ATTA's connections

For at least four years while living in Hamburg during the 1990's terrorist
ringleader Mohamed Atta was part of a 'joint venture' between the U.S. and
German Governments, the MadCowMorningNews has learned, an elite
international "exchange" program run by a little-known private organization
with close ties to powerful American political figures like David
Rockefeller and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

The jointly-funded government effort picked up the tab for Atta on sojourns
in Cairo, Istanbul, and Aleppo in Syria during the years 1994 and 1995, as
well as employing him as a "tutor" and "seminar participant" during 1996 and
1997.

Moreover Atta's financial relationship with the U.S.-German government
effort may even extend back to his initial move from Egypt to Germany in
1992, after being "recruited" in Cairo by a mysterious German couple dubbed
the "hijacker's sponsors" in a recent news account in the Chicago Tribune.

Mohamed Atta, before becoming a 'terrorist ringleader,' enjoyed the
patronage of a government initiative, known as the "Congress-Bundestag
Program," overseen by the U.S. State Department and the German Ministry of
Economic Cooperation and Development, the German equivalent of the U.S.
Agency for International Development busy currently supervising the
secretive bidding race for tens of billions of dollars of post-war
reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

All the news that fits...under the rug

News that Mohamed Atta had been on the payroll of the elite international
program surfaced in a curious way just a month after the 9/11 attack: a
brief seven-line report by German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
on Oct. 18, 2001, under the headline "ATTA WAS TUTOR FOR SCHOLARSHIP
HOLDERS."

The story quoted spokesmen for "Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft," described as a
"German international further education organisation," as having admitted
paying Hamburg cadre principal Atta as a "scholarship holder" and "tutor,"
between 1995 and 1997.

But what makes the story curious is that the German paper concealed the
shocking implications of their story, that Mohamed Atta had been on the
payroll of a joint U.S.-German government program, through the simple
expedient of neglecting to mention that the "Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft" was
merely a private entity set up to administer the "exchange" initiative of
the two governments.

The U.S. end of the program is run out of an address at United Nations Plaza
in New York by CDS International. The letters stand for Carl Duisberg
Society, also the name of its German counterpart in Cologne, the Carl
Duisberg Gesellschaft. Both are named for Carl Duisberg, a German chemist
and industrialist who headed the Bayer Corporation during the 1920's.

The list of elite power brokers backing CDS International ranges from the
aforementioned Kissinger and Rockefeller to former President Bill Clinton
and other Democratic heavyweights like former First Lady Hillary Clinton and
Clinton White House adviser Ira Magaziner.

One reason Kissinger bowed out

Kissinger, to cite just one example, had at one time addressed over 100
international business leaders at an anniversary dinner organized and
celebrating CDS International held at the River Club of New York June 2,
1987.

Kissinger congratulated CDS International on its 20 years of service in
keeping close business ties, not only between Germany and the United States,
but more recently through career development programs for participants from
other countries as well.

Five years later, Mohamed Atta became one of these participants from "other"
countries.

Then-President Bill Clinton also found a lot to like about CDS
International. During his visit to Germany to commemorate the Berlin Airlift
he noted that the United States "will be working hard to expand our support"
for the "Congress-Bundestag" exchange which "has already given more than
10,000 German and American students the chance to visit each other's
countries."

Were he to give the same speech today, he would no doubt change the wording
to read "the chance to visit and vaporize" each other's countries.

CDS International, states the organizations literature, provides
opportunities for young German engineers. Mohamed Atta wasn't, strictly
speaking, a "young German engineer," but apparently Kissinger's praise for
"career development programs for participants from other countries as well"
had been taken to heart by the friendly folks at the Carl Duisberg Society.

"These young German engineers earn real world experience and are given
assignments to contribute from the start," a program spokesman enthused in a
newspaper interview.

The organization is today understandably shy about mentioning that their
most famous recent graduate's "real world experience" included murdering
almost 3000 people in New York City in slightly less than two hours.

A financial relationship between the terrorist ringleader and the U.S. and
German Governments has not previously even been hinted at in America's major
media. The conspiracy-minded might conclude that the fact that the scoop is
going to the MadCowMorningNews may owe something to the program's raft of
politically-powerful boosters.

Big Juice in High Places

Having big juice in high places may also explain more equally-curious
omissions in a second story about Mohamed Atta's time in Germany, which
appeared recently in the March 7,2003 Chicago Tribune, under the headline
"9/11 haunts hijacker's sponsors; German couple talks of living with pilot
Atta."

The article describes the 1992 meeting in Cairo between Atta and a German
couple running an "international student exchange program," a meeting which
the Tribune says led Atta to move to Hamburg.

During a visit to the Egyptian capital in fall 1991, the Tribune reported,
the German couple had stayed with friends who knew Atta's father, a Cairo
lawyer, and his father's friends had then introduced the German couple to
Atta.

"Atta, who had recently graduated with a degree in architectural engineering
from the University of Cairo, told the couple he wanted to study
architecture in Germany, but he had no particular idea where he should go,"
the paper reported.

Though the article neglects to mention it, the reason Atta found himself
with "no particular idea where he should go" was because although he had
studied engineering at prestigious Cairo University, he had not fared well
enough to gain admission to its graduate school.

The paper quotes the German wife telling investigators: "In this first
conversation, we suggested he continue his studies in Hamburg and offered
him a place to live at our house."

