|
New
Jersey
and
Terrorism…Perfect Together;
terrorism
is operating in NJ unchecked, and Bush's Justice Dept knows about it.
a four part
series
By Allan P.
Duncan
September 2, 2004
Introduction
Between the Fall of 1998 and June 2001, a group of Middle
Eastern men living in
New Jersey
is caught on tape in an ATF weapons sting conspiring to buy millions of
dollars of weapons including components for nuclear bombs. Three years
after the operation ended, all of the people involved in the deal are
free.
Federal agents who worked on the case were frustrated because it was
handled as a criminal case instead of a counterterrorism case. In an in
depth look at Operation Diamondback
I reveal that one of the suspects who was accused of skimming millions of
dollars from a fraudulent HMO to offshore accounts where the money
allegedly went to finance terrorism, was defended in the HMO case by a
lawyer who later became the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the
Criminal Division, under John Ashcroft. The lawyer, Michael Chertoff, was
in his position as Assistant Attorney General when Operation Diamondback
ended and his client was never arrested even though an intelligence
document claimed he and his brother in
Egypt
had links to Osama Bin Laden.
Is this why the ATF operation was handled as a criminal case and not
a terrorism case by the federal government?
I will also examine the history of terror links to the North Jersey
area from before the 1993 bombing of the
World
Trade
Center
right up until 9-11. Michael Chertoff, by the way, was the U.S. Attorney
for the District of New Jersey from 1990-1994 and was in office when the
first attack on the
World
Trade
Center
took place. For reasons that escape me, the
Jersey City
area and particularly the Al Salam mosque from which the Blind Sheik
Omar Abdel Rahman spewed his hatred, was allowed to continue to be one of
the major hubs of terrorist activity in the
United States
.
Part
1: The
Jersey City
Rat Pack
Recent headlines over the past two weeks announced the arrest of
two leaders of an
Albany
,
New York
mosque for allegedly laundering money involved in the sale of a shoulder
fired missile. The arrests were the result of a year long weapons sting
conducted by the FBI. (1)
Anytime someone involved in planning terrorism on
US
soil is taken off the streets it should be plastered all over the
headlines to announce to the world that another terrorist is in the
slammer and is unable to hurt, maim or kill innocent American citizens.
This case pales in comparison, however, to a pre-9-11 weapon sting
in which a 32 million dollar deal for a ship load of weapons, 500 Stinger
Missiles, nuclear triggers, weapons grade plutonium and “heavy water”
for a nuclear dirty bomb were the weapons of choice of
Middle Eastern men seeking to arm Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban.
This case never made screaming headlines when it ended in June 2001 and
most people have never head about it. The attacks on 9-11 were three
months away and the American press was not as eager to pounce on every
story that even mentioned the word terrorist. In addition to the weapons
deal, the
World
Trade
Center
was specifically mentioned as a future target by one of the characters in
this drama and yet none of the people involved in this case are currently
in prison. Why?
I ran across references to Operation Diamondback while doing research on terrorism and Weapons
of Mass Destruction well over a year ago. I found out that a former con
man named Randy Glass had posed as an undercover weapons dealer in an
attempt to lure Middle Eastern weapons buyers to the
US
in a sting operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
with support from the FBI and Customs.
The sting operation was documented in two episodes of Dateline
NBC; On the trail of arms merchants, which
aired on
August 2, 2002
(2), and Stinger missile sting operation,
which was broadcast on
March 18, 2003
. (3)
The case came to a screeching halt with the arrest of only a handful
of suspects in June of 2001 even though there was ample evidence that some
of the people who were attempting to buy these weapons had connections
with the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden himself. The two Dateline
NBC stories cited the frustration of Special Agents who worked on the
operation and questioned why the case hadn’t received more attention
from higher ups in federal law enforcement.
I decided to look deeper into the case myself and discovered some
shocking information. I have held onto this information for over a year. I
had passed it on to a few lawyers and journalists in hopes that they would
follow-up on my discoveries, but to date none of them have, so I have
decided to divulge the info myself.
