Al Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf & The CIA's Terror Incubator in the Philippines, by Alex Constantine,

Al Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf & The CIA's Terror Incubator in the Philippines, by Alex Constantine,

911review
Alex Constantine

An apartment is bombed in the Philippines, and a CIA agent's legs are blown off by the explosion. The bombing was an American covert operation. Yet the American press reported that Abu Sayyef, a division of Al Qaeda, set off the explosion. The story makes clear that the leaders of Abu Sayyef are provocateurs in league with American intelligence, the true culprits behind the bombing. The contradiction sheds light on Black Tuesday and the international "war on terrorism." - AC ------------

By Alex Constantine,

It's generally agreed that the same arm of Al Qaeda responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing returned on September 11, 2001 to finish the job. Therefore, it's a reasonable assumption that the first attempt to level the towers, and the subsequent paths of blind cleric Rahman's fellow conspirators, should provide some answers to questions left in the wake of 9/11 concerning its history and sponsorship.

Newspaper histories of al-Qaeda trace its roots to Saudi Arabia. Founder Osama Bin Laden pushed early funding through the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), as arranged in meetings between al Qaeda's inner-circle and the charity's directors. (The Saudi government funded terrorist attacks on Israel in secrecy throughout most of the 1990's via similar charities in Virginia and Florida.1) Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's lieutenant, was employed by the IIRO in Albania. The Philippine branch office was run by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama's brother-in-law (1986-94), who made a lateral hand-off of cash to the Abu Sayyaf, an al Qaeda offshoot.2

The DoD, CIA and other opaque branches of government (and the Mafia), drawn by the lure of Japanese and German gold, maintained a particularly busy presence in the Philippines as the Marcos kleptocracy declined and fell. Khashoggi's Iran-contra ally, Oliver North, oversaw "back door" shipments of the recovered gold, much of it to Arab governments, some of it to Middle Eastern terrorists trading on the black market. North met with Osama Bin Laden's money men often to negotiate exchange of the gold.3

The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), like Al Qaeda, owed its existence to the intelligence establishment. The ASG was co-founded by Edwin Angeles, an undercover agent for the Defense Intelligence Group at the Department of National Defense, Republic of the Philippines. His Muslim handle was "Ibrahim Yakub" and as the organization's operations officer and chief recruiter, he was largely responsible for the spread -- and criminalization -- of the Abu Sayyaf.

Filipino television news reporter Arlyn de la Cruz, in her history of the ASG, writes that Angeles/Yokub "holds the key to the deep intricacies of how some government agencies manipulated the rawness of the Abu Sayyaf during its early years." This observation still applies, and can be said of al Qaeda, the CIA-bred Taliban mutation, as well.

It was Angeles "who actually introduced the idea of kidnapping as part of the fund-raising activities of the Abu Sayyaf," de la Cruz reports -- this would be the abduction of a wealthy woman in Davao. "Edwin planned the abduction and even initiated the plan himself." The victim was held not far from the Brigade Headquarters of the Philippine Marines in Tabuk. She was released after her family paid the million-pesos ransom to Abu Sayyaf.

The next to be kidnapped was Luis "Ton-Ton" Biel, a five year-old child, and his grandfather ... then Claretian priest Bernardo Blanco. Soon, the media were requesting interviews, and "Yokub" stepped before the cameras to act the role of lethal but well-spoken religious lunatic. Angeles was a "good speaker, a good actor. He spoke like a Leftist leader espousing Fundamentalist principles."
An accidental blast at the Evergreen Hotel in Davao in May 2004 was a clear statement that the "Al Qaeda" offshoot still functions as an intelligence front, a proxy army of the National Security Council that exists to justify intervention in the Philippines.

The explosion, publicized in the States as the work of the dread Abu Sayyaf, was set off by a store of dynamite traced to Michael Meiring, an African-born, naturalized, proverbially Ugly American citizen. Meiring claimed that Abu Sayyaf's mad dogs had lobbed a grenade into his hotel room, an alibi proven to be fabricated upon examination of the scene by local police. Meiring was so badly injured that both of his legs had to be amputated at the knees.

The dynamite, the Manila Times reported, also tore off his "mantle of obscurity," exposing the accident-prone American "and his numerous American and Filipino partners, to the public limelight." From the rubble at the Evergreen Hotel emerged the story of "a complex man, whose trail leads back to South Africa and boxes supposedly containing US Federal Reserve notes and bonds obtained from the Abu Sayyaf." The Times reported that employees of the hotel "claimed that while they were cleaning Meiring's room before the explosion, he warned them not to touch two metal boxes, which he said contained important documents. Police investigators said they recovered blasting caps and ammonium nitrate from the room, where Meiring had stayed since Dec. 14 2001."

Meiring refused to talk to Philippine police. Bloodied and burned by the explosion, he was whisked out of the country on a chartered plane, according Col. Lino Calingasan, a local immigration official, by agents of the FBI and NSC. "American David Hawthorn, a close friend of Meiring, claimed the blast victim had confessed passing to Mandela's government the proceeds of a box of old US federal notes." That box was one in a set of twelve, containing an estimated $500-million in counterfeit American notes.