Atta, she states, accepted their offer right away.

This magnanimous gesture by the German couple to an undistinguished young
man they have just met raises serious questions. Perhaps their gesture is
just the very milk of human kindness; perhaps it is something else.

Why did this German couple running an international exchange program leap at
the opportunity to help a young man not considered promising enough to gain
entrance to graduate school in Cairo, and offer him a place to live at their
house?

The Tribune doesn't say.

And they have made it difficult for anyone lese to follow up on their story,
because they neglected to identify either the couple or the "international"
program they ran by name.

But although Tribune correspondent Stevenson Swanson cites the German

he never gives either their names nor that of the organization they worked for.

This is some curious, if you know what we mean. After all, the story is 1200
words in length. So its not as if they didn't have room to print the names,
is it?

"Jane and John Doe from Help-A-Student International" would have been
enough.

You know: Who What When Where and Why.

So, either the Tribune just forgot the 'Who,' or something even weirder
happened.

Was "Shock & Awe' campaign used first September 11, 2001?

After studying German in Cairo, Atta arrived in Germany on July 24, 1992,
according to investigators' records, and then lived rent-free for at least
the next six months in the couple's home in a quiet, middle-class
neighborhood.

And since just two years later Atta was on the payroll of the
"Congress-Bundestag Program" it is reasonable to conclude--and no thanks to
the Chicago Tribune--that it was also the "exchange program" responsible for
bringing him to Germany in the first place..

CDS International's elite sponsors are apparently influential enough to have
kept their organization's name out of the newspapers.

Or at any rate out of the Chicago Tribune.

When Atta returned home several years later for a three-month visit to
Cairo, in 1995, the Egyptian government was in the midst of cracking down
viciously on Islamic fundamentalists.

Yet, strangely, Atta chose this exact time to grow a beard, traditionally a
sign of a devout Muslim, but also in Atta's case assumed to have been a
defiant political gesture chosen to register his disgust at the secular
elite that ruled his homeland.

Or, at least, that's the way they tell the story.

And indeed, his two German traveling "companions" report that Atta said he
would not be cowed by his home country's "fat cats," who he believed were
criminalizing religious traditionalists while bowing shamefully to the West
in foreign and economic policies.

At least that's what they say he said.

But maybe growing a beard and assuming an "Islamic fundamentalist" pose had
instead merely been the act of a man "singing for his supper" by going
undercover on behalf of "fat cats" from another part of the forest
entirely...

Naw.

It couldn't be.

Could it?

http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/13912/index.php

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

SEE also the following mountain of evidence showing more government
connections to the "terrorists".

Bush took FBI agents off Laden family trail

http://www.prisonplanet.com/911.html#w199i

Alleged Hijackers May Have Trained at U.S. Bases

The Pentagon has turned over military records on five men to the FBI

By George Wehrfritz, Catharine Skipp and John Barry

NEWSWEEK

Sept. 15 — U.S. military sources have given the FBI information that

suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used in

Tuesday’s terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military

installations in the 1990s.

THREE OF THE alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers

licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola,

Fla.—known as the “Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation,” according to a

high-ranking U.S. Navy source.

Another of the alleged hijackers may have been trained in strategy

and tactics at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., said another

high-ranking Pentagon official. The fifth man may have received language

instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. Both were

former Saudi Air Force pilots who had come to the United States, according

to the Pentagon source.

But there are slight discrepancies between the military training

records and the official FBI list of suspected hijackers—either in the

spellings of their names or with their birthdates. One military source

said it is possible that the hijackers may have stolen the identities of

the foreign nationals who studied at the U.S. installations.

The five men were on a list of 19 people identified as hijackers

by the FBI on Friday. The three foreign nationals training in Pensacola

appear to be Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmad Alnami, who were among the four

men who allegedly commandeered United Airlines Flight 93. That flight crashed

into rural Pennsylvania. The third man who may have trained in Pensacola,

Ahmed Alghamdi, allegedly helped highjack United Airlines Flight 75, which

hit the south tower of the World Trade Center.

Military records show that the three used as their address 10

Radford Boulevard, a base roadway on which residences for foreign-military

flight trainees are located. In March 1997, Saeed Alghamdi listed the

address to register a 1998 Oldsmobile; five months later he used it again

to register a second vehicle, a late model Buick. Drivers licenses thought

to have been issued to the other two suspects in 1996 and 1998 list the

barracks as their residences.

NEWSWEEK visited the base early Saturday morning, where military

police confirmed that the address housed foreign military flight trainees

but denied access past front barricades. Officials at the base confirmed

that the FBI is investigating the three students.

It is not unusual for foreign nationals to train at U.S. military

facilities. A former Navy pilot told NEWSWEEK that during his years on the

base, “we always, always, always trained other countries’ pilots. When I

was there two decades ago, it was Iranians. The shah was in power. Whoever

the country du jour is, that’s whose pilots we train.”

Candidates begin with “an officer’s equivalent of boot camp,” he

said. “Then they would put them through flight training.” The U.S. has a

long-standing agreement with Saudi Arabia—a key ally in the 1990-91 gulf

war—to train pilots for its National Guard. Candidates are trained in air

combat on several Army and Navy bases. Training is paid for by Saudi

Arabia.

http://www.wanttoknow.info/010915newsweek