“TREASON ON THE HIGHEST LEVELS”
by Sharon Rondeau
(Feb. 16, 2015) — In a recent interview, whistleblower 2Lt. Scott Bennett told The Post & Email that he believes that if the 28-page section of the 9-11 report is made public, it will confirm his research that showed that not only has Saudi Arabia been involved in funding terrorism, but also, that funding of terrorist activity is ongoing through the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) and other Swiss banking institutions.
Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, Rep. Walter C. Jones, and Rep. Steven Lynch have all called for the release of an as-yet-classified portion of the official congressional report issued in 2002 following the worst attacks on U.S. soil since the bombing of Pearl Harbor, HI on December 7, 1941.
Jones and Lynch introduced a resolution in the 113th Congress to make public the 28 pages classified by President George W. Bush on the grounds that its release to the public would expose “sources and methods that would make it harder for us to win the war on terror.”
Both Lynch and Jones contested the claim, asserting that the 28 pages detail the role of Saudi Arabia in financing Al Qaeda’s activities, including the 9-11 attacks.
In an undated report, Fox News Radio referred to the 28 pages as the “blanked-out Saudi section” which Graham reportedly claims will implicate the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in direct funding for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 which killed nearly 3,000 people.
An account given last October to attorneys suing Saudi Arabia on behalf of 9-11 victims’ surviving family members by an imprisoned accomplice in the attacks known as the “20th hijacker,” Zacarias Moussaoui, made public within the last two weeks identifies the Saudi Arabian royal family as having provided funding for aircraft flying lessons for the 19 Islamic men who reportedly slit pilots’ throats with box-cutters, took over the flights of four airliners on September 11, 2001, and flew them into Manhattan’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and ultimately, a field in Shanksville, PA.
There were no survivors from any of the flights.
In a letter to the judge hearing the case naming Saudi Arabia as an accomplice in the attacks, Moussaoui asked for an opportunity to provide information, hence his in-prison interview with the plaintiffs’ attorneys. According to The New York Times, Moussaoui claimed that members of the Saudi Royal family financially supported Al Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for the attacks. Moussaoui also claimed that he maintained a database of Al Qaeda financial transactions for 1998 and 1999 which included donations.
After Moussaoui’s claims were made public, the Saudi government denounced them as having “no credibility.”
Among those Moussaoui named as donors was Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a major stockholder in Newscorp, the parent company of the Fox News Channel. Bin Talal is reportedly a personal friend of Newscorp owner Rupert Murdoch and has supported “initiatives” of the imam advocating the building of a mosque at “Ground Zero” in New York. Last week it was reported that Bin Talal reduced his stock ownership in Newscorp from 6.6% to 1% “over the past year.”
Bennett told The Post & Email that he is hopeful that the redacted pages from the 9/11 report and his own information about UBS will be disclosed in a “joint session” of Congress in the near future.
In early 2010, as a U.S. Army Reserve officer and Terror Finance Analyst for Booz Allen Hamilton, Bennett was arrested twice at gunpoint, first falsely accused of DUI and later, with wearing a military uniform without authorization. Bennett said that he had begun blowing the whistle on evidence he found implicating UBS and other institutions as participants in money-laundering, resulting in the funding of terrorists in the Middle East and throughout the world, similar to that which had been admitted to in 2012 by executives of British banking giant HSBC.
When Bennett went to his civilian superiors at Booz Allen about his discoveries, he was ignored, with the same result coming from his military superiors at Ft. Bragg.
In a grand jury indictment press release dated January 14, 2011, then-U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida, Robert E. O’Neill, claimed that Bennett was not a member of the Army Reserves upon his arrest. In a 23-page report including Bennett’s challenge to his military discharge following his eventual imprisonment, Bennett states that he was accosted by military personnel outside of MacDill Air Force Base while working as a civilian for Booz Allen on a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, among other alleged federal and constitutional violations.
SAB APPLICATION for review of discharge
O’Neill left his 20-year-long position in 2013 to work for a risk management company headed by Louis J. Freeh, former FBI director. O’Neill’s former closest assistant, A. Lee Bentley, III, now holds the post. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara C. Sweeney had prosecuted Bennett as a civilian in a trial which Bennett, speaking of himself, claims was engineered “in order to avoid the Uniform Code of Military Justice and avoid providing military defense counsel–even though he was a military officer, in uniform, and on a military base–violating the Constitutional separation between the military and civilian systems of justice” (p. 7 of “Application” document above).
