnell Corporation was training the Saudi Arabian National Guard. Simultaneously, Booz Allen Hamilton was managing the Saudi Marine Corps and running the Saudi Armed Forces Staff College.
15. Salomon Smith Barney (SSB), the company that occupied all but ten floors of WTC building 7, was taken over by Citigroup in 1998 after Citigroup was taken over by Saudi Prince Alwaleed, in a deal brokered by The Carlyle Group. Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney joined the advisory board for SSB just after Citigroup’s takeover and they only resigned in January 2001 to join the Bush Administration.
16. The Saudi government was sued by thousands of 9/11 victim’s family members due to the suspicion that Saudi Arabia helped to finance Al Qaeda. The Saudis hired the law firm of Bush Administration insider James Baker to defend them in that lawsuit.
17. The 9/11 families’ lawsuit against Saudi royals was thrown out on a technicality related to the ability to sue a foreign government and, later, the Obama Administration backed the Saudis during the appeal.
18. The world’s leading insurance provider, Lloyd’s of London, filed a lawsuit alleging Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Lloyd’s dropped the lawsuit just days later without explanation.
19. After 9/11, it became clear that Saudi officials were supporting terrorism. For example, in the case of a would-be “underwear bomber,” it was revealed that the suspect was working for the CIA and Saudi intelligence.
20. Saudi Prince Bandar has been accused of coordinating an international ring of terrorism in his role as Saudi intelligence chief. From Egypt to Libya, and now in Syria, evidence suggests that Bandar Bush has led a network of terrorists around the globe, with U.S. support.

Therefore it is not surprising that people who hear claims of Saudi involvement in 9/11 wonder why the discussion remains so limited and always avoids the glaring implications those claims should entail.
Now that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have “reset” their rocky relationship, calls by U.S. leaders to release the “28 pages” may very well die down. Since the new Saudi King came to the U.S. a few weeks ago, the two governments have rediscovered that they are “close allies” and many new deals are in the works. It remains to be seen what cards U.S. and Saudi leaders will play in the ongoing game of terror and deception but discussions of hijacker financing will probably be left behind.
Kevin Ryan blogs at Dig Within.