I discovered that the “terror
support system supplying
U.S.
enemies with sophisticated weapons” included three men from
New Jersey
. As I looked deeper into the story, I realized that one of the men lived
in the same county where I worked at the time, and that all of them had
worked in the city where one of my closest relatives lives.
Needless to say, I was shocked to think that two of these same men
who plotted to secure components for nuclear weapons and one of whom
allegedly funneled millions of dollars to Osama Bin Laden in the years
leading up to 9-11, were still free and allowed to roam the streets of New
Jersey.
Enter the players in the Garden State Soap Opera…
Diaa Moshen
The
August 2, 2002
edition of Dateline NBC revealed
that Operation Diamondback began
in the Fall of 1998 and was a two and a half year investigation. One of
the first contacts Randy Glass made was with an American citizen
born in
Egypt
who moved to
New Jersey
about 32 years ago named Diaa Mohsen. Moshen implied that he represented
Arab men and that they needed to be very careful as to how they did
business.
As the relationship between Randy Glass and Diaa
Moshen developed they talked specifically about what kinds of weapons
Moshen’s contacts wanted and who they would be going to. The following
quotes are excerpts from taped conversations between Glass and Moshen from
the Dateline transcript:
“Diaa
Mohsen: “They use rocket grenades. They have howitizer. They have like
120 millimeter howitizer.”
Randy Glass: “What is that? That’s
like a — what’s a howitizer? It’s like a cannon?”
Diaa Mohsen: “Artillery.”
Glass: “It’s like artillery like
in the movies.”
Diaa Mohsen: “Yeah”.”
“And then
Glass’s contact tells him where the potential customers can be found.
Diaa Mohsen: “I’ll take you to
the border between
Afghanistan
and
Pakistan
.”
Finally, he confirms just what kind of people he’s dealing with.
Diaa Mohsen: “You know those f——-g
people, they are terrorists.”
Randy Glass: “So these are
terrorists?”
Diaa Mohsen: “Sure.”
Randy Glass:
“That’s wonderful.”
And what else do the terrorists want? Special technology, he says,
for the deadliest of weapons.
Randy Glass: “What is that?”
Diaa Mohsen: “One of the components
for a nuclear weapon.””
(2)
Mohsen wanted proof that Glass could actually deliver
weapons, so on
January 21, 1999
a meeting was set up in a parking lot in
New Jersey
where Randy showed him a Stinger Missile. A photo was taken of Moshen
holding the weapon and he was then off to
Egypt
to prove to his associates that Glass was legit.
Dick Stoltz, a decorated veteran agent with ATF,
posed as an associate of Randy’s during the operation. Their initial
meeting with some Egyptian men fell through, but they were soon put in
touch with more people in
Jersey City
who were eager to deal with them.
Mohamed Malik
The next person Diaa Moshen put Randy Glass in touch with was, Mohamed
“Mike” Malik, a small businessman in
Jersey City
who owned convenience stores, a laundromat and a long distance phone card
company. On the phone with Malik, Randy agrees to travel to
New York City
to meet a buyer referred to in the Dateline
transcript as “Abbas”. I have since determined that the full name of
“Abbas” was Raja Ghulam Abbas.
Excerpts from the Dateline
transcript:
“On
July 22, 1999
, Glass flew to
New York
for a meeting at the trendy Tribeca Grill, a restaurant partly owned by
actor Robert DeNiro. It was dinner for four: Glass, his first contact,
Diaa Mohsen; the
Jersey City
businessman Mike Malik and the mystery man; Abbas.”
“Abbas gave
Glass a business card saying he worked for Malik’s long distance phone
card company. Glass was wearing a wire.
Mixed in
with the dinner crowd were agents from the FBI’s Terrorism Task Force in
case anything went wrong. Glass says Abbas was all business.
“Basically what he told me was that
they were interested in purchasing a large amount of sophisticated weapons
systems,” says Glass. “And they wanted an actual ship load, not a
small amount.”
