A number of obscure individuals in influential positions (spiders) have aided and abetted terrorists resulting in great harm to the security of the United States The players
It is not only nations that support a web of terrorism, there are a number of obscure individuals in influential positions that have aided and abetted terrorists, (think of them as spiders) and as a result have done a great deal of harm to the security of the United States. A case in point is a French citizen named Guy Barbier, (born September 19, 1928) who is a functioning agent for Russian intelligence.

A report taken from the KGB archives indicates he had a long-term relationship with that service which accorded him the code name "Gurov". He had succeeded in his "escorted" career to become director of the Arthur Anderson Agency in Geneva, and thus had access to very sensitive information regarding CIA employees in Eastern Europe; inasmuch as the that corporation was in charge of financing agents and their needs in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, it is widely assumed Barbier passed on such information to his Soviet handlers. Evidence of such lies in intelligence gathered during the late 1980s that indicated the names of CIA agents in Europe that were revealed by an unnamed source. Over the years, to screen his espionage activities and to give the impression he was working for the U.S. government, he befriended and exploited Frederick Dulles, the son of John Foster Dulles.

Following a lengthy investigation by The Swiss Federal Banking Commission, Barbier has been judged guilty of misappropriation of funds, forgery and money laundering. During the investigation, the internal records of the Arthur Anderson Company revealed that in 1991 Barbier embezzled the accounts of its international partners executive retirement fund that were located in Geneva. Curiously, when his felonious conduct was exposed in the early nineties, rather than face bad publicity by prosecuting him, Arthur Anderson quietly removed him from his post. However, they were never were able to trace the stolen money; a preview of the Enron scandal and attempted cover-up?

After his departure from Arthur Anderson in 1991, Barbier unlawfully (because he was under criminal investigation) took over Swiss Financial Holdings (SFH), appointing Frederick Dulles and a mysterious Pradip Krishna Rohatgi as directors. They proceeded to operate, without any licenses, an illegal banking operation plus a stock brokerage house. A rather convenient end result was that auditors and regulators did not supervise such operations, nor did they have to file any forms detailing any movements of money. From there they created an online presence for futures trading. SFH Cocoa and SFH Coffee both based in London, and used their commodities trading to launder money. Concrete evidence indicates that they accepted donations to bin Laden and funneled the money back to him through SFH Holdings in Bermuda and the Guy H. Barbier Trust in Bermuda and the Isle of Jersey.

There is also good reason to suspect he used his connections with Middle Eastern terrorists to assassinate a director of Credit Suisse who had testified against him. It all began back in the summer of 1992 when the director of Credit Suisse incriminated Barbier with money laundering and embezzlement. Subsequently, in November 1997, during the infamous Egyptian terrorist assault against tourists at Luxor, where 60 Japanese and Swiss vacationers were slain by terrorist gunmen, Frau Alice Reichmut, the director of Credit Suisse, was killed in the company of other Swiss women each with a shot to the head. Strangely, such a coup de grace was only afforded to that small number of Swiss women, no doubt due to the fact the terrorists were not sure which of the Swiss women was Alice Reichmut and therefore made sure they were all dead. Swiss magistrates, including Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, now the prominent judge in the La Hague-Milosevic trial, believes Barbier could have contracted the Egyptian terrorist group that was found responsible for the attack, especially since that group was working directly with bin Laden and bin Laden would want to help any key, well-placed European financial asset.

Despite his arrest and conviction, Barbier still has friends in high places and is being well protected. He has destroyed and hidden evidence against him and has threatened and blackmailed witnesses. Even though he is under indictment, he continues to this day to be active in his murky world of espionage, illegal financial activities and aiding terrorism by means of his wife, Helen Ann Barbier and a supporting cast of dubious sorts such as Patrick Dawson, ex-DEA Chief of Station in Paris who was implicated and found guilty by Swiss magistrates of providing cover for illegal financial deals and money laundering.

Russian to make a killing
While the Russian government might have been allied with the US during the war against the Taliban, some Russian figures were profiting during the conflict selling arms to America's enemies. [Russian figures are Russian Jews -- to top of page]

An ongoing international investigation has uncovered an arms trading concern that is being described as the "largest arms-trafficking organization in the world". A Russian named Victor Bout, who has strong ties to al-Qaeda, runs the operation. He has some 60 aircraft in his operation, mainly Russian cargo planes which are able to link up with charter companies and other freight-forwarding airlines. He tries to obscure his operations by constantly changing his aircraft's registrations from one county to another. He also conceals his arms dealing behind legitimate activities. He is known as the "Lone Wolf" because he has always insisted in operating alone. In 1996 the Taliban was delivered weapons and military supplies in Afghanistan by Bout's air cargo firms based in the Emirates. An informer named Sanjivan Ruprah, a Kenyan diamond mine owner, and who was a key figure in international arms trade, has also reported Bout's secret business dealing in diamonds from Sierra Leone that may have financed bin Laden's terrorist actions.