Donald Rumsfeld and the Demolition of WTC 7

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Kevin Ryan

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/ 

When former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked about World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7), he claimed that he had never heard of it. This was despite the unprecedented destruction of that 47-story building and its relationship to the events of 9/11 that shaped Rumsfeld’s career. Although not hit by a plane, WTC 7 experienced free fall into its own footprint on the afternoon of 9/11—through the path of what should have been the most resistance. The government agency charged with investigating the building’s destruction ultimately admitted that it had been in free fall during a portion of its descent. That fact makes explosive demolition the only logical explanation. Considering how WTC 7 might have been demolished leads to some interesting facts about Rumsfeld and his associates.
The one major tenant of WTC 7 was Salomon Smith Barney (SSB), the company that occupied 37 of the 47 floors in WTC 7. A little discussed fact is that Rumsfeld was the chairman of the SSB advisory board and Dick Cheney was a board member as well. Rumsfeld had served as chairman of the SSB advisory board since its inception in 1999. According to the financial disclosures he made in his nomination process, during the same period Rumsfeld had also been a paid consultant to the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet. Rumsfeld and Cheney had to resign from their CIA and SSB positions in 2001 when they were confirmed as members of George W. Bush’s cabinet.
Several of Rumsfeld and Cheney’s colleagues had access to, or personal knowledge of, WTC 7. Secret Service agent Carl Truscott, who was in charge of the Presidential Protection Division on 9/11, knew the building well because he had worked at the Secret Service’s New York field office located there. Furthermore, Tenet’s CIA secretly operated a “false front of another federal organization” from within WTC 7.  That false front might have been related to the Secret Service, the Internal Revenue Service, Rumsfeld’s Department of Defense, or the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), all of which were listed as tenants of WTC 7. The SEC lost many important documents when the building was destroyed, including much of what was needed to effectively prosecute Enron and WorldCom.
In any event, it is clear that covert operatives had access to WTC 7. Through the Secret Service, the DOD, and a secret office of the CIA, the building provided access to many such people. Additionally, electronic security for the WTC complex was contracted out to Stratesec, a security company operated by military arms logistician and Iran-Contra suspect, Barry McDaniel. Wirt Walker, the son of a CIA employee who was flagged by the SEC for suspected 9/11 insider trading, was McDaniel’s boss at Stratesec.
Amazingly, explosives and terrorism were planned topics of discussion at WTC 7 on the day of the attacks. There was a meeting scheduled at WTC 7 for the morning of 9/11 that included explosive disposal units from the U.S. military. The Demolition Ordnance Disposal Team from the Army’s Fort Monmouth just happened to be invited there that morning to meet with the building’s owner, Larry Silverstein. They were “reportedly planning to hold a meeting at 7 World Trade Center to discuss terrorism prevention efforts.” The meeting was set for eight o’clock in the morning on 9/11 but was canceled with the excuse that one of Silverstein’s executives could not make it.
Richard Spanard, an Army captain and commander of Fort Monmouth’s explosive disposal unit, was at WTC 7 to attend the meeting. He was “enjoying breakfast at a deli 50 feet from the World Trade Center twin towers when the first plane hit. General hysteria inundated the deli. Spanard decided that he and the three soldiers with him should move to number 7 World Trade Center, where they had a scheduled meeting.” Building 7 was “full of people in the midst of evacuating. A second explosion was heard, and people began mobbing the three escalators in a state of panic. Spanard and the now five soldiers with him began yelling for everyone to remain calm.”
In yet another “eerie quirk of fate,” Fort Monmouth personnel were preparing for an exercise called Timely Alert II on the day of 9/11. This was a disaster drill focused on response to a terrorist attack and included law enforcement agencies and emergency personnel. The drill simply changed to an actual response as the attacks began.
Fort Monmouth, located in New Jersey just 49 miles away from the WTC complex, was home to several units of the Army Materiel Command (AMC). Coincidentally, Stratesec’s Barry McDaniel had led AMC a decade earlier. McDaniel had an interesting past and, after 9/11, became business partners with one of Dick Cheney’s closest colleagues.
The Fort Monmouth response on 9/11 included the explosives unit and the Army’s Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM). As the drill was converted to an actual response, teams of CECOM experts were deployed to locate cell phone transmissions in the pile at Ground Zero. The remainder of the base’s explosive ordnance company was there by the afternoon of 9/11 and stayed for three days in order to, among other things, help “authorities” look for any possible explosives in the debris.
The explosive disposal/terrorism meeting was not just a request of Larry Silverstein, however, but was actually organized by the Secret Service field office. The U.S. Navy’s explosive ordnance disposal Mobile Unit 6 had also been invited to WTC 7 that morning, again at the request of the Secret Service. As they arrived, the planes began to strike the towers.
Considering all of this, Rumsfeld’s claim that he had never heard of WTC 7 is not believable. It does not reconcile with the facts about the positions he held and those of his colleagues and subordinates. It certainly doesn’t reconcile with the fact that Rudy Giuliani gave Rumsfeld a personal tour of Ground Zero just two months after the attacks. Surely Rumsfeld noticed the huge pile of still-smoking rubble that was once the building where Giuliani’s 23rd-floor emergency bunker was housed. They were photographed standing right across the street from it.
Rumsfeld was the chairman of the advisory board for a company that occupied nearly the entirety of WTC 7. On 9/11 he led the DOD—another tenant of the building. Explosive disposal units from both the Army and the Navy (DOD entities) were scheduled to meet in WTC 7 on the morning of 9/11, ostensibly to discuss terrorism. A DOD-sponsored terrorism exercise was scheduled for that morning in the same area. Moreover, Rumsfeld’s long-time business associate Peter Janson ran AMEC Construction, a company hired to clean-up the debris at the WTC complex (after having renovated the exact area where Flight 77 was said to have hit the Pentagon).
And as stated above, Rumsfeld had been a paid consultant to CIA director George Tenet in the three years prior to 9/11. Immediately after WTC 7 was destroyed, the CIA ordered the immediate area around the building to be surrounded by FBI agents. According to the New York Times, the CIA then “dispatched a special team to scour the rubble.” Reportedly this was to retrieve secret documents. But was the CIA, in conjunction with (or posing as) the Secret Service, also coordinating the military’s ordnance disposal units in their search for explosives in the debris?
Rumsfeld’s comments should be considered in light of the fact that he was among the leaders of a concerted plan to lie about Iraq’s WMDs. Similarly, there has been a pattern of lying about WTC 7 by government officials. The official report on the destruction of the building is patently and provably false and followed a long string of false explanations. When government scientists finally admitted that WTC 7 was in free-fall, indicating that they had previously lied about that fact, even their body language revealed the deception.
When we remember 9/11, we should remember that those crimes initiated and continue to drive the devastating “War on Terror.” We should also remember that war is based on deception and the official account of 9/11 is a prime example. We see the lies about 9/11 everyday as they are still being told, like the one readily seen in the form of a 47-story building experiencing free fall and nearly every statement made about it by government officials since that time.