And who was Abbas representing in
this transaction?
“Abbas was represented to me as
being an ISI agent,” says Glass.
ISI is the official intelligence
agency, like the CIA, of
Pakistan
. And this is where the stakes really get high. Because, if Abbas was
telling the truth, Randy Glass and the feds were about to cut an illegal
weapons deal with a Pakistani intelligence operative linked to terrorists.”
“Then, in the middle of a
crowded
New York
restaurant, Glass says the talk turned to something much more ominous:
components for nuclear weapons, triggering devices and plutonium.
“They inquired if it was available,”
says Glass.
What did Glass say? “Yes,” says
Glass.
And they responded? “They were
interested,” says Glass.
Dick Stoltz, the veteran undercover
agent with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms who worked the case,
confirms Randy Glass’s account.
Stoltz had to realize that the people
being talked about as customers for these weapons were the most wanted
terrorists in the world.
“That’s correct,” says Stoltz.
Bin Laden? “Correct,” says Stoltz.
Did Stoltz think they were serious?
“Oh absolutely,” he says.
In fact, Stoltz says Randy Glass’s
dinner companions were checked out by
U.S.
intelligence experts and found to have real connections.
“We did confirm through various
sources that Abbas and Malik did have links to weapons trafficking groups
and militant operations,” says Stoltz.” (2)
About this meeting, John Pacenti, in a Palm Beach Post article dated
August 2, 2002
titled, Con
Man Turned Patriot Tells All
states:
"At the meeting Abbas said
Americans are the enemy and they will have no problem blowing up this
entire restaurant because it’s full of Americans," Glass said.
"As we leave the restaurant, Abbas turns and says, 'those towers (the
World
Trade
Center
) are coming down.'"
Despite that information,
available to the government two years before the
World
Trade
Center
attack, the FBI's terrorism task force didn't appear to take the threat
seriously, Glass said.” (4)
So now we have an alleged member of the Pakistani ISI,
Raja Ghulam Abbas, meeting with Randy Glass in
New York City
, talking about buying sophisticated weapons, components for nuclear arms
and talking about the
World
Trade
Center
towers coming down. Abbas also presents a business card showing that he is
in business with Mohamed “Mike” Malik. The entire meeting was recorded
and according to Randy, members of the FBI Terrorism Task Force were
present in case anything went wrong.
A few weeks after the meeting the buyers flew to
Florida
to see the weapons for sale. From the August 2nd Dateline transcript we find this:
“Stoltz says that more than
anything else they wanted materials for nuclear weapons, especially a
substance called heavy water, which is used to make weapons grade
plutonium.
Sometimes, as on this tape, Abbas used a code name, referring to
heavy water as “sweet water.”
Abbas:
“And we hook up to the guys which ... in
Pakistan
work for us . . .”
Randy Glass: “Yeah, of course.”
Abbas: “So we say to him whatever
you need, anything up to the sweet water, you know?”
Randy Glass: “Yes.”
“They would tell me: ‘The people
that I’m dealing with, they have to have the heavy water,’” says
Stoltz.
And unless they got it, Stoltz was
told the deal was off. That was a deal breaker.
“That was a deal breaker,” says
Stoltz. “They were flexible maybe on military parts for airplanes or
small arms or maybe even Stingers, but they always came back to square
one. Heavy water.”
For nuclear weapons?
“Correct,” says Stoltz.
And that wasn’t all the arms
dealers wanted. “Dateline” has learned that Mike Malik gave the
undercover agents a list of radioactive chemicals that could be used to
make a so-called dirty bomb — conventional explosives laced with
radioactive materials. Bin Laden’s terrorists are believed to have
talked about detonating such a bomb in a major
U.S.
city to spread toxic radiation.
Malik and Abbas were so serious about
closing a deal, Stoltz says, they went back to
Pakistan
to talk to their customers in person. Then, Stoltz says, Abbas informed
him there was one more condition: he wanted to bring a Pakistani nuclear
scientist to
America
who could inspect the nuclear materials that would be part of the deal.