In his several books and numerous interviews since his release from federal prison last February, Bennett maintains that his goal remains exposing the sources of terrorism which are killing and maiming U.S. servicemen and women. He names Attorney General Eric Holder and former Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Criminal Division Lanny Breuer as accomplices in a massive cover-up which has sacrificed an unknown number of American lives.
Bennett names others who he reported have been incarcerated or harassed as a result of whistleblowing, including former Qwest Communications CEO Joe Nacchio, former NSA department director William Binney, former Booz Allen employee and whistleblower Edward Snowden, former NSA employee Thomas Drake, and J. Kirk Wiebe, who had worked with Binney at the NSA.
In an interview with USA Today following Snowden’s revelations of NSA spying programs in June 2013, Binney stated that Snowden had “performed a really great public service to begin with by exposing these programs and making the government in a sense publicly accountable for what they’re doing.”
Bennett believes that other whistleblowers have been retaliated against by both the Bush and Obama regimes. “They need to release [former Qwest Communications CEO] Joe Nacchio’s material,” he told us. “In his testimony, Joe Nacchio reveals that the NSA was targeting him, trying to get all sorts of intelligence released, and he couldn’t present that as part of his defense; otherwise, the whole case against him would have fallen apart. Those documents should also be released because they all fit into a pattern.”
In March of last year following his release from four and one-half years in prison on “insider trading” convictions, Fox News reported that Nacchio had been approached by the NSA before the 9/11 attacks with a request to “participate in a surveillance program, but Nacchio considered the proposed action to be illegal” and refused. In 2007, Nacchio was convicted of insider trading, a claim he disputes. After serving 53 months in federal prison, Nacchio stated in several interviews that the collapse of Qwest was caused by “the federal government.”
Another whistleblower who corroborated Bennett’s findings on UBS, Brad Birkenfeld, asked the U.S. Department of Justice for a subpoena to testify as to his knowledge of both tax evasion and terrorism funding through the bank, where Birkenfeld had been employed in Switzerland for five years, but was rebuffed. Ultimately, in 2007, he was subpoenaed by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence chaired by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI). After providing actionable intelligence to the subcommittee, followed by the DOJ and IRS, the DOJ in 2008 prosecuted Birkenfeld for allegedly failing to reveal all the details of his business relationship with Igor Olenicoff, a wealthy real estate investor whose bank accounts Birkenfeld had managed.
Levin, who did not run for his Senate seat again in 2014, petitioned the DOJ for leniency in Birkenfeld’s conviction, which resulted in an enhanced sentenced of 40 months. Bloomberg reported that Birkenfeld’s sentence was, in months, “10 more than prosecutors sought.”
Birkenfeld’s disclosures about terror funding were not made public.
Birkenfeld and Bennett met in prison after Bennett was incarcerated at the same facility in Schuylkill, PA, during the summer of 2011.
Regarding his knowledge of terror funding emanating from Swiss banks, and specifically, UBS, The Post & Email asked Bennett, “Why would the government want this to continue?” to which he responded:
I think the general military-political neo-conservative strategy is godless at its core. Its core is capitalism, free markets, a humanistic, Ayn-Randian philosophy in which the world is to be one big peaceful corporation, mastered by the few, and everything looked at as a lever to pull and a job to do. You’ve seen it in H.G. Wells and other utopian philosophies. The view is that utopia can be achieved through the normalization and harmony of all people, either through sophisticated, mature tolerance, medication, imprisonment or death. Those are the four solutions to human conflict, and they’ve sought what some would say has been sought after by an Israeli-Mossad neo-conservative cabal consisting of (Dov) Zackheim, (Philip D.) Zelikow, and (Michael) Chertoff. All of these high-ranking people are dual citizens with Israel.
[Editor’s Note: Former Homeland Security Secretary under President George W. Bush, Michael Chertoff, is now Senior Counsel at Covington & Burling, where Breuer is now vice chairman. Covington & Burling has also represented UBS in the past.
On January 20, 2012, Reuters published a report which pictured Breuer and current Attorney General Eric Holder together smiling prior to testifying to Congress on the “financial crisis” of 2008 titled “Insight: Top Justice Officials Connected to Mortgage Banks.”
Zelikow served as executive director of the 9/11 Commission.