Last August, bin Laden told two Pakistani nuclear scientists that he had access to radioactive material by way of the Radical Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan from the former Soviet Union. Which is not surprising since there have been repeated attempts by the Russian mafia over the years to get radioactive materials for the Taliban. Last year a Pakistan intelligence source confirmed certain arms shipment to the Taliban brokered by an Afghan commander. It was also revealed that arms had been smuggled to the Taliban by Pakistani middlemen in Peshawar and a religious trust based in Pakistan. A fax message allegedly from a Russian mafia man last June detailed the arms shipments (to be listed in the manifest as "fish from Tanzania or Malaysia) possible air routes, one via Tanzania and the United Arab Emirates to Uzbekistan, another from Kuala Lumpur to Turkmenistan. It went on to state that both routes would over-fly Afghanistan at night and would land where ever stipulated under the pretext of having engine trouble. The air shipment costs were listed as $35,000 to $50,000 per shipment, plus a risk bonus for the pilots, all deriving from Armenia. Intelligence officials concluded that the Taliban commander had a long established, ongoing relationship with a powerful Russian mafia network.

The secret nuclear lab     [Russian mafia is Jewish mafia -- to top of page]
U.S. intelligence services believe that bin Laden had a secret nuclear weapons laboratory and nuclear material cache inside Afghanistan having seen evidence that the Russian mafia had supplied him with chemical, biological and nuclear components. From there it is an easy extension to speculate that perhaps some of those "missing suitcase bombs" ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda military commanders. Furthermore, a leaked confidential intelligence report suggests that the Russian criminal underworld sold to international terrorists, either Soviet "suitcase nuclear bombs" or atomic demolition munitions that were developed for the GRU Special Task Force for use in unconventional warfare operations. These nuclear munitions were known to the GRU as "Special Devices" and were developed and adopted for them in the late 1960's.

Immediately following the demise of the Soviet Union, the six GRU Special Task Forces, based in the former Soviet republics were transferred by Russia to the newly formed independent states. The atomic munitions were transferred back to Russia in 1992. The transfer from most of the independent states took place normally, but because high levels of corruption, disorder and criminality in Ukraine, certain doubts remain that some of the special devices might have been "gone missing." Uncertainty lingers as far as the transfer from Turkestan and the Central Asian military districts, where two GRU STF were located, since some of the GRU officers were locals and could have been partisans of Islamic fundamentalism.

By 1997 the Special Task Forces in the independent states fell into disintegration, brought about by serious lack of funding and low morale, with some of the officers being recruited by local organized crime gangs who paid them well for their experience in nuclear arms and specialized warfare. Reliable sources report that not only atomic munitions were sold by the Russian underworld and smuggled into Armenia, during the conflict between the U.S. and the Taliban, but that several Russian nuclear technicians were hired by the Islamic fundamentalist to try and make the weapons operational. Reportedly these weapons are still in Armenia.

Cyber connections
An intensive U.S. investigation into Mohamedou Ould Slahi, (AKA Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, the Mauritanian, Muhammad Hassan, Abu Zubaydah) a 32 year old Mauritanian who is married to Sinta Bint al-Din, the sister of bin Laden's associate Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, who is known to have been involved the September 11th terrorist attacks, strongly suggest he played a major role in communications for the September 11th strikes.

The Cyber-criminal division of the Swiss company Netmon has been examining Slahi's home page on the Internet. The investigation's leader, Guido Rudolphi became intrigued that Slahi's guest book on his home page could only be opened using a pass word. He ended up examining 2300 data records on the site and found a surge in communications that were private and password protected that began in May 2000, peaked in July and August 2001, and dwindled to zero by September 9th 2001. Rudolphi believes that terrorist instructions were dispatched back and forth through Slahi's guest book from cyber cafes making them tricky to track and decipher; a resourceful method of exchange.

The following evidence suggest Slahi is very much involved in terrorism:

• He visited Al-Qaeda training camps at least twice between 1990-1999.
  
• Ahmed Ressam testified in a New York court that Slahi sponsored his training in Afghanistan and requested a fake passport in return.
  
• Canada's Security Intelligence Service discovered Salhi directly associated with Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested in Washington state on December 14, 2000 in connection with a bomb plot to smuggle bomb making components into the U.S.
  
• U.S. investigators found Slahi to be in constant contact with a construction company in Sudan that was owned by bin Laden as a front for Al-Qaeda.

Summation
Authorities have found that the al-Qaeda terrorist network is not so loosely knit as once thought and actually turns out to be a highly structured network, as corroborated by authorities when they found units in specific European countries, each in charge of a particular task. For example, the German units specialize in financing the organization, Spanish and Belgian units provide counterfeit documentation for the terrorists and the British units are responsible for logistics and recruiting. All of these detached strands are subsequently woven into a tight web of terrorism.

The full extent of the web of terrorism is only now becoming clear, as the specific examples in this paper reveal. It can never be conquered but can be contained. One decisive way to frustrate its menacing effectiveness is to cut their logistic supply lines as authorities have done in the Victor Bout air cargo case. A similar procedure can be applied to their means of communication by infiltrating their telecommunications to transmit misleading information, disrupt systems and intercept traffic in a more effective way. Because it is exceedingly difficult for authorities to gather local intelligence in Islamic countries, the U.S. intelligence community must succeed in getting further cooperation with allied foreign intelligence agencies that could develop sources, collect intelligence and infiltrate terrorist groups. But ultimately, to better shield the U.S. against today's terrorism, homeland defense has to be enhanced, and the first line of such a protection is the security of the nation's borders; certainly the subject of a future paper.

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The Author
Peter B. Martin studied biology and fine arts and worked for the American Museum of Natural History for several years doing research in mammalogy. He moved to France in 1968. He has an abiding interest in natural history and the arts and professional experience in both security and intelligence.

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