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The Muslim Brotherhood, The Nazis and Al-Qa'ida
Posted on Sunday, October 30, 2005 (CDT) by Thoth
 It always seems a little strange to have an Irish Catholic talking about Yom Ha'Shoah. I had an unusual education in the Holocaust. When I was working for the Attorney General, I was assigned to do the classified research about the Holocaust, so I went underground to a little town called Suitland, Maryland, right outside Washington, DC, and that's where the US Government buries its secrets—literally.
There are 20 vaults underground and each vault is one acre in size. Anyone see the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark? The last scene of that movie is what the underground vaults are really like, only not as organised as they are in the movie. And in those underground vaults I discovered something horrible.
I learned that many of the Nazis that I had been assigned to prosecute were on the CIA payroll, but the CIA didn't know they were Nazis because the British Intelligence Service had lied to them.
What the
British Intelligence Service didn't know was that their liar was Kim
Philby, the Soviet communist double agent—a little scandal of the Cold
War. But our State Department swept it all under the rug and allowed
the Nazis to stay in America until I was stupid enough to go public
with it.
What do you do when you
want to go public with a story like this one? You call up 60 Minutes.
We had a great time. Mike Wallace gave me 30 minutes on his show. For a
long time, it was the longest segment that 60 Minutes ever did. When
the episode about Nazis in America went on the air back in 1982, it
caused a minor national uproar. Congress demanded hearings, Mike
Wallace got the Emmy award, and my family got the death threats. It was
a great trip.
Then a funny thing
happened. Over the last 25 years, every retired spy in the US and
Canada and England all wanted me to be their lawyer—for free, of
course. So I had 500 clients; they paid me a dollar apiece. So I am the
worst-paid lawyer in America, but among the better employed.
Let me give you an example.
This year a friend of mine from the CIA, named Bob Baer, wrote a very
good book about Saudi Arabia and terrorism; it's called Sleeping with
the Devil.1 I was reading the book and I got about a third of the way
through and I stopped. Bob was writing about when he worked for the CIA
and how bad the files were. He said, for example, the files for the
Muslim Brotherhood were almost nothing. There were just a few newspaper
clippings.
I called Bob up and said,
"Bob, that's wrong. The CIA has enormous files on the Muslim
Brotherhood, volumes of them. I know because I read them a quarter of a
century ago."
He said, "What do you mean?"
Here's how you can find all of the missing secrets about the Muslim Brotherhood—and you can do this, too.
I said, "Bob, go to your computer and type two words into the search part. Type the word 'Banna', B-a-n-n-a."
He said, "Yeah."
"Type in 'Nazi'."
Bob typed the two words in,
and out came 30 to 40 articles from around the world. He read them and
called me back and said, "Oh my God, what have we done?"
What I'm doing today is
doing what I'm doing now: I'm educating a new generation in the CIA
[about the fact] that the Muslim Brotherhood was a fascist organisation
that was hired by Western Intelligence and evolved over time into what
we today know as Al- Qa'ida [Al-Qaeda].
A brief history of the Muslim Brotherhood
Here's how the story began.
In the 1920s there was a young Egyptian named [Hassan] Al-Banna. And
Al-Banna formed this nationalist group called the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al-Banna was a devout admirer of Adolf Hitler and wrote to him
frequently. So persistent was he in his admiration of the new Nazi
Party that in the 1930s Al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood became a
secret arm of Nazi Intelligence.
The Arab Nazis had much in
common with the new Nazi doctrines: they hated Jews; they hated
democracy; and they hated the Western culture. It became the official
policy of the Third Reich to secretly develop the Muslim Brotherhood as
the "fifth parliament", an army inside Egypt.
When war broke out, the
Muslim Brotherhood promised in writing that they would rise up and help
General Rommel and make sure that no English or American soldier was
left alive in Cairo or Alexandria.
The Muslim Brotherhood
began to expand in scope and influence during World War II. They even
had a Palestinian section headed by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, one
of the great bigots of all time. Here, too, was a man...the Grand Mufti
of Jerusalem was the Muslim Brotherhood representative for Palestine.
These were undoubtedly Arab Nazis. The Grand Mufti, for example, went
to Germany during the war and helped recruit an international SS
division of Arab Nazis. They based it in Croatia and called it the
Handzar Muslim Division, but it was to become the core of Hitler's new
army of Arab fascists that would conquer the Arabian Peninsula and,
from there, on to Africa—grand dreams.
At the end of World War II,
the Muslim Brotherhood was wanted for war crimes. Their German
Intelligence handlers were captured in Cairo. The whole net was rolled
up by the British Secret Service.