Zackheim served as Comptroller of the Pentagon from 2001 to 2004, during which time he admitted that $1 trillion was missing from the Defense Department. Following his departure from the Pentagon, Zackheim became vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he worked until his retirement in July 2010.]
I’m not bigoted in any way, shape or form, but I am bigoted against anyone who has a loyalty separation from his country. You can’t be loyal to two masters; you’re loyal to one and you hate the other. You cannot serve Israel and the United States in the same philosophy, and the attempt to do that has been the current wars that we’ve had for ten years. It’s been going around looking at all the Middle Eastern Muslim countries and structures from Libya to the Northern Mediterranean areas of Africa to Syria to Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Yemen and saying, “OK, military dictatorships have worked for 50 years, but there’s a danger; the Tower of Babel is getting too high, so let’s knock it down. Then we can let them fight each other; there will be scrambling, they will be angry hornets which will be stinging, but they won’t be able to amass too much strength to threaten Israel or anything like that.”
So you have the destruction of Libya, the destruction of Iraq, the threatening of Iran, and now with Saudi Arabia being burned on the edges with the king’s death and the U.S. holding the Sword of Damocles over its head by saying, “If we release the 28 pages, every American will hate Saudi Arabia.” That was Barbara Honegger‘s contention, and I agree with her: that the U.S. government is holding those 28 pages saying, “We won’t release it as long as you, Saudi Arabia, stick to the story or keep beheading people who threaten to tell the truth,” or whatever it may be. So they may not release it, but I think it’s inevitable that it will be released, whether voluntarily or by leak. But that’s been the agenda: to topple all of these countries so that they’re receptive to sprinkling the fairy dust of democracy in the hope that you can erect little utopian governments that eventually will live at peace with Israel or at least be subjugated by Israel.
I know Israel has ambitions in Libya and its gold holdings and a larger geopolitical ambition spreading farther down the Saudi Arabian peninsula which ties into Ariel Sharon‘s “Greater Israel” vision that is far larger than what it is now. That could be part of the explanation. I don’t think any good will come of that because Europe has a potential to be an enormously powerful super-state that could dwarf the United States, and if they nationalize their virulence against the U.S. because we killed a lot of their soldiers in war – from Britain, from Sweden, from Germany, from Italy – these countries have a reason to be angry. People already don’t like Israel to a large extent, and if you add gasoline to that flame, their entire governments will go hardcore right-wing against the U.S. and Israel, and if they’re embraced and emboldened by Russia and China – Russia, China, Europe and a Middle East that tolerates China, Russia and Europe – and everyone looks at the U.S. as a drunk at a party, that’s not a good social light for us to be in. I’m afraid we’re getting close to that very quickly.
“What is it about Obama that makes him seem so aggressive against Christians and Jews and anyone who isn’t a Muslim?” The Post & Email asked Bennett, to which he responded:
I would agree with that; you judge a man by his actions. “By his fruits ye shall know him.” Obama’s fruits are wild, open borders, the “Wild West,” which doesn’t do any good to the Christian population in America which occupies the white middle class, if you will – they look at that policy as very, very aggressive and anti-population of the United States to just open up the borders and let everybody come through and everybody’s relatives and they’re going to sign them all up for welfare payments and food stamps as long as they vote Democrat or whatever your way is…that’s going to overwhelm the southern border states. I think that might have a huge backlash; talk about a civil war that causes states to secede from the union…it’s overwhelming the individual states. You see a little bit of that in [Former Arizona Gov.] Janice Brewer‘s attempt to stem the illegal immigration. I think she’s within the Constitution to do that. That’s just one of his acts of betrayal.
The other description is one that Martha Trowbridge has drawn in that Obama is linked to all sorts of bad people, and none of that’s been reported in the media: his origins, his bad upbringing, his associations with very bad characters.
“What can be done about stopping the financing of terrorism?”
In a solution-based mind, and that’s where we always have to be focusing, what are the creative, positive, energetic things that we need to do and demand that other people do? We demand that people in Congress who represent us do certain things. We demand that people in the military uniform in positions of authority do things. What are we demanding that they do? We need to engage every member of Congress newly-elected for 2015 to take up these issues, particularly what is fresh in my mind: my issue and understanding of terrorist financing, bank accounts, UBS and the cover-up that’s been done for two and a half years – from MacDill, to Congress to the Department of Justice and the military – all of that I want exposed by new members of Congress, people in the media like you, Sean Stone, Kathy Rubio and others are starting to get this out and show the documentation. That pressure needs to be replicated. Everyone who reads your paper and is familiar with you needs to go to their churches, high schools and junior highs and give presentations to classes. Give presentations to church groups and demand that they do something. They need to set up a team, even if it’s only a prayer team, to say, “We’re going to hold our leaders accountable; we’re going to make phone calls to our congressmen and our senators on the state and federal levels.”
