Chairman Kean's Link To bin Laden's Brother-in-law

WASHINGTON -- April 1, 2004 -- (TomFlocco.com) -- Like an efficient maitre ‘d at an upscale Capitol Hill eatery, Chairman Tom Kean was graciously shepherding witnesses and fellow commissioners from one table of question topics to another. The affable ex-New Jersey governor--now college president and multiple corporate board member--punctuated time gaps between last week’s September 11 hearing deponents with inventive soft-ball queries such as “Can you tell us what we could have done to prevent 9-11 and how can we make sure it never happens again?”

Kean may yet have to explain why his oil company board of directors continued to maintain a corporate relationship with an oil company backed by Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, who was reported to be a past financial benefactor of George W. Bush. According to the FBI, the terror-linked Saudi had been funding terrorism well before September 11, 2001. Moreover, he has been linked to a U.S. law firm with a partner who was a Bush 2000 fundraiser.

Kean’s oil group did not extricate itself from its ties to the publicly known financier of terrorism until 15 months after the attacks--but just 21 days before President Bush appointed him chairman of the Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States. This, as a fired whistleblower and FBI translator said her letter and follow-up calls to Kean, charging terrorism-related internal security and espionage breaches at the FBI, had gone unanswered by the chairman for a year.

The rest of the story...


Is this whole commission dirty beyond belief?

whitestar

n/t

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_3-2-2003_pg4_9

trying to find actual link...

Old fortune link:
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,410237,00.html

text can be found elsewhere.

This was to be a put-up job. Lots of show and zero to show for it. Remember, before Kean, Henry "The Monster" Kissinger was hand-picked by Smirk to lead the cover-up. Unfortunately for the Bush Organized Crime Family, some of these people have souls, perhaps even Lee Hamilton. Old Lee helped cover up Iran-Contra, which kept Poppy Bush out of jail and led to the selection of his crooked, moronic son.

(With apologies to my DU friends who know the man) Here's what I mean about Lee:

Hamilton and Iran-Contra

"......former Congressman Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House select committee investigating the Iran-contra affair, was shown ample evidence against Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, but he did not probe their wrongdoing. Why did Hamilton choose not to investigate? In a late 1980s interview aired on PBS 'Frontline,' Hamilton said that he did not think it would have been 'good for the country' to put the public through another impeachment trial. In Lee Hamilton's view, it was better to keep the public in the dark than to bring to light another Watergate, with all the implied ramifications. When Hamilton was chairman of the House committee investigating Iran-contra, he took the word of senior Reagan administration officials when they claimed Bush and Reagan were 'out of the loop.' Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh and White House records later proved that Reagan and Bush had been very much in the loop. If Hamilton had looked into the matter instead of accepting the Reagan administration's word, the congressional investigation would have shown the public the truth. Hamilton later said he should not have believed the Reagan officials. However, today, George W. Bush is considering appointing Hamilton UN ambassador."
-- Uncovering the Florida cover-up: The good fight continues
A Past Look, 25 December, 2000

"One of the key congressional Republicans fighting this rear-guard action was Rep. Dick Cheney of Wyoming, who became the ranking House Republican on the Iran-contra investigation. Cheney already enjoyed a favorable reputation in Washington as a steady conservative hand. Cheney smartly exploited his relationship with Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., who was chairman of the Iran-contra panel. Hamilton cared deeply about his reputation for bipartisanship and the Republicans quickly exploited this fact. A senior committee source said one of Cheney’s top priorities was to block Democrats from deposing Vice President Bush about his Iran-contra knowledge. Cheney 'kept trying to intimidate Hamilton,' the source said. 'He kept saying if we go down that road, we won’t have bipartisanship.' So, Hamilton gave Bush a pass. The limited investigation also gave little attention to other sensitive areas, such as contra-drug trafficking and the public diplomacy operation. They were pared down or tossed out altogether. Despite surrendering to Cheney’s demands time and again, Hamilton failed, in the end, to get a single House Republican to sign the final report. Only three moderate Republicans on the Senate side – Warren Rudman, William Cohen and Paul Trible – agreed to sign the report, after extracting more concessions. Cheney and the other Republicans submitted a minority report that denied that any significant wrongdoing had occurred."

Covering Up Iran-Contra - Robert Parry
Consortium News, 5 November 2000
Robert Parry is an investigative reporter who broke many of the Iran-contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek

" The designated congressional committees filed their joint report on the Iran-Contra affair. Wyoming Representative Richard Cheney, the senior Republican member of the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, helped steer the joint committees to an impotent result. George Bush was totally exonerated, and was hardly mentioned. George Bush, when President, rewarded Dick Cheney by appointing him U.S. Secretary of Defense, after the Senate refused to confirm John Tower."

Chapter -XVIII- Iran- Contra
'George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography'
by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin

SNIP...

Drugs And The Bogus 'War Against Terrorism'

"Around the same time as the destruction of the Project X records, President Bush was completing the long-running cover-up of the Iran-contra scandal. On Christmas Eve 1992, he issued pardons to former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five other Iran-contra defendants. The pardons effectively ended the Iran-contra investigation and spared leading Republicans, including Gen. Colin Powell, the embarrassment of having to testify at the Weinberger trial about their earlier deceptions. After leaving office, Bush himself refused to submit to an interview with Walsh that might have established what Bush and his aides actually did during the Iran-contra operation."

Covering Up Iran-Contra - Robert Parry
Consortium News, 5 November 2000
Robert Parry is an investigative reporter who broke many of the Iran-contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek

CONTINUED...

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/hamiltoniran-contra.htm

Jamie Gorlick: joined the legal defense team of Clark Clifford and Robert Altman, the two top officers of First American Bank, which had been taken over by the corrupt BCCI, which laundered money for Intelligence agencies, criminals and terrorists.