And he told Stoltz the name of the scientist.
Did Stoltz check this out?
“Of course it was passed up the
line and it was confirmed that this person did exist and that’s what he
did for the Pakistani government,” says Stoltz. “That he was in the
field of atomic weapons. He was a scientist.”” (2)
Now we have Mohamed “Mike” Malik not only traveling with Abbas
to Florida with a priority of securing heavy water for a dirty bomb, but
Malik himself coming up with a shopping “list
of radioactive chemicals that could
be used to make a so-called dirty bomb — conventional explosives laced
with radioactive materials.”
The group finally reached an agreement in December of 2000.
“The buyers
would pay $32 million over several years. The first shipments would be
conventional weapons. Nuclear components would come later. A
Florida
bank account was set up to receive the $32 million wire transfer that was
supposed to come from a bank in the Middle Eastern emirate of
Dubai
. Federal agents waited six months, but the money never came.
“And at that point, it was decided
that we would take the case down,” says Stoltz. “We thought we had
gone about as far as we could with it.”
The Dateline
story states that, “A Florida bank
account was set up to receive the $32 million wire transfer that was
supposed to come from a bank in the Middle Eastern emirate of
Dubai
.”
In an interesting parallel, in an article titled Al
Qaeda Moneyman Caught, by Elaine Shannon, published by Time Magazine
on
May 1, 2003
(5),
Shannon
states:
“A
Pakistani police roundup of al-Qaeda figures in
Karachi
Tuesday has netted a Bin Laden bagman who funneled nearly $120,000 to
ringleader Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers to finance their flight
lessons and living expenses in the
US
, according to FBI and
U.S.
intelligence officials.
Ali
Abd al-Aziz (also known as Ammar al-Baluchi), a nephew of captured
al-Qaeda operations boss Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and first cousin of 1993
World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef, was arrested with a
higher-ranking al-Qaeda lieutenant, Walid Ba 'Attash, aka "Khallad"
or Tawfiq Bin Attash an Osama bin Laden intimate who is believed to have
organized the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.” (5)
Further
on Shannon writes about the arrangements made to transfer the money from
Dubai
to a bank in
Florida
.
“From
July 18 to September 18, 2000, Aziz, using the Mansur alias or calling
himself "Mr. Ali" or "Hani" of "Fawaz Trding"
(SIC), wired another $109,500 from the UAE Exchange Centre in Dubai to an
account at Sun Trust Bank held jointly by Al Shehhi and 9/11 hijack team
leader Mohammed Atta, while both men were attending Huffman Aviation
school in Venice, Florida.” (5)
So
we have both of these plans to wire money originating in
Dubai
and ending up in banks in
Florida
. Coincidence?
Another
interesting parallel in the two stories is that they both involve members
of the Pakistani ISI. We know that Raja Ghulam Abbas represented himself
to Randy Glass as being a Pakistani ISI Agent. The
Times of India, in an article titled, India
helped FBI trace ISI-terrorist links
 , by Manoj Joshi, dated
October 9, 2001, revealed that the head of the Pakistani ISI, General
Mahmoud Ahmad, had been fired from his position after it was determined
that he had authorized the transfer of $100,000
to Mohamed Atta in Florida shortly before 9-11.
“While the Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations claimed that
former ISI director-general Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad sought retirement after
being superseded on Monday, the truth is more shocking.
Top sources
confirmed here on Tuesday, that the general lost his job because of the
"evidence"
India
produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the
World Trade Centre. The
US
authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000
were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from
Pakistan
by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen Mahumd.” (6)
Further research indicates that
Dubai
was the place where most Al Qaeda money transfers originated. Atta
apparently received a number of money transfers from
Dubai
and some of them were sent by people other than Ali Abd al-Aziz. Atta’s
name will come up again later in this report when I tell the story of
another Operation Diamondback
player.
So whatever happened to
Diaa Mohsen, Mohammed Malik and Raja Ghulam Abbas after Operation
Diamondback came to an end? Here are some of the answers from the Dateline transcript:
“In June of last year, the feds moved in and arrested Randy Glass’s
original contact, Diaa Mohsen, and Mohamed Mike Malik. That was three
months before 9/11. After 9/11 both men pled guilty to violating arms
laws. But remarkably — even though they were apparently willing to
supply America’s enemies with sophisticated weapons — even nuclear
weapons technology — Mohsen was sentenced to just 30 months in prison.
And Malik? Mysteriously, his sentence remains under seal. And he appears
to be a free man as “Dateline” saw recently when we visited him at his
New Jersey
convenience store.” (2)
According to my own research, Diaa Mohsen spent time in Allenwood Federal
Prison in White Deer, PA and had a projected release date of
9-13-03
.
Mohamed Malik currently lives in
Watchung
,
New Jersey
and according to reports, his case has been sealed and all references to
Pakistan
have been stricken from the documents.
In an article that appeared in the Washington
Post titled U.S. Reopens Arms Case In Probe for Taliban Role, lawyers for
Moshen and Malik tried to minimize their role and discount their contacts:
“Lawyers for the two men
arrested in the sting said their clients have no connections to terrorists
or arms dealers, and became involved only when approached by a
U.S.
government informant.
"None of those people who
came over from Pakistan were government officials who could get an arms
deal done," said Jim Eisenberg, attorney for Mohammed
"Mike" Malik, one of the potential buyers, who remains free and
whose case is sealed.
Val Rodriguez, lawyer for Diaa
Mohsen, the only man in the case currently imprisoned, said his client
also lacked the ties necessary to arrange a secret arms deal. He
acknowledged, however, that Mohsen "kept trying to get the
connections [the undercover agent] wanted." However, both Mohsen and
Malik, he added, "had contact with people who knew terrorists."”
The statements from the lawyers contradict statements
made by ATF Special Agent Dick Stoltz and other intelligence people who
claim that the contacts Moshen and Malik made were with terror groups
known to be enemies of the
United States
.
What bothers me is that both Moshen and Malik were caught red-handed on
tape talking about securing components for nuclear weapons and Malik
himself provided a list of specific things they needed to build these
weapons. I didn’t hear Randy Glass or Dick Stoltz saying that they had
these things for sale. I heard Moshen and Malik asking for them and making
their deal contingent on the acquisition of these nuclear weapons related
components.
And how does a guy who supposedly just runs a
convenience store in Jersey City even know what kind of components are
needed to build a nuclear weapon unless he’s involved with people who
know what to ask for?
As for Raja Ghulum Abbas, he ended up fleeing the
country and intelligence officials claim they have lost him. Dateline NBC was able to locate him easily enough though and talked
to him over the phone.
New
Jersey
and
Terrorism…Perfect Together
By Allan P.
Duncan
September 4, 2004
Part
2: The Good Doctor Who Wasn’t So Good
In Part 1 of this series I introduced you to three
men from
Jersey City
who attempted to set up a weapons deal which included among other things,
hundreds of Stinger Missiles and components for nuclear weapons. The
weapons deal was part of a two and a half year investigation called Operation
Diamondback which culminated with the arrests of two of the
Jersey City
men in June of 2001.
Diaa Moshen was sentenced to 30 months in prison and
Mohamed Malik was freed and had his case sealed and purged of all
references to
Pakistan
. Both men are now free and continue to walk the streets of
New Jersey
.
The third man, Raja Ghulam Abbas, an alleged
Pakistani ISI Agent, fled the country and the last I heard was living in
Pakistan
.
During a meeting at Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Grill
on
July 22, 1999
, Abbas pointed towards the
World
Trade
Center
and stated “those towers are
coming down.” Despite the fact that the meeting was recorded and was
being watched by members of the FBI’s Terrorism Task Force, the threat
was apparently not taken seriously. (4)
Randy Glass, the former con-man who posed as a weapons dealer during Operation
Diamondback, was so upset about the references to the Towers coming
down, that after the investigation ended he notified his elected
representatives in
Florida
and reported the threats. According to an article in the Palm Beach Post, titled Intelligence
Panel Hears from Glass, by
John Pacenti published on
October 17, 2002
:
“In August 2001, just before
Glass started to serve a seven-month sentence for a $6 million jewelry
scam, he said he reached out to Sen. Bob Graham and U.S. Rep. Robert
Wexler. He said he told staffers for both lawmakers that a Pakistani
operative working for the Taliban known as R.G. Abbas made three
references to imminent plans to attack the World Trade Center during the
probe, which ended in June 2001.
At one meeting at
New York
's Tribeca Grill caught on tape, Abbas pointed to the
World
Trade
Center
and said, "Those towers are coming down," Glass said.” (8)
Further on in the article Pacenti reports:
“Graham acknowledged at news
conference in Boca Raton last month that Glass had contact with his office
before Sept. 11, 2001, about an attack on the World Trade Center. "I
was concerned about that and a dozen other pieces of information which
emanated from the summer of 2001," the senator said.” (8)
WPTV, an NBC affiliate in
Florida
did a news report where Senator Graham is confronted about the Glass info
and a video of the story can be viewed online by checking out The Randy Glass Video in
the Resources section at the end of this article.
In Part 1 of this series, I mentioned the fact that General Mahmoud
Ahmad, the head of the Pakistani ISI, had been sacked from his position
after it was determined that he had authorized a wire transfer of $100,000
to Mohammed Atta shortly before 9-11. (6)
On the morning of 9-11, General Ahmad was at a breakfast meeting in
Washington
D.C.
with Senator Bob Graham and Congressman Porter Goss, the Chairmen of the
Senate and House Intelligence Committees. (9) One would think that as soon
as Senator Graham heard about the attack on the
World
Trade
Center
, he would have remembered the information Randy Glass had shared with him
about the threats.
Ironic, isn’t it, that
Graham was sitting with the head of the Pakistani ISI at the exact same
time the attacks took place when he had already been warned of a threat
that had come directly from the lips of an alleged Pakistani ISI Agent? No
wonder Senator Graham acted dumb when confronted with the pre 9-11 Glass
warning in the WPTV news story.
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.
Elamir (in this country, he'd
begun eliding the two parts of his last name) did a brisk business. Before
long, his medical practice became the nucleus for other health-related
enterprises, including several MRI centers, a limousine and ambulance
company, and a physician billing and management service. He also acquired
real estate in
Hudson
County
, where he practiced, and in several adjoining counties.” (10)
I also found out that in addition to the HMO fraud case referred to in
the Dateline story, that Dr. Elamir had a history of involvement in other
fraud cases.
“In 1996 and 1997, Maryland
Casualty Insurance Co., National Consumer Insurance Co., and Allstate New
Jersey Insurance Co. cited Elamir and numerous other defendants in
lawsuits alleging that they performed unnecessary medical procedures on
"victims” of staged auto accidents. As a result, Allstate stopped
paying for MRIs at Elamir's unlicensed centers, and his cash flow dropped,
Elamir's attorneys have said.
Elamir ran afoul of the federal
Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1997 after applying for a license to
perform radioactive imaging in another of his offices. The NRC found that
he had listed a
Long Island
doctor as his office's radiation safety officer and the sole authorized
user of the material without the doctor's knowledge, NRC disciplinary
records show. The physician was not licensed in
New Jersey
, according to the state Board of Medical Examiners.
As a result,
the NRC has prohibited Elamir from any involvement
with nuclear medicine until 2002.” (11)
In 2001 Dr. Elamir was involved in another accident fraud case in
New Jersey
:
“A
Clifton
lawyer and three doctors were arrested in Wednesday's roundup of 192
defendants charged as part of an auto insurance fraud ring, making them
the first professionals to be arrested under
New Jersey
's anti-runner statute.
Hudson County prosecutors said the ring staged accidents in Hudson,
Bergen, Passaic and Essex counties to try to collect $5 million in phony
claims, a few of which were paid by carriers cooperating in the
19-month-long sting operation.” (12)
Further on in the article:
“The other
doctor charged under the statute is neurologist Magdy Elamir of
Saddle
River
. He is accused of paying Poller in exchange for his sending patients to
Elamir's clinics for unnecessary and expensive MRIs.
Neurologist
Elamir, who operates clinics in several cities, is no stranger to
authorities. In June 2000, he was sued by the state for allegedly draining
$16.7 million from the assets of a Newark-based HMO he and his associates
ran. The now-defunct HMO, American Preferred Provider Plan, served 44,000
poor, mostly Medicaid patients.
State Banking and Insurance Commissioner Karen Suter said at the time that
the assets were diverted to Elamir, his relatives and associates, and
other enterprises he controlled, including HMOs in
Michigan
and
Washington
,
D.C.
Bill Hine, a spokesman for Suter, says the suit against Elamir is in
discovery. The state is liquidating the
Washington
HMO and has taken over the
Michigan
operation and sold the assets, he adds.
Elamir's clinics also came up
in the discipline case against former Newark solo practitioner Patrick
Pajerowski, disbarred by the state Supreme Court in 1998 for using a
runner. In that ethics case, two accident victims were visited by the
runner -- Pajerowski's office manager -- who referred them to a
Jersey City
clinic operated by Elamir, even though they told him they were not
injured. No criminal charges were filed.”
(12)
If that wasn’t enough, I also found that in 1999, Dr. Elamir was
running a number of unlicensed MRI centers:
“A
Saddle
River
man accused by the state of siphoning more than $ 9
million from his financially ailing health maintenance organization also
owns five unlicensed MRI centers that are not subject to health and
safety standards, state officials say.
Dr. Magdy Elamir, owner of the American Preferred Provider Plan
(APPP), which was taken over by the state last month, owns magnetic
resonance imaging centers in
Paterson
,
Passaic
,
Jersey City
,
Irvington
,
and
Newark
.” (13)
So here we have a prominent neurologist who is alleged to have funneled
money to Osama Bin Laden through his fraudulent HMO, and we also discover
that he has been involved in at least two accident fraud schemes, operated
unlicensed MRI centers and had a license revoked by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. The NRC license revocation is especially troubling since
unauthorized and unlicensed personnel at Dr. Elamir’s clinics were
handling nuclear materials.
In a document I found
titled Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Issuances, dated July 1-
December 31, 1998
, Volume 48 pages 1-415, on page 7 is listed:
Magdy Elamir
,
MD
(
Newark
,
New Jersey
)
Docket 1A 97-070
Memorandum and Order, LBP
98-25,
October 8, 1998
……226
This document is in the form of a PDF file and when I
scrolled down to page 226, I found five pages of information concerning
the suspension of Byproducts Material License # 29-30282-01. (14)
In
an NRC News article published by
the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on
April 4, 1997
, it states:
“An NRC inspection in January
found that the individuals acting as the authorized user of radioactive
materials at
Newark
Medical Associates and as its radiation safety officer were not listed on
the license, as NRC requires. A subsequent investigation by the NRC's
Office of Investigations determined that the application for the license
listed an individual as the sole authorized user and radiation safety
officer without that individual's consent or knowledge. Investigators
further found that the individual has never been associated with
Newark
Medical Associates.” (15)
To make matters worse, Dr. Elamir’s own brother, Mohamed El Amir, was
implicated in Operation Diamondback:
“Dateline”
has found another reason why federal investigators might want to pay close
attention to Dr. Elamir and his family. It’s something we learned when
we interviewed Randy Glass, the con-man turned undercover operative who
helped the government break up an illegal weapons ring allegedly tied to
terrorist groups. It turns out that one of the people recorded trying to
arrange an arms deal with Randy Glass was Dr. Elamir’s own brother,
Mohamed, an engineer, also a U.S. citizen now living in Egypt. And just
listen to what he was interested in.
“There was a warehouse full of
weapons in
Italy
that they needed shipped,” says Glass.
It was the spring of 1999. Mohamed
Elamir explains that he wants false papers that would identify a shipment
of weapons — as vegetables.
Randy
Glass: “ But you’re talking about, they’re saying they wanna
ship vegetables, right? Is what they want — is what they want on the
paperwork, correct?”
Mohamed
El Amir: “Yep.”
Then Randy Glass cuts to the chase.
Randy
Glass: “Listen. My phone line is secure. And so I’m just gonna
talk very open with you, OK?”
Mohamed
El Amir: “Yep.”
Randy
Glass: “OK. They want to ship things like tanks, correct?”
Mohamed
El Amir: “Uh-huh.”
Glass:
“OK. How... OK. In or— ”
Mohamed
El Amir: “No, no, no, no. Just ammunition, not tanks.”
Randy
Glass: “So they just wanna do basically, small arms and
ammunition, right?”
Mohamed
El Amir: “Yes.”
Did Mohamed give Glass any indication
as to who was going to get these arms?
“Never got a chance to ask him,”
says Glass.
Glass says federal agents told him to
drop the matter.
So, what happened to the case? “Nothing,”
says Glass.
There was no follow-up. “No,”
says Glass.
Was this a missed opportunity? “Hundred
percent,” says Glass.
And Randy Glass doesn’t know the
half of it, because that same intelligence report that talks about Dr.
Elamir also names his brother Mohamed as having ties to Osama bin Laden.”
(2)
So at this point we now have information that
Dr. Magdy Elamir along with his brother Mohamed El Amir have ties to Osama
Bin Laden and yet neither one of them is arrested. Randy Glass says in
fact that “federal agents told him
to drop the matter.”
All of this information made me wonder what a person
has to do in
New Jersey
to lose his or her medical license? I also wondered why Dr. Elamir had
never been arrested for his connections to Osama Bin Laden? The only
logical reason I could figure that Dr. Magdy Elamir was still practicing
medicine was that he must have had one fine well connected lawyer.
I then took a closer look at the articles and court
documents I had collected on Dr. Magdy Elamir and they revealed who his
lawyer was.
“Elamir did not return repeated
phone calls seeking comment. But his
attorney, Michael Chertoff,
said several of the five MRI centers may be
exempt from licensing requirements, a position questioned by state
health officials.” (13)
The same article states that Dr. Elamir’s lawyer, Michael Chertoff,
also represented him in the fraudulent HMO case:
”Chertoff, who has represented Elamir
at court hearings on the state
takeover of APPP, said he did not know why the MRI centers did not
provide financial help for the troubled HMO, as envisioned in the
agreement.
Elamir has been accused by the state of diverting state Medicaid
funds to other businesses he owns. In a civil proceeding, the state
alleges that American Preferred Provider illegally"loaned"more
than $ 4
million to two start-up HMOs in
Michigan
and
Washington
,
D.C.
, also
owned by Elamir, and that APPP paid Elamir and various other businesses
he owned more than $ 5 million out of Medicaid funds.” (13)
I didn’t know who Michael Chertoff was when I ran
across his name as the attorney who defended Dr. Elamir in his fraudulent
HMO and MRI cases, so I did some research. I was completely blown away by
what I discovered about Michael Chertoff.
As it turns out, Michael Chertoff was appointed
Assistant Attorney General, under John Ashcroft, in early 2001 and was
placed in charge of the Criminal Division. (16) Since Operation
Diamondback was an active case when he took office, and culminated in
arrests in June of 2001, the case would have fallen under his pervue since
it was handled as a criminal case and not as a counterterrorism case. This
means that one of his former clients, Dr. Magdy Elamir, along with his
brother Mohamed El Amir, were now involved in a case under his
supervision.
When the attacks on 9-11 occurred, Michael Chertoff
was placed in charge of the investigation. On
Oct. 25, 2001
, CBS reported that the Feