The Nests of Osama bin Laden

(...and some of the rich and famous birds who have flocked with him!)

~ o ~

Dec. 07, 2007

Commentary: The CIA's Gift to
Conspiracy Theorists

By Robert Baer, Time

The CIA has proved, once again, that the cover up is worse than the crime. Or at least let's hope that's the case.

CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden has admitted that in 2005 the CIA destroyed two videotapes of interrogations of al-Qaeda prisoners, including a central figure in 9/11, Abu Zubaydah. Hayden said the tapes were destroyed to protect the identities of the CIA interrogators from members of al-Qaeda and other terrorists who might try to retaliate. He also claims that the tapes were made to safeguard against unlawful treatment of detainees, and that they were only destroyed after it was confirmed that suspects were not being tortured.

At a time when Congressional Democrats are trying once again to pass a torture ban, it's a given that the revelation is going to further inflame the torture debate — since the tapes apparently showed harsh interrogation techniques. The assumption will be that the CIA did not want the tapes seen in public because they are too graphic and could lead to indictments.

But more to the point, the revelation will raise another question: What other evidence has the CIA destroyed? And can the CIA be trusted to tell us? The CIA had told the 9/11 Commission, when it formally requested such materials, that there was no taping of interrogations. CIA lawyers also told federal prosecutors trying the Zacarias Moussaoui terror case that the agency did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge and Moussaoui's defense lawyers. The CIA insists that the tapes destroyed were not the ones in question.

I would find it very difficult to believe the CIA would deliberately destroy evidence material to the 9/11 investigation, evidence that would cover up a core truth, such as who really was behind 9/11. On the other hand I have to wonder what space-time continuum the CIA exists in, if they weren't able to grasp what a field day the 9/11 conspiracy theorists are going to have with this — especially at a time when trust for the government is plumbing new depths.

I myself have felt the pull of the conspiracy theorists — who believe that 9/11 was an inside job, somehow pulled off by the U.S. government. For the record, I don't believe that the World Trade Center was brought down by our own explosives, or that a rocket, rather than an airliner, hit the Pentagon. I spent a career in the CIA trying to orchestrate plots, wasn't all that good at it, and certainly couldn't carry off 9/11. Nor could the real pros I had the pleasure to work with.

Still, the people who think 9/11 was an inside job might easily be able to believe that Abu Zubaydah named his American accomplices in the tape that has now been destroyed by the CIA.

It isn't going to help that the Abu Zubaydah investigation has a lot of problems even without destroyed evidence. When Abu Zubaydah was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, two ATM cards were found on him. One was issued by a bank in Saudi Arabia (a bank close to the Saudi royal family) and the other to a bank in Kuwait. As I understand it, neither Kuwait nor Saudi Arabia has been able to tell us who fed the accounts.

Also, apparently, when Abu Zubaydah was captured, telephone records, including calls to the United States, were found in the house he was living in. The calls stopped on September 10, and resumed on September 16. There's nothing in the 9/11 Commission report about any of this, and I have no idea whether the leads were run down, the evidence lost or destroyed.

If this sounds like paranoia, it is. But the CIA certainly is not helping by destroying evidence. And they should know better than to destroy evidence in the biggest criminal case in American history. More than anything what we need right now is complete and total transparency on 9/11.

Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1692518,00.html

January 2, 2004

TWO SENATORS QUESTION OFFICE'S
ABILITY TO BLOCK TERROR MONEY

By John Solomon, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The top senators on the powerful Senate Finance Committee are openly questioning a key federal agency's ability to block terrorist money, citing examples in which U.S. officials failed to freeze the money of people identified as terrorist financiers by American allies.

"Other nations rightly look to the United States for leadership and information in the war on terrorism. We should not be playing catch-up," Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Max Baucus, D-Mont., wrote the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control in a letter just before Christmas.

Grassley, the committee chairman, and Baucus, its senior Democrat, cited numerous concerns about the office's performance, including evidence of sloppy record-keeping, failure to provide required information to Congress and reliance on voluntary compliance by banks to impose sanctions against suspected terrorists.

Though an internal investigation in 2002 recommended that the office make changes to ensure it has the legal authority to test banks' compliance with sanctions, the agency hasn't taken steps to do so, according to the letter.

Treasury Department spokeswoman Tara Bradshaw said she was unfamiliar with the lawmakers' complaint, and Richard Newcomb, director of the office, was out of town and unavailable for comment.

The obscure office is charged with freezing the bank accounts and other financial assets of countries, companies and individuals deemed enemies of the United States - among them Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Based on orders from Congress and the president or just raw intelligence, it applies people to a "specially designated nationals" list that requires all financial institutions to block their money. It is one of the most powerful tools for choking off terrorist finances.

The office has been run for years by Newcomb, a career official who has served both Republican and Democratic presidents. The agency, however, has had its share of controversy.

Newcomb was the focus of a Treasury inspector general's investigation in the mid-1990s after a series of stories. The internal probe confirmed several instances in which he met outside the office with representatives of companies under investigation by his agency and took uncoordinated enforcement actions that potentially compromised criminal investigations.

Investigators cited two possible violations of federal ethics regulations, but Treasury officials rejected those conclusions and instead sent Newcomb a letter scolding him for creating the appearance of impropriety.

In 2002, the Treasury inspector general issued a report questioning the office's effectiveness in the war on terror.

Some concerns cited by Grassley and Baucus stem from that report, but the two lawmakers also questioned why the office had failed to block the assets of several people designated by allies as terrorist financiers.

* * *

<<< FLASHBACK <<<

September 25, 2001 - In an effort to "cut off money supplies" to terrorist groups, President Bush has announced that we and our allies intend to freeze the assets of all persons tied to a list of 27 (so far) people with alleged links to terrorism.

A few of us realize that dictators, drug dealers, rogue arms merchants, terrorists, and other illegal enterprises which deal in huge sums of money, simply cannot operate without the quiet money-laundering assistance of large international financial institutions, namely banks, insurance companies, stock brokers, money exchanges, credit card companies, casinos, etc.

So, if you wish to follow the migration of some of these high-flying birds of prey, just look closely for the trail of money droppings . . .

September 26, 2001

From the United States Securities and Exchange Commission web site:

Request for Records Search by Securities-Related Entities, Including Brokers, Dealers, Investment Advisers, Investment Companies, Municipal Securities Dealers and Transfer Agents

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington, D.C., September 26, 2001 -- On September 23, 2001, President Bush signed an executive order freezing United States assets of and blocking transactions with 27 individuals and organizations. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also published a list of people who are under investigation in connection with the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

The Commission asks that all securities-related entities (whether or not registered with the SEC) voluntarily (emphasis added) check their records for any relationships or transactions with the individuals and organizations named in the executive order or FBI's list. Names on those lists are set forth below.

We are asking all securities-related entities, including brokers, dealers, investment advisers, investment companies, municipal securities dealers, and transfer agents, for your help. If you know of any relationship (for example, an account), or a transaction (such as the purchase or sale of securities or a wire transfer), with any of the individuals or organizations on this list, please let us know. . . .

List of Individuals and Entities

>> Al Qaida/Islamic Army (or Al Qaeda)

>> Abu Sayyaf Group

>> Armed Islamic Group (GIA)

>> Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM)

>> Al-Jihad (Egyptian Islamic Jihad)

>> Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)

>> Asbat al-Ansar

>> Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC)

>> Libyan Islamic Fighting Group

>> Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (AIAI)

>> Islamic Army of Aden

>> Usama bin Laden (or Osama bin Laden)

>> Muhammad Atif (aka, Subhi Abu Sitta, Abu Hafs Al Masri)

>> Sayf al-Adi

>> Shaykh Sai'id (aka, Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad)

>> Abu Hafs the Mauritanian (aka, Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, Khalid Al-Shanqiti)

>> Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi

>> Abu Zubaydah (aka, Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, Tariq)

>> Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi (aka, Abu Abdallah)

>> Ayman al-Zawahri

>> Thirwat Salah Shihata

>> Tariq Anwar al-Sayyid Ahmad (aka, Fathi, Amr al-Fatih)

>> Muhammad Salah (aka, Nasr Fahmi Nasr Hasanayn)

>> Makhtab Al-Khidamat/Al Kifah

>> Wafa Humanitarian Organization

>> Al Rashid Trust

>> Mamoun Darkazanli Import-Export Company

>> Khalid Al-Midhar

>> Majed Moqed

>> Nawaq Alhamzi

>> Salem Alhamzi

>> Hani Hanjour

>> Satam Al Suqami

>> Waleed M. Alshehri

>> Wail Alshehri

>> Mohamed Atta

>> Abdulaziz Alomari

>> Marwan Al-Shehhi

>> Fayez Ahmed

>> Ahmed Alghamdi

>> Hamza Alghamdi

>> Mohald Alshehri

>> Saeed Alghamdi

>> Ahmed Alhaznawi

>> Ahmed Alnami

>> Ziad Jarrahi

NOT appearing on the above list (for some reason) were the following, more pronounceable names

September 29, 2001

FOLLOW THE MONEY

By Chris Floyd, Moscow Times

Why couldn't American agents find Osama bin Laden's money and stop the flow of his support to terrorist networks around the world before they struck on Sept. 11?

Because Phil Gramm didn't want them to.

The hard-line Texas senator has long led the fight against international efforts to crack down on money laundering, tax evasion and other financial hijinks beloved of operators taking advantage of the "free flow of capital" around the world.

Gramm has successfully lobbied his fellow Republicans -- and not a few Democrats -- to keep "Big Guvmint" from peering under the rocks where terrorists, drug lords, outlaw regimes and various Mafias entwine so comfortably with Big Business and High Finance.

Last year, as head of the Senate Banking Committee, Gramm killed a Clinton initiative to give federal authorities broader powers to stop money laundering and bar foreign countries and banks from U.S. financial markets if they didn't cooperate with investigators, The New York Times reports.

Even after the attack, Gramm was proud of his intransigence.

"I was right then, and I am right now," Gramm crowed last week. "The way to deal with terrorists is to hunt them down and kill them."

But not, obviously, to interfere with their financial transactions. After all, some of that cash finds its way back to the pockets of those generous folks in the banking industry -- Gramm's political patrons.

Feisty Phil wasn't the only one opposed to such efforts, however. Just a few weeks ago, the Bush administration -- another group well-watered by the murky flow of offshore capital -- announced its withdrawal from international treaty talks on cleaning up the money-laundering swamp.

Why on earth did they oppose this strike against terrorism and organized crime?

Let's ask Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank -- no "left-wing fifth columnist" he: "The answer is, it's in the interests of some of the monied interests to allow this to occur," he told The Nation in June.

"It's not an accident; it could have been shut down at any time."

And this week, the Bush administration finally reversed the long-standing conservative appeasement of wealthy murderers, at least in part, by freezing the financial assets of Bin Laden and his associates and threatening to, er, bar any foreign countries and banks from U.S. financial markets if they didn't cooperate with investigators.

Of course, it took them 13 days to get around to blocking the cash flow of their "prime suspect" -- but maybe some of their comfortably entwined High Finance pals needed time to get untangled before the freeze.

Oh well, better late than never, right?

Backward Glance

Speaking of closing the barn door after the mule has gone, Generalissimo George announced last week the creation of a new Cabinet-level "Office of Homeland Security," Reuters reports.

The OHS will oversee the work of 40 federal agencies and departments, including the FBI and CIA, while working with state governors and their agencies to provide nationwide coordination of domestic security efforts for the first time.

Good idea. Too bad the Generalissimo rejected it when it was first proposed to him -- last January.

That's when the "U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century," a bipartisan panel led by former senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, presented the fruits of two years' work on upgrading safeguards against terrorist assaults.

Noting that "the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack," their report called for the creation of a Cabinet-level "Homeland Security Agency" to, er, provide nationwide coordination of domestic security efforts for the first time.

The Generalissimo, then engrossed in his successful jihad to reduce taxes for the rich, shelved the report. He said he would have U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney draw up his own plan for domestic security somewhere down the line -- maybe in October or something.

