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FLASH: Before 9/11, the Bush Administration Curbed FBI Anti-Terrorism Efforts, Allegedly in Order to Advance Negotiations for a Government and Gas Pipeline in Afghanistan

In its issue of November 12, Le Monde summarized a new book, Ben Laden: La Verite interdite (Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth). The book's authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, claim that the Bush administration, up until September 11, was curbing the FBI's anti-terrorism efforts, in order to facilitate negotiations for an enlarged Afghan government which could then revive the Unocal pipeline project through Afghanistan.

An analysis of the book in English became available from www.truthout.com. Since then fuller summaries have appeared in the Asia Times of November 20, and Irish Times of November 19. The Irish Times reports from the book that the first international arrest warrant against bin Laden was filed in March 1998, by Qaddafi in Libya. It was ignored by Interpol, presumably because in the mid-1990s British intelligence was plotting in collaboration with al-Muqatila, bin Laden's Libyan terrorist group, to assassinate Qaddafi.

Only one fragment of the book's argument has reached the mainstream US press. Here for example is the story in the 11/12/01 New York Times, which appears to blame the curbing on the State Department and more specifically a U.S. Ambassador:

"A former F.B.I. antiterror official who was killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 complained bitterly last summer that the United States was unwilling to confront Saudi Arabia over Osama bin Laden and that oil ruled American foreign policy, according to a new book published in France.

"The former official, John P. O'Neill, was the director of antiterrorism for the F.B.I.'s New York office when he resigned in August to become chief of security for the twin towers. "All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden's organization can be found in Saudi Arabia," Mr. O'Neill is quoted as saying in the new book, "Ben Laden: La Verite Interdite" ("Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth"), which argues that Saudi support for Mr. bin Laden has been extensive.

"One of the book's co-authors, Jean-Charles Brisard, a security expert who has spent several years examining Mr. bin Laden's financial empire, says in the book that he met with Mr. O'Neill in June and July. Mr. O'Neill is quoted as lamenting "the inability of American officials to get anything at all from King Fahd," the ailing Saudi ruler.

"He explains the failure in one word: oil.

"In telephone interviews and e-mail exchanges, Mr. Brisard elaborated on the book, released this week by the French publishing house Denoel.

"He said he first met Mr. O'Neill in June in Paris, where the two had dinner with a group of French antiterror officials. Mr. Brisard had written a report for the French intelligence services on the finances of Mr. bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization and he gave Mr. O'Neill a copy.

"In late July, he said, they met alone in New York for drinks and dinner, and Mr. O'Neill complained that the F.B.I. was not free to act in international terror investigations because the State Department kept interfering.

"Mr. O'Neill, who had worked on investigations of the first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993, and on the attacks on two American embassies in Africa in 1998, also suggested that he would soon move to the private sector, Mr. Brisard said.

"Mr. Brisard said his conversations with Mr. O'Neill were not interviews. He is publicizing Mr. O'Neill's opinions as `a tribute' to a man he admired.

"Mr. O'Neill's frustrations with the State Department were not secret. He had been leading the F.B.I.'s investigation into the bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen in October 2000, but he had been barred in July from returning to Yemen by the United States ambassador there.

"The ambassador, Barbara Bodine, complained that Mr. O'Neill and his associates showed no sensitivity to Yemeni culture or concerns and were harming relations between the two countries.

"After Mr. O'Neill's death in September, Yemeni officials called the F.B.I. and offered to cooperate with their investigations, Barry W. Mawn, the assistant director of the F.B.I., announced at Mr. O'Neill's funeral Mass.

[End of New York Times story.]

In its Opinion Journal, the Wall Street Journal of 11/15/01 also blames "Our Friends at the State Department."

Thus there has been no reporting of the core of the book's argument, as reported by Le Monde:

"Before September 11, the Bush Administration curbed the FBI's antiterrorist activity, because it was conducting intense negotiations with the Taliban....The authors affirm that American diplomacy has been engaged for years in multiple dealings with the Taliban and their neighbors...in order, essentially, to respond to the expectations of the American petroleum companies....They show that the negotiations were resumed, with passion, by the Bush administration, where the petroleum lobby is at the controls."

Le Monde quotes the remarks of a former Pakistani Foreign Minister (Naif Naif) who participated in unofficial diplomatic negotiations last July: "Once an enlarged [Afghan] government was constituted, there would be international aid. Then the pipeline could come."

Details of the July meeting in Berlin (where three American ex-officials including former ambassador Tom Simons attended but the Taliban did not turn up) were previously reported by the London Guardian on 9/22/01. Naif also talks of warnings from the Americans (which the Pakistanis transmitted to the Taliban) of possible military strikes against the Taliban if the Taliban did not comply with American demands. Simons denies the allegation (cf. Brisard and Dasquie, 77).

Oil companies were blamed by O'Neill according to the truthout analysis: "Brisard [and Dasquie] claim O'Neill told them that "the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it".

The full version of this suppressed story helps to make sense of other stories suppressed in this country, such as the report of 11/6/01 on the BBC that the Bush Administration stymied an FBI investigation of the Bush family's business associates, the bin Laden family. The Sydney Morning Herald also reported the story, with details linking the bin Laden investments to the Carlyle Group and George W. Bush's first oil companies (for fuller details see Brisard and Dasquie, 297-98).

Or the story in France's Le Figaro and London's Guardian, that "Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent." Radio France Internationale later supplied the name of the CIA agent -- Larry Mitchell -- who visited bin Laden on July 12.

The oblique treatment in the U.S. press of the new book by Brisard and Dasquie is a good example of why it is so important to keep in touch with the press of the rest of the world. Not only do we realize that important allegations are not being reported in this country, the news not reported helps in many cases to define what is really central to the current campaign.