Hawthorn had been shown a letter from the South African government and a US Treasury permit to support his claims. Hawthorn also saw a "packing list" that had "a cover sheet printed with the words "US ARMY," some numbers and a group of upper case letters.

"Meiring, he said, claimed the list represented the serial numbers of the missing notes, dating back to 1937. Similar "boxes" were recovered by United States Secret Service and the Philippine Central Bank late last year. Other counterfeit bonds and currency were also recovered from a hotel in Davao a few months ago. It has been reported that these were to be ... shipped to Las Vegas, Nevada."4

Philippine police discovered that Meiring, the NSC amputee, had run with neo-nazis and Islamic radicals alike, including the ASG and other radical fronts. His key contact in Nevada was financier James Rowe, an executive producer for Wild Rose Productions, an independent documentary production company in New Green Valley, near Vegas. Rowe, in turn, ran with white supremacists and tax rebels, also neo-nazis, in the United States and Germany. Another of Meiring'sn contacts back home was Chuck Ager, an ultracon mining engineer in Colorado. Another was Nina North (possibly an alias), a CIA operative who took over "back door" financial transactions in black market gold formerly conducted by the ubiquitous Oliver North. Another was Filipino-American Bob Gould, a tax protester from Hayward, California in league with Fred Obado, leader of the Kodar Kiram terrorist cell, son of Sultan Jumalul Kiram.

Meiring operated a shell company called PAROUSIA, a term used by right-wing Christian evangelicals, a reference to the second coming of Christ. But Meiers wasn't the only home-grown terrorist running loose in the Philippines: "Three Vietnamese terrorists arrested last year for plotting to blow up the Vietnamese Embassy here were assets of the US intelligence community," the Times reported.5

KAHANA Robert J. Freidman, a journalist for the Village Voice, wrote one of the most signally important articles of the last decade, "The CIA and the Sheikh."6 The feature was an inventory of critical leads, eroded over time, sadly, opportunities lost. If the killers allied with Rabbi Meir Kahana, the vitriolic leader of the Jewish Defense League, had been captured and sentenced, Freidman contends, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing -- and by extension, 9/11 -- would never have occurred.

On November 5, 1990, Freidman wrote, El Sayyid Nosair, a "pudgy, bearded 34-year-old Egyptian American and a core member of the El Salaam Mosque," casually strolled up to the podium of a conference room in the Manhattan's Halloran House, after Kahane wrapped up a one-hour speech. "Moments later, Kahane was shot once in the throat at point-blank range with a .357 magnum, and Nosair bolted outside. During a running gun battle down Lexington Avenue, Nosair was wounded by an off-duty postal inspector and finally captured by New York City police."

An FBI informant told Freidman that Nosair frequented the El Salaam Mosque in Jersey City. Nosair was close to Sheikh Abdel Rahman. "I told them that, four days before, I saw with my own eyes the Sheikh meeting with Nosair at a Lebanese restaurant on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. It was 7 p.m. There was Nosair, the Sheikh, a person escorting the Sheikh, and another person I don't know. They were deep in conversation."

After the arrest of Kahane's assailant, police found evidence that the murder "was just the first in a planned spree. Scrawled on a bank calendar in Nosair's home was a "hit list" that included the names of a U.S. representative, two federal judges, and a former assistant U.S. Attorney."

The secretive cell of extremists from the Mosque often met with Nosair to discuss means of destroying symbols of the Israeli-loving Babylon they despised, "the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty."

The World Trade Center.

"Many are wondering why there wasn't a comprehensive, wide-ranging investigation of Meir Kahane's murder," Friedman reported. "What investigators would have found if they had done their job thoroughly is that Sheikh Abdel Rahman and El Sayyid Nosair were at the heart of a far-flung terrorist conspiracy."7


NOTES

1) John Loftus, "What Congress does not know about Enron and 9/11," May 31, 2002,
http://www.john-loftus.com/enron3.asp#congress

2) Dore Gold, "The Suicide Bombing Attacks in Saudi Arabia: A Preliminary Assessment," Jerusalem Issue Brief, Institute for Contemporary Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 28, May 13, 2003, http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief2-28.htm

3) See Thompson and Kanigher. Also, Edith Regalado, "CIA whisks away Brit-Am blast victim; now in US," Philippine Star, July 9, 2002.

4) Anon., "Edwin Angeles: The spy who came in from the cold," INQ7.net,

5) See, http://www.voxfux.com/archives/00000105.htm for a summary of the Manila Times series written by Dorian Zumel-Sicat and Jeannette Andrade, May 29, 2002 through May 31, 2002. Also see, Manila Times' reports to June 19, 2002.

6) Robert J. Freidman, "The CIA and the Sheikh," Village Voice, March 30, 1993.

7) Ibid.

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