No need to be in such an all-fired hurry; after all, there weren't any "domestic security" lobbyists out there pouring dough into Bush campaign coffers, right? You gots to pay to play in this White House, bub.

The Generalissimo had other good reasons for rejecting the report.

First, the commission was appointed by former President Bill Clinton. ('Nuff said!)

Second, Hart was a liberal Democrat whose political career had been derailed years ago by the same kind of un-Christian trouser hockey that afflicted the Great Arkansas Satan.

And third, perhaps worst of all, Republican Rudman had openly supported the renegade John McCain when he dared oppose Dubya's bid for power last year.

No doubt the Generalissimo enjoyed this little exercise in political pique -- and now that thousands of his people lie dead in the smoldering ruins, why not dust off the old report and put its recommendations into practice?

Oh well, better late than never, right?

Old-Time Religion

You will doubtless be comforted to know that Generalissimo Bush -- just like Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar of the Taliban, Adolf Hitler, Vlad the Impaler, Attila the Hun, Hammurabi of Babylon and Ug-Ug, the Neanderthal tribal chieftain -- believes he has been chosen by God to lead his people into war.

Bush's close friends say the atrocity has given the Generalissimo "a reason for being," The New York Times reports.

Mark McKinnon, a senior campaign adviser, says Bush feels the war "is the country's destiny -- and his destiny."

Says another, unidentified pal: "I think, in his frame, this is what God has asked him to do" -- a conviction, we're told, "informed and shaped by the president's own strain of Christianity."

During a White House meeting last week, one Christian-strained mullah told Bush it was "God's plan" that the Generalissimo was enthroned in power at such a propitious time.

Quietly, firmly -- and probably not smirking at all -- Bush replied: "I accept the responsibility."

So let's get the theology straight here:

It was "God's plan" to murder 6,000 innocent people in the most horrendous way possible just so George W. Bush could "find himself" and "fulfill his destiny"?

Lord have mercy on us all.

- Reprinted from The Moscow Times: http://www.themoscowtimes.ru/stories/2001/09/28/107.html

October 3, 2001

- From Rense.com:

Bush's Former Oil Company
Linked To bin Laden Family

By Rick Wiles, American Freedom News.com

President Bush recently signed an executive order to freeze the US financial assets of corporations doing business with Osama bin Laden. He described the order as a "strike on the financial foundation of the global terror network."

"If you do business with terrorists, if you support or succor them, you will not do business with the United States," said President Bush.

He didn't say anything about doing business with a terrorist's brother - or his wealthy financier.

When President George W. Bush froze assets connected to Osama bin Laden, he didn't tell the American people that the terrorist mastermind's late brother was an investor in the president's former oil business in Texas.

He also hasn't leveled with the American public about his financial connections to a host of shady Saudi characters involved in drug cartels, gun smuggling, and terrorist networks.

Doing business with the enemy is nothing new to the Bush family. Much of the Bush family wealth came from supplying needed raw materials and credit to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Several business operations managed by Prescott Bush - the president's grandfather - were seized by the US government during World War II under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

On October 20, 1942, the federal government seized the Union Banking Corporation in New York City as a front operation for the Nazis. Prescott Bush was a director. Bush, E. Roland Harriman, two Bush associates, and three Nazi executives owned the bank's shares. Eight days later, the Roosevelt administration seized two other corporations managed by Prescott Bush.

The Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation, both managed by the Bush-Harriman bank, were accused by the US federal government of being front organizations for Hitler's Third Reich. Again, on November 8, 1942, the federal government seized Nazi-controlled assets of Silesian-American Corporation, another Bush-Harriman company doing business with Hitler.

Doing business with the bin Laden empire, therefore, is only the latest extension of the Bush family's financial ties to unsavory individuals and organizations. Now that thousands of American citizens have died in terrorist attacks and the nation is going to war, the American people should know about George W. Bush's relationship with the family of Osama bin Laden.

Salem bin Laden, Osama's older brother, was an investor in Arbusto Energy - the Texas oil company started by George W. Bush. Arbusto means "Bush" in Spanish. Salem bin Laden died in an airplane crash in Texas in 1988.

Sheik Mohammed bin Laden, the family patriarch and founder of its construction empire, also died in a plane crash. Upon his death in 1968, he left behind 57 sons and daughters - the offspring he sired with 12 wives in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. About a dozen brothers manage Bin Laden Brothers Construction - one of the largest construction firms in the Middle East.

Fresh out of Harvard Business School, young George W. Bush returned to Midland, TX, in the late 1970s to follow his father's footsteps in the oil business. Beginning in 1978, he set up a series of limited partnerships - Arbusto '78, Arbusto '79, and so on - to drill for oil.

One of President Bush's earliest financial backers was James Bath, a Houston aircraft broker. Bath served with President Bush in the Texas Air National Guard. Bath has a mysterious connection to the Central Intelligence Agency.

According to a 1976 trust agreement, Salem bin Laden appointed James Bath as his business representative in Houston. Revelation about Bath's relationship with the bin Laden financial empire and the CIA was made public in 1992 by Bill White, a former real estate business partner with Bath. White informed federal investigators in 1992 that Bath told him that he had assisted the CIA in a liaison role since 1976 - the same year former President George Herbert Walker Bush served as director of the CIA.

During a bitter legal fight between White and Bath, the real estate partner disclosed that Bath managed a portfolio worth millions of dollars for Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz and other wealthy Saudis. Among the investments made by Bath with Mahfouz's money was the Houston Gulf Airport.

A powerful banker in Saudi Arabia, Mahfouz was one of the largest stockholders in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. BCCI was a corrupt global banking empire operating in 73 nations and was a major financial and political force in Washington, Paris, Geneva, London, and Hong Kong.

Despite the appearance of a normal banking operation, BCCI was actually an international crime syndicate providing "banking services" to the Medellin drug cartel, Pamama dictator Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, terrorist mastermind Abu Nidal, and Khun Sa, the heroin kingpin in Asia's Golden Triangle.

The BCCI scandal implicated some of the biggest political names in Washington - both Democrats and Republicans - during the first Bush White House. The bank was accused of laundering money for drug cartels, smuggling weapons to terrorists, and using Middle Eastern oil money to influence American politicians.

The chief of the Justice Department's criminal division under former President Bush was Robert Mueller. Because the major players came out of the scandal with slaps on the wrists, many critics accused Mueller of botching the investigation. Mr. Mueller was recently appointed by President George W. Bush as the new Director of the FBI, replacing Louis Freeh who did nothing while William Jefferson Clinton allowed the Red Chinese to loot our national security secrets.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a division of the Justice Department, reviewed allegations by Bill White in 1992 that James Bath funneled money from wealthy Middle Eastern businessmen to American companies to influence the policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations. Robert Mueller, the new FBI chief, was in a senior position at the Justice Department at the time of the review.

White told a Texas court in 1992 that Bath and the Justice Department had "blackballed" him professionally and financially because he refused to keep quiet about his knowledge of an Arabic conspiracy to launder Middle Eastern money into the bank accounts of American businesses and politicians.

In sworn depositions, Bath admitted he represented four wealthy Saudi Arabian businessmen as a trustee. He also admitted he used his name on their investments and received, in return, a five- percent stake in their business deals.

Indeed, Texas tax documents revealed that Bath owned five percent of Arbusto '79 Ltd., and Arbusto '80 Ltd. Bush Exploration Company controlled the limited partnerships, the general partnership firm owned by young George W. Bush.

Although George W. Bush's Texas oil ventures were financial failures, his financial backers recovered their investments through a series of mergers and stock swaps. He changed Arbusto's name to Bush Exploration, then merged the new firm into Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation in 1984.

The Bush-controlled oil business eventually ended up being folded into Harken Energy Corp., a Dallas-based corporation. Mr. Bush joined Harken as a director in 1986 and was given 212,000 shares of Harken stock. Bush used his White House connections to land a lucrative contract for the obscure Harken Energy Corp. with the Middle Eastern government of Bahrain. On June 20, 1990, George W. Bush sold his Harken stock for $848,000 and paid off his loan he took out to buy his small share in the Texas Rangers. The Bahrain deal was brokered by David Edwards, a close pal to Bill Clinton and a former employee of Stephens Inc.

Shortly after Bush sold his stock, Harken's fortunes nose-dived when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Some critics claim young George was tipped off in advance by his father about the soon-coming Gulf War.

George W. Bush, however, worked wonders for Harken Energy Corp. before the stock collapse. Using the Bush family name, he managed to bring much-needed capital investment to the struggling firm. George W. Bush traveled to Little Rock, AR, to attend a meeting with Jackson Stephens - a powerful Arkansas tycoon who help bankroll the state campaigns of young Bill Clinton. He first gained political prominence as a fund-raiser for President Jimmy Carter. Stephens was also deeply involved in the BCCI scandal by helping the corrupt bank take control of First American Bank in Washington, DC.

Jack Stephens didn't need an introduction to young George W. Bush. Mary Anne Stephens, his wife, managed Vice President George Bush's 1988 presidential campaign in Arkansas. Stephens Inc., the well connected brokerage firm owned by Jack Stephens, donated $100,000 to a Bush campaign fundraising dinner in 1991. When George W. Bush won the contested Florida election in 2000, Jack Stephens made a substantial contribution to the Bush inauguration. Recently, former President Bush played golf on April 11, 2001, with Jack Stephens at the Jack Stephens Youth Golf Academy in Little Rock.

The former president told Stephens, "Jack, we love you and we are very, very grateful for what you have done."

Perhaps the former president was thanking him for the money Stephens provided young George W. Bush. Stephens arranged for a $25 million investment from the Union des Banques Suisses. The Swiss Bank held the minority interest in the Banque de Commerce et de Placements, a Geneva-based subsidiary of BCCI.

Both Stephens and Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, a wealthy and well-connected Saudi real estate investor, signed the financial transaction. The Geneva transaction was paid through a joint venture between the Union Bank of Switzerland and its Geneva branch of BCCI.

The BCCI connection, therefore, linked George W. Bush with Saudi banker Khaled bin Mahfouz. Known in Arab circles as the "king's treasurer," Mahfouz held a 20 percent take in BCCI between 1986 and 1990.

Mahfouz is no stranger to the Bush family. He was a big investor in the Carlyle Group, a defense-industry investment group with deep connections to the Republican Party establishment. Former President Bush is a former member of the company's board of directors. George W. Bush also held shares in Caterair, a Carlyle subsidiary. Sami Baarma, a powerful player in the Mahfouz-owned Prime Commercial Bank of Pakistan, is a member of the Carlyle Group's international advisory board.

President Bush certainly is aware of that his former Saudi sugar daddy is still financing Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. USA Today newspaper reported in 1999 that a year after bin Laden's attacks on US embassies in Africa, Khaled bin Mahfouz and other wealthy Saudis were funneling tens of millions of dollars each year into bin Laden's bank accounts.

Five top Saudi businessmen ordered the National Commercial Bank to transfer personal funds and $3 million pilfered from a Saudi pension fund to the Capitol Trust Bank in New York City. The money was deposited into the Islamic Relief and Bless Relief - Islamic charities operating in the US and Great Britain as fronts for Osama bin Laden.

The Capitol Trust Bank is run by Mohammad Hussein al-Amoudi. His lawyer is Democratic Party bigwig Vernon Jordan, close friend of former President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, the Arab who cosigned the $25 million cash infusion into George W. Bush's Harken Energy Corporation, appointed Talat Othman to manage his 17.6 percent share in Harken Energy Corp. Othman, a native Palestinian, is president and CEO of Dearborn Financial Inc. - an investment firm in Arlington Heights, IL.

Bakhsh also bought a 9.6 percent stake in Worthen Banking Corporation, the Arkansas bank controlled by Jack Stephens. Abdullah Bakhsh's share was the identical percentage as the amount of shares sold by Mochtar Riady, the godfather of the wealthy Indonesian family with close ties to the Chinese communists,