Then a horrible thing
happened. Instead of prosecuting the Nazis—the Muslim Brotherhood—the
British Government hired them. They brought all the fugitive Nazi war
criminals of Arab and Muslim descent into Egypt, and for three years
trained them on a special mission. The British Secret Service wanted to
use the fascists of the Muslim Brotherhood to strike down the infant
state of Israel in 1948. Only a few people in the Mossad know this, but
many of the members of the Arab armies and terrorist groups that tried
to strangle the infant State of Israel were the Arab Nazis of the
Muslim Brotherhood.
Britain was not alone. The
French Intelligence Service cooperated by releasing the Grand Mufti and
smuggling him to Egypt, so all of the Arab Nazis came together. So,
from 1945 to 1948, the British Secret Service protected every Arab Nazi
it could, but failed to quash the State of Israel.
What the British did, then,
was they sold the Arab Nazis to the predecessor of what became the CIA.
It may sound stupid, it may sound evil, but it did happen. The idea was
that we were going to use the Arab Nazis in the Middle East as a
counterweight to the Arab communists. Just as the Soviet Union was
funding Arab communists, we would fund the Arab Nazis to fight against
them. And lots of secret classes took place. We kept the Muslim
Brotherhood on our payroll.
But the Egyptians became
nervous. Nasser ordered all of the Muslim Brotherhood out of Egypt or
be imprisoned and executed. So, during the 1950s, the CIA evacuated the
Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia. Now, when they arrived
in Saudi Arabia, some of the leading lights of the Muslim Brotherhood,
like [Dr Abdullah] Azzam, became the teachers in the madrassas, the
religious schools. And there they combined the doctrines of Nazism with
this weird Islamic cult, Wahhabism.
Everyone thinks that Islam
is this fanatical religion, but it is not. They think that Islam—the
Saudi version of Islam—is typical, but it's not. The Wahhabi cult has
been condemned as a heresy more than 60 times by the Muslim nations.
But when the Saudis got wealthy, they bought a lot of silence. This is
a very harsh cult. Wahhabism was only practised by the Taliban and in
Saudi Arabia—that's how extreme it is. It really has nothing to do with
Islam. Islam is a very peaceful and tolerant religion. It always had
good relationships with the Jews for the first thousand years of its
existence.
For the Saudis, there was a
ruler in charge of Saudi Arabia, and they were [providing] the new home
of the Muslim Brotherhood. Fascism and extremism were mingled in these
schools [the madrassas]. And there was a young student who paid
attention: Azzam's student was named Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden
was taught by the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood who had emigrated to
Saudi Arabia.
The CIA and Al-Qa'ida
In 1979, the CIA
decided to take the Arab Nazis out of cold storage. The Russians had
invaded Afghanistan, so we told the Saudis that we would fund them if
they would bring all of the Arab Nazis together and ship them off to
Afghanistan to fight the Russians. We had to rename them. We couldn't
call them the Muslim Brotherhood because that was too sensitive a name.
Its Nazi past was too known. So we called them Maktab al-Khadamat
al-Mujahidin, the MAK.
And the CIA lied to
Congress and said they didn't know who was on the payroll in
Afghanistan, except the Saudis. But it was not true. A small section of
the CIA knew perfectly well that we had once again hired the Arab Nazis
and that we were using them to fight our secret wars.
Azzam and his assistant,
Osama bin Laden, rose to some prominence from 1979 to 1989, and they
won the war. They drove the Russians out of Afghanistan. Our CIA said,
"We won—let's go home!", and we left this army of Arab fascists in the
field of Afghanistan.
The Saudis didn't want
[them] to come back. The Saudis started paying bribes to Osama bin
Laden and his followers to stay out of Saudi Arabia. Now the MAK was
split in half. Azzam was mysteriously assassinated, apparently by Osama
bin Laden himself. The radical group—the most radical of the merge of
the Arab fascists and religious extremists—Osama called Al-Qa'ida. But
to this day, there are branches of the Muslim Brotherhood all through
Al-Qa'ida.
Osama bin Laden's
second-in-command, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, came from the Egyptian branch of
the Muslim Brotherhood—the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the result of a
Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
There are many flavours and
branches, but they are all Muslim Brotherhoods. There is one in Israel.
The organisation you know as Hamas is actually a secret chapter of the
Muslim Brotherhood. When Israel assassinated Sheik [Ahmed] Yassin a
month ago [March 22, 2004], the Muslim Brotherhood published his
obituary in a Cairo newspaper in Arabic and revealed that he was
actually the secret leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza.
So the Muslim Brotherhood
became this poison that spread throughout the Middle East, and on 9/11
it began to spread around the world.
I know this sounds like
some sort of a sick fantasy, but go to your computer and type in the
words "Banna" and the word "Nazi", and you will see all of the articles
come up. Those are all the pieces of information that the CIA was
trying to hide from its employees. It did not want them to know the
awful past. In 1984, when I was exposing European Nazis on the CIA
payroll, at the same time they were trying to hide from Congress the
fact that they had Arab Nazis back on the payroll to fight the
Russians—a stupid and corrupt program.
So, when Bob Baer studied
his files, he was just stunned. A whole generation...the current CIA
people know nothing about this. And believe me, the current generation
CIA are good and decent Americans and I like them a lot. They're trying
to do a good job, but part of their problem is their files have been
shredded. All of these secrets have to come out.
Saudi charities exposed
So, of course, my
clients in the intelligence community said, "Well, what are you doing?"
They gave me an example. They said, "Here's how the Saudis finance
these groups. The Saudis have established a group of charities on a
street in Virginia. It's 555 Grove Street, Herndon, Virginia."
So I said, "Okay, the Saudis are terrorists, so what?"
"These charities fund
Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hizballah, Al-Qa'ida. The Saudis are getting
tax deductions for terrorism. They have set up front groups so all the
terrorist groups in the US and the front groups get the Saudi money as
a charitable donation."
I said, "You're kidding me."
"Nope."
And they told me that right
near where I lived in Tampa, Florida, was one of the leading terrorists
in the world. There were these two professors at the University of
South Florida. One had just left and was now in Syria, and he was the
world head of Islamic Jihad. His number two, the head of Islamic Jihad
in the Western hemisphere, was Dr Sami Al-Arian, who is still employed
as a professor at the University of South Florida.
"You've got to be kidding. This can't be true."
Yes, these guys are raising
money all across America and shipping it to Syria to go down to
Palestine, the Palestinian areas, and hire suicide bombers to kill
Jews. They sent me the videotapes. There was Professor Al-Arian on
stage and one of his friends gets up and says, "Now, who will give me
$500 to kill a Jew? There are people standing by in Jerusalem who will
go out in the street and stab a Jew with a knife, but we need $500."
And he said, "All of this money will go to the Islamic Committee for
Palestine." And that is the front group in the United States for the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
So I had all my friends in the FBI and CIA send in these files.
I said, "Why haven't you prosecuted this guy? You've known about him since 1989."
"We'd love to. We've tried
to prosecute him but we were told we couldn't touch him because he gets
all of his money from the Saudis, and we are all under orders not to do
anything to embarrass the Saudi Government."
I said, "I don't mind embarrassing them."
You know what I did? I
donated money to the charity that was the terrorist fund, because under
Florida law that gave me the right to sue the charity to find out where
my money was going. It was hilarious.
In early March 2002, I
drafted a long lawsuit exposing Professor Sami Al-Arian, naming all the
crimes he'd committed, all the bombings in Israel, the fundraising in
America linked with terrorism. I mentioned how his money got to him
from the Saudis and how the Saudis had convinced our government not to
prosecute him for political reasons.
Because of my high-level
security clearances, everything I write is sort of classified material
and has to be sent back to the government before publication, for
censorship. So I sent my long lawsuit complaint to the CIA, and they
loved it.
They said, "Oh, great. We don't like the Saudis, either. Go sue them."
Three days later, two FBI
agents showed up at my door, saying, "You know, there are only 21
people in the US government that knew some of this information, and now
you're twenty-two. How did you find out?"
I said, "I'm sorry, I can't tell you: attorney-client privilege." That's why my clients pay me $1.00 each.
The day before I went to
file the lawsuit, I got a frantic phone call from the United States
Department of Justice. They said, "John, please don't file the lawsuit
tomorrow. We really are going to raid these Saudi charities. We're
going to close them down. Just give us more time."
"Oh yeah, you're going to
raid them. That's what you told me in January, and again in February,
and now it's March. You want more time? I'll give you until 4.00
o'clock tomorrow. I'm filing my complaint at 10.00 am, so that at 4.00
pm I'm going to release the address of the Saudi charities."
Back to tomorrow. I filed my lawsuit at 10.00 o'clock, and told the press I was going to hold something back for a little bit.
At 10.15 am, the US
Government launched Operation Green Quest, a massive raid on all the
Saudi charities in homes and businesses, and in one hour we shut down
the entire Saudi money-laundering network in America.
From March 20, 2002 to the
present, the government has found more and more evidence seized in
those archives in that single raid that day. The evidence was so
compelling that Professor Al-Arian is no longer giving his speeches. He
is now in federal prison awaiting trial. His accomplice, [Sameeh]
Hammoudeh, has also been indicted. Some 32 different people have been
indicted in the United States as a direct result of these efforts. But
not the Saudis—not the Saudis.
A month after I filed my
lawsuit against Al-Arian, I did it: I caused some trouble. I invited 40
of the top trial lawyers in America to come down to St Petersburg,
Florida. Boy, did I have a deal for them. I wanted them to put up
millions of dollars of their own money—I'm poor, I had no money to give
them—but I wanted to do something for America. These are lawyers like
Ron Motley, who had won billions of dollars in lawsuits against the
tobacco industry and the asbestos industry.
I said, "What I want you to
do is look at the evidence I've collected. It's the same Saudi banks
and charities that funded Sami Al-Arian that also funded Al-Qa'ida."
I said, "I want you to
bring a class action in Federal Court in Washington on behalf of
everyone who died on September 11 [2001]. I'm going to work for free
and collect all the evidence, introduce you to the experts, provide all
the exhibits and documents...and we have to do this for America."
The lawyers studied all the
documents I collected, and on August 15, 2002 they filed the largest
class-action lawsuit in American history in the Federal District Court
in Washington, DC, asking for one trillion dollars' damages against the
Saudis. The lawsuit said essentially that all these Saudi banks had one
thing in common: they were bribing Osama bin Laden 300 million dollars
a year to stay out of Saudi Arabia and go blow up someone else.
Well, on 9/11 we found out
we were someone else. The Saudis had to pay for their negligence. So,
that lawsuit is coming along very well.
Learning from the past
More and more people in the
CIA and FBI are sort of using me as a back channel to get out
information. So, believe it or not, they've actually given me my own TV
show now on Sunday mornings on Fox TV nationwide. I'm on at 11.20
Eastern Standard Time. And ABC Radio has given me a national radio
program, but I'm on at 10.30 at night and it's past your bedtime.
What I've become in my old
age is a teacher. Twenty-five years ago I was a lot younger, a lot
thinner, but now every day I get 500 to 1,000 emails from honest men
and women around the world from the intelligence community.
We have to end the evil in
this world. We have to recognise that Al-Qa'ida simply didn't spring up
on its own. The evil route was Nazism. The Al-Qa'ida doctrine is the
same as the Arab Nazis held. They hate Jews, they hate democracy and
they hate Westerners for Western culture. Al-Qa'ida is nothing more
than the religious expression of Arab fascism. We allowed this branch
of the Nazi trunk to survive, to flourish, and it has come back to
haunt us.
We must do a better job.
Look at these children. They are our legacy. If we are to keep our
children safe, we must teach them the lessons of the past. Every
generation should know what these candles mean: not only that one of
the greatest tragedies in the history of the world really happened, but
that the evil that caused it—Nazism—survived because we didn't fight
hard enough. We didn't finish the job.
But we must tell our
children that in every generation the men and women of America have
stood side by side with our Jewish, Christian and Moslem brothers. We
have risen up together against hatred. America is united now.
We will win the war on
terror, and we will finish the job that these soldiers and survivors
started more than a half-century ago. We must set the standard that to
teach a child to hate is the worst form of child abuse. We must work
together to end racism in our children's lifetime. We must teach our
children to remember the Holocaust and be proud, so proud of those who
survived and inspired us with their courage. In their name, in their
honour, let us go forward and fight together.
Never again!
John Loftus is a former US Justice Department prosecutor who lives in St Petersburg, Florida. As a young US Army officer, he helped train Israelis in a covert operation that turned the tide of battle in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. During the Carter and Reagan administrations, he investigated CIA cases and Nazi war criminals for the US Attorney-General. As a private attorney, he works pro bono to help hundreds of intelligence agents obtain lawful permission to declassify and publish the hidden secrets of our times. Loftus is Vice Chair of the Florida Holocaust Museum's Executive Committee. He is the co-author (with Mark Aarons) of The Secret War Against the Jews (St Martin's Press, 1994) and Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis and the Swiss Banks (St Martin's Press, 1992, 1998). His forthcoming book is titled Prophets of Terror: Jonathan Pollard and Peace in the Middle East. He can be contacted via his website, http://www.john-loftus.com.
This speech by John Loftus was given to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Ha'Shoah) on April 18, 2004. It was first published in Jewish Community News, August 2004.
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