Bush, Oil & The Taliban
Two French authors allege that before Sept. 11,
the White House put oil interests ahead of national security.
By Nina Burleigh
Feb. 8, 2002 | PARIS -- In a new book, "Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth," two
French intelligence analysts allege the Clinton and Bush administrations put
diplomacy before law enforcement in dealing with the al-Qaida threat before
Sept. 11, in order to maintain smooth relations with Saudi Arabia and to
avoid disrupting the oil market.
The book, which has become a bestseller in France but has received little
press attention here, also alleges that the Bush administration was
bargaining with the Taliban, over a Central Asian oil pipeline and Osama bin
Laden, just five weeks before the September attacks. The authors,
Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, see a link between the
negotiations and Vice President Dick Cheney's energy policy task force, with
its conclusions that Central Asian oil was going to become critical to the
U.S. economy. Brisard and Dasquie also claim former FBI deputy director John
O'Neill (who died in the attack on the World Trade Center, where he was the
chief of security) resigned in July to protest the policy of giving U.S.
oil interests a higher priority than bringing al-Qaida leaders to justice.
Brisard claims O'Neill told him that "the main obstacles to investigating
Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by
Saudi Arabia."
The authors also allege that the Sept. 11 attacks were a calculated response
to Western pressure on the Taliban to hand over bin Laden and permit the
return of the long-exiled Afghan leader, King Shah.
They say the terror attacks were aimed at sparking a widespread war in
Central Asia and thereby reinforcing the Islamic extremists' grip on power.
Brisard, a private intelligence analyst who once worked for the French
conglomerate Vivendi, compiled a report in 1997 on the financing behind the
al-Qaida network. Dasquie is a journalist and editor of Intelligence Online.
The authors are negotiating with American publishers now to get the book
translated and published in England. They recently discussed their book with
Salon.
How did you meet John O'Neill, and how often and where? Did you ever tape
your discussions with him?
Brisard: I met him twice. The first time was in Paris in June 2001 and then
in July in New York. I met him because I wrote some years ago a report about
the bin Laden family and its financial connections with Osama bin Laden. Our
meeting was in the process of the French sharing information with the FBI.
He wanted to meet me again a month after our first meeting to discuss the
points of my report, and so we met at the end of July 2001. I never taped
him and that's why I only quote him directly three or four times. That's all
I have and the rest is paraphrase. The discussion of O'Neill is only 10
pages in the book. It is the first 10 pages of the book. What he said is a
synthesis of what we say in the book, and that's why we decided to put it on
the first pages. That is, the role of Saudi Arabia, the role of oil and the
way the investigation worked in the United States before Sept. 11.
Did O'Neill indicate that the FBI expected more attacks on the United States?
Brisard: No. Not even implicitly. We didn't talk about the threat itself. We
focused on the sources and roots of the problems and the way to deter
further action.
How much did Mr. O'Neill know about al-Qaida that the public didn't know
until after Sept. 11, such as the extent of the training, the network and
the hatred?
Brisard: John O'Neill clearly knew extensively about the threat of Osama bin
Laden and al-Qaida. He told me the FBI had identified for years the
financial supports of bin Laden. For instance, in the Yemen investigation
[of the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole], he said everything pointed at
Osama bin Laden but there was an unwillingness among U.S. diplomats to act
and to put any kind of pressure against the governments. His investigation
was made difficult because of this unwillingness, and in his mind it was
especially because of the economic interests of the United States. I quote
him saying that everything about bin Laden and al-Qaida can be explainable
through Saudi Arabia. And when I asked why the U.S. was unwilling to go
after the states that host bin Laden, he said because of oil.
In what sense was Saudia Arabia supporting bin Laden? He had been exiled.
Brisard: Yes, the official stance is he was banned in 1994 and his assets
were frozen. This is the official position of the Saudi government. But we
prove in our book that until 1998 he was able to use economic and financial
structures in Saudi Arabia. He could have linked working bank accounts in
Sudan with companies registered in Saudi. He had various contacts with Saudi
officials. And remember, the Saudis were supporting the Taliban regime,
which was hosting him.
In Saudi Arabia, the left hand ignores the right hand. And the FBI was fully
aware of the situation.
Other than the U.S. ambassador in Yemen sending O'Neill home because of his
alleged insensitivity to the culture, exactly how did the State Department
hinder the FBI investigation?
Brisard: O'Neill said the State Department has had an overwhelming role on
these investigations. He was explicitly blocked in Yemen from further
investigation. We now know from different files that the FBI was starting
investigations on different aspects of Saudi Arabian support [of bin Laden],
and those investigations were all stopped, even under Clinton. What John
O'Neill said is that for him, there was a clear [conflict] between the FBI's
goal, which was to go fast and to implicate members of the networks and
eventually to implicate states that gave them support, and the State
Department's goal, which was to move in a more diplomatic way to negotiate
with those states and to some extent accommodate them. And what he said was
that the diplomatic way was chosen over the security or law enforcement
policy, and of course he was very angry about what happened to him in Yemen.
In your book, you allege that the Bush administration was negotiating with
the Taliban last year over a proposed Central Asian oil pipeline through
Afghanistan. Which Bush official conducted those talks?
Brisard: [Assistant Secretary of State] Christina Rocca, in August 2001 in
Pakistan, explicitly discussed the oil interest, not the pipeline.
Did you ever speak with Rocca?