Richard Ben-Vaniste: represented Barry Seal, the drug-running Iran/Contra CIA asset. Told The Wall Street Journal: "I did my part by launching him (Seal) into the arms of Vice President Bush who embraced him as an undercover operative."

Fred Fielding: deputy counsel under John Dean in the Nixon WH. Helped clean out Howard Hunt's safe and dispose of evidence. Served on the Bush* transition team.

Jim Thompson: longtime Illinois Governor and currently chairman of the Chicago-based law firm Winston and Strawn. Subject of allegations of complicity in CIA drug smuggling.

Slade Gorton: Appointed by Trent Lott to Senate Intelligence Committee. Told the Seattle Times two days after 9/11, that there was nothing Intelligence agencies could have done to prevent the attacks, and "I doubt we can expect to get too much inside information no matter what we do."

Then there's Max Cleland. The one member who said the commission was a "sham", and that America was being cheated." Well, he's not there anymore, is he?

If I had a newsroom filled with you and your clones ... Oh. What that would mean.

"Kean may yet have to explain why his oil company board of directors continued to maintain a corporate relationship with an oil company backed by Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law,"

Inserting the facts into TomFloppo's shit-sausage (a skin of truth stuffed with shit): "Kean may yet have to explain why" the oil company of which he is a director and shareholder continued an ongoing business arrangement with another oil company which received funding from a person who was related by marriage to Osama bin Laden.

Hey, I once lived with a woman who performed with Madonna before her career took off. Under Floppo's rules, I'd be justified in claiming that I was intimate with Madonna!

And what is this nonsense about "softball questions"? According to Floppo, these were made *between* depositions! So? What about the questions asked *during* the depositions?

Howsabout we talk about TomFloppo's connections to NewsMax, Judicial Watch and the goons that tried to remove a duly-elected President over a blow job?

Why do you consider him to be a credible reporter despite *his* past associations?

Did you see one with Poppy doing business with the bin Ladens during and after 9-11? This is an old story but it is more nefarious than you are letting on.

How remote would an association have to be before you would decide that the possibility of conflict was unreasonably small?

There was a business arrangement between two independent corporations. Kean was on the board of one corporation, but did not control it. The arab backed the other corporation and exercised some unknown degree of control. His connection with Osama was through marriage and the strength of his connection with Osama is doubtful.

Of course, by your reasoning, there is a possibility that I am in on the conspiracy. My sister's brother-in-law was once an employee of a corporation owned by the Kean family.

On edit: I also should disclose that I know several people who studied at a college named after the Keans.

I agree with you that Amereda/Hess/Delta Oil, and the fact that Kean was on the board does not make him in any way complicit in any actions Khalid bin Mahfouz may have done.

however, do the Bushies not know ANYONE who is not in some way connected to Saudi oil interests who could have served in this capacity?

...Truman took pains to avoid the appearance as well as the fact of war profiteering...it would be nice if the commission didn't look like it might have a huge conflict of interest...

And as far as Khalid bin Mahfouz, his connection to bin Laden is more than simply being married to bin Laden's sister. The UN named bin Mahfouz as a financier of terrorism after the American Embassy bombings in Africa.

In addition, the is a very tangled web of financial connections uniting bin Laden and bin Mahfouz...maybe someone here can post a graphic from the back of the Forbidden Truth book...

but at least until recently, they both had offices in Oxford, England, in the same building...one the International Dev. Fund, or something like that, the other a Muslim charity...which has already been shown to have been a way for terrorists to launder money.

bin Mahfouz was not only in biz with Kean, btw. He was also an 11% stakeholder in Harken Energy, via James Bath, who was in Bush's National Guard Unit, and who was supposedly recruited by Poppy for the CIA.

Bath, as bin Mahfouz's partner, tried to buy an airport in Houston, as an aside.

bin Mahfouz was also one of the chief beneficiaries of the ponzi scheme known as BCCI, the largest bank fraud in world history, which was also used to funnel money/launder drug transactions/run guns for the illegal Iran/Contra operation.

So...bin Mahfouz is dirty.

And whether or not Kean was aware of these things is another issue, but if my husband had been killed on 9-11, I certainly wouldn't want the head of the committee investigating this issue to have been in biz with someone like bin Mahfouz up until three weeks before his appointment.

Let me "misdirect" your attention to this one -
http://antiwar.com/sperry/?articleid=2209

Zelikow has an immediate and multifaceted set of conflicts.
So why are you twisting yourself into knots over Kean?

and, of course, he has not and will not.

I agree that Zelikow has no business heading this commission, and the fact that he screens information, apparently, for the commission is a slap in the face to those whose family members were killed on 9-11.

has bashed Clinton at every turn

this is truly disturbing


we need to call air america about this

A few snips:

Early on at the second commission hearing, this writer asked Kean about reported and perceived conflicts of interest regarding the Hess-Delta relationship and Saudi-sponsored terrorism: “That’s not a problem,” he said, adding, “I’ve already taken care of that,” whereupon he walked away quietly.

Why did the commission decide not to require President Bush and Vice-President Cheney to testify in public under oath? Did it have anything to do with the joint congressional intelligence committee report’s 28 redacted pages about Saudi financial support of terrorism? Did it have anything to do with Khalid bin Mahfouz and terrorism finance?

While Chairman Tom Kean has questions to answer regarding Khalid bin Mahfouz, some may also question why the Chairman would not discuss Sibel Edmonds’ FBI translation issues for one year, potentially harming United States internal security--if one believes Senator Charles Grassley.

Today there are stories hitting the internet that pertain to the Commission being compromised beyond belief. We need to get them all in front of the public's eyes.

whitestar