I’ve also never heard a response from either Senator Bob Graham or Congressman Porter Goss about what their thoughts were when it was revealed that the guy they had breakfast with on 9-11 had actually authorized the transfer of money to Mohammed Atta?
Porter Goss has now been nominated by President Bush to head the CIA. Many people have been lobbying to have Goss questioned about his meeting with General Ahmad on 9-11 but I’m betting that nobody has the guts to even bring it up during his confirmation hearings and it seems to be a foregone conclusion that he will breeze though the hearings with no problem.
I also alluded in Part 1, to frustrations voiced by intelligence professionals over the lack of attention Operation Diamondback received from higher ups in Law Enforcement. ATF Special Agent Dick Stoltz had this to say about Operation Diamondback:
“Stoltz says he’s surprised that all the evidence and intelligence the case generated wasn’t pursued more aggressively at the highest levels of law enforcement in Washington .
“Quite frankly, I was always wondering when maybe the case would be taken away from ATF,” says Stoltz.
So Stoltz thought that he was on to something so big that ultimately FBI, perhaps CIA might take over? “Oh, FBI at the minimum,” says Stoltz.” (2)
Other federal officials had this to say:
“Some federal officials were frustrated that the FBI, while allowing a Florida agent to work on the probe, did not declare the case a counterterrorism matter. That would have given ATF officials better access to FBI information and U.S. intelligence from around the world, and would have drawn bureaucratic backing from people all the way to the White House, officials said.” (7)
In the same Washington Post article, Dick Stoltz added this:
"Had more attention been paid to this inside the government, the case agents in the trenches would have had more information on who these Pakistani people on U.S. soil were," said Stoltz, who is now retired. "It would have steered us in other directions, and possibly justified continuing the investigation. . . . We couldn't understand why this wasn't treated as a national security matter." (7)
So why was Operation Diamondback handled as a criminal matter and not as a counterterrorism case? I believe I may have discovered the answer which will be revealed in the following section.
The Strange Story of Dr. Magdy Elamir
The August 2, 2002 edition of Dateline NBC, brought to light the story of another North Jersey character named Dr. Magdy Elamir.
“Last fall, “Dateline” obtained information about Magdy Elamir. He’s a prominent doctor, a neurologist with a practice in Jersey City . Born and educated in Egypt , he moved to this country about 20 years ago and since then has built a fortune. He lives in a mansion, is generous to local charities and is an active supporter of both political parties.
Should counterterrorism investigators take an interest in Dr. Elamir? Well, “Dateline” obtained a document last fall — foreign intelligence report, that makes a startling allegation about the doctor — that he has had financial ties with Osama bin Laden for years. The report was given to a senior member of Congress, Ben Gilman, back in 1998, when he was Chairman of the House International Relations Committee.
“We have a former FBI person on our staff and I asked him to look it over,” says Congressman Gilman. “He thought it was credible enough to turn it over to the intelligence people. And we turned it over to the FBI practically immediately.”
This was in 1998.
The report alleges that an H.M.O. owned by Dr. Elamir in New Jersey was “funded by ben [sic] Laden” and that in turn Dr. Elamir was skimming money from the H.M.O. to fund “terrorist activities.”
Has the FBI answered those questions? Not to Congressman Gilman’s satisfaction. But what “Dateline” found intriguing is that less than a year after the congressman says the FBI received the report, Dr. Elamir’s HMO was taken over by the state of New Jersey , which opened a fraud investigation. Why? Because, according to sources close to the investigation, more than $15 million is unaccounted for. Where did the money go? “Dateline” has reviewed documents that show at least some of it went into hard-to-trace offshore bank accounts. Does that mean any of the missing money went, as the intelligence report suggests, to fund terrorist activities? We don’t know.” (2)
This story really caught my attention since allegations were made that Dr. Elamir had financial ties to Osama Bin Laden for years and that Bin Laden had funded an HMO that Elamir was operating in New Jersey . The intelligence report that Dateline refers to also infers that Dr. Elamir may have skimmed money from the HMO to fund “terrorist activities”.
I decided to look deeper into this story and found the following information about Dr. Elamir:
“Magdy El Sayed El Amir, a native of Egypt, received his medical degree from the University of Cairo in 1977. After moving to the US with his family, he completed his neurology and psychiatry residency before opening a storefront neurology practice in Jersey City , NJ , in 1982. The practice catered to the area's poor, many of whom were fee-for-service Medicaid beneficiaries.