Dasquie: I tried to, but when you are a foreign journalist you must ask the
U.S. embassy in France before an interview. My correspondent in Washington
also made requests. Since March or April 2001 we had tracked this story,
because just after the United Nations' decision against the Taliban, it was
crazy to see Taliban leaders coming into Washington and having meetings.
Christina Rocca arrived at the State Department in June, and we knew her
background at the CIA; she had managed all the relations between the agency
and Islamic groups in Central Asia. Since around June I have been focused on
Rocca. We made requests. The embassy said it was impossible. With no
explanation.
Do you allege that she mentioned oil explicitly?
Dasquie: Madeleine Albright was the first to refuse to negotiate with the
Taliban in 1997. Before that, from 1994 to '97, Clinton did negotiate with
the Taliban. We describe the meeting of Rocca and some Taliban leaders in
Islamabad in August 2001. There are documents to support it. And at the same
time in Washington there are lots of meetings of the energy policy task
force and lots of oil company representatives around Dick Cheney. The task
force's conclusion is that Central Asia oil is a very important goal. And at
the same time people are negotiating with the Taliban for the first time
since 1994.
Brisard: We believe that when [Rocca] went to Pakistan in 2001 she was there
to speak about oil, and unfortunately the Osama bin Laden case was just a
technical part of the negotiations. I'm not sure about the pipeline
specifically, but we make it clear she was there to speak about oil. There
are witnesses, including the Pakistani foreign minister.
Are you saying that the Central Asian oil and pipelines were not an issue
under Clinton, or just more of an issue for the Bush administration? And
what are you basing that on?
Brisard: Oil was also an issue for the Clinton administration, but the
difference between Clinton and Bush is, under Bush the economic argument
became predominant and the U.S. thought they could pursue the Taliban to
accept a deal on economics.
Dasquie: The area was of enormous strategic concern to many nations.
The U.N. "six plus two" group [made up of the six countries that border
Afghanistan, plus the United States and Russia] had tried to persuade the
Taliban to take back the Afghan king in exchange for recognition. The
biggest mistake of the U.N. and the U.S. was to consider the Taliban as
independent and able to negotiate. Nobody saw the reality of the
relationship between Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. So when the U.N.'s
six-plus-two group and the U.S. said accept the king and give us Osama, it
was incredible; it was like asking them to kill themselves. It was the very
wrong way to negotiate.
People say the only reason 9-11 happened is that Osama is a bad boy and the
Muslims hate the U.S., but that is not enough. It is a pity to see that all
our policies are built on that. It is very, very much more complex. They
knew that if they did nothing they would lose.
Everyone wanted to give power to the former king. When you think you are
going to lose, the easy reaction is to be the first to attack. So 9-11 was
not just a mad act, it was a political act meant to create a good ground for
a big war in all Central Asia. Mullah Omar and bin Laden wanted to rally
Muslims in Central Asia. In the last 10 years, the focal point of Islamists
has taken off from the Middle East and gone into Central Asia.
The first President Bush has lots of connections with the Saudis and has
made visits there as a private businessman with the merchant banking firm
the Carlyle Group. Did you find any trace of the Carlyle Group on the
financial trail?
Brisard: No. Carlyle has connections to the bin Laden family. Also, [Saudi
banker and alleged terrorist financer] Khaleed bin Mahfooz financed the Bush
oil companies in Texas in the late '70s and we discovered that he is also
the primary financial support of Osama bin Laden. For years he was the
personal banker of King Fahd, but now Mahfooz is under house arrest in Saudi
Arabia for allegedly financing terrorist groups. He was arrested in 1999,
but he is still a shareholder of the Saudi Bank National Commercial. He had
charities around the world and one of them, International Development
Foundation in London, has just been banned by the charity commission in
London because of our book. We also make lots of connections with BCCI [Bank
of Credit and Commerce International, the foreign bank closed 10 years ago
after a huge scandal connected it to fraud, secret weapons deals, money
laundering and the financing of terrorist groups]. We say the system
financing bin Laden was more or less the revival of the BCCI. Even the
associates of the BCCI are now involved in those networks. And bin Mahfooz
was the operational director of BCCI.
Exactly how have the Saudis promoted Islamic terrorism?
Brisard: It's a political question for them. They have to support those
religious fundamentalists because they are a large part of the regime of the
kingdom and they need them to survive politically.
Wahhabism, the Saudi form of Islam, is one of the harshest forms, and bin
Laden is a product of his country.
Is there anything in the American press about your book you would like to
correct?
Brisard: The main error is to say that the U.S. preferred oil to fighting
against al-Qaida. That oversimplifies it. And it is also wrong to say John
O'Neill told me that George Bush blocked inquiries into al-Qaida because of
oil. It was not personally Bush [that O'Neill complained about]; it was a
policy of putting diplomacy ahead of law enforcement going back to Clinton.
Why is the book so popular in France?
Brisard: Because there have been a lot of books about Sept. 11 and what
happened and bios of bin Laden, but it's the first time that two
investigators put facts on the table, documents, interviews and nothing
else. We don't say it could have been stopped. If any government had known
what was going to happen it wouldn't have happened. But we point out the
role of the Western countries that led to Sept.11 -- back to 50 years ago,
when we agreed to make an alliance with Saudi Arabia, and then by closing
our eyes to the support they were giving fundamentalists around the world
for the last 20 years.
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