We need to ask: How do they explain it, and what is their solution?
Take it also to the military. People in the United States are under the foolish notion that they don’t have authority to tell the military what to do. Well, that’s nonsense. Every person with a phone can call the nearest military base or Ft. Bragg or MacDill and say, “I want to talk to the guy in charge of terrorist financing. I want to talk to the general in charge of Special Operations Command, and get his name and say, “I’m a concerned taxpayer from Kansas or Alaska or California, and I just got wind that a military officer submitted a report to you on terrorist financing and you haven’t done a damn thing about it. Now you better have a damn good explanation or you pack your bags and get ready to hang by the neck because kids are dead because of your inaction.” That’s how serious and strong people need to put this truth. They can’t simply be polite and say, “If you wouldn’t mind, please look into it. If you wouldn’t mind, please get back to me.” That’s stupid and weak, and the military and the Congress will laugh at that and never return a phone call. However, they will respond to hard, firm, uncompromising, patriotically-charged confrontation of something that is destructive, evil and deceitful against them and their children. That’s what this is. It’s deception, incompetence, and corruption, and I would say treason on the highest levels because soldiers are dead because of it. People I know are dead or maimed or lost limbs because they’re out fighting a war and they get blown up by a roadside bomb that was bought by a couple bad guys using money that was given to them from their mosque that was transferred from a yellow brick road connect-the-dot of ten mosques leading back to Saudi Arabia that was connected to Swiss banks that was donated from some of the Saudi royal family.
The powers that be are trying to cover this up.
The other connection is the Paris shootings on January 7, which happened the same day that they came out calling for the release of the 28 pages. Barbara Honegger just coordinated that date. That’s extremely significant. We all need to do this in the future: whenever something happens, you have to mark it on your calendar. That’s the center of the pond into which the pebble has dropped. Look at all the stuff that happens as a result of that vibration, that circular ripple effect. The Paris shootings happened on January 7; instantly, you look at what else is happening, and what you find is that the 28 pages were called for release on that exact day. So the notion that that operation was done to cover that up or to take attention away is very strong.
The whole point of psychological warfare is to bring attention away from things that are really, really significant and matter. They want to take your attention away from some of these trails that ultimately lead to the heart of the matter. They want to get you down other trails and have you looking at other things so that you get all emotionally charged about a couple guys who go into a newspaper and shoot up a bunch of French people, and then they engineer this great political bloc, and all the networks are flapping their feathers, but what you don’t see is the call to release 28 pages of the 9-11 report. What you don’t see is the Moussaoui affidavit that was released to 6,000 people who sued the Saudi Arabians for funding terrorism. You don’t see the UBS-Brad Birkenfeld documents that he gave to Sen. Carl Levin and Sen. Barack Obama. Obama got those reports and saw it, and he saw it again from me when I submitted my reports after meeting Birkenfeld. So Obama got the same letter from Birkenfeld and me, only a few years apart.
Birkenfeld was the whistleblower; I was just the military investigator who accidentally stumbled onto this. But what gave me credibility – and this is where Susan [Lindauer] and Barbara say I was sent on a mission – was that I was trained. I knew when it hit me, when I got the scent, I was the bloodhound. When I got the scent, I knew exactly what it was and I started sniffing and digging, which led me to all of this material with Birkenfeld. Then I just started howling like a Baskerville dog to my military chain of command, “Hey, do you guys know about this? What are you going to do? Here’s what was given to me. I have to get it up the chain of command because our mission is being compromised, so do something.” And what kind of response did I get? Absolute silence.
On page 11 of his Application for Review of Discharge and accompanying report, Bennett discloses:
In another ironic–some might say miraculous–twist of fate, Joe Nacchio ended up at the Federal Prison Camp Schuylkill in Minersville, Pennsylvania, along with the Union Bank of Switzerland insider Brad Birkenfeld, and Booz Allen Hamilton analyst and Army Officer Scott Bennett; and upon connecting the dots, the constellation of truth revealed has been breathtaking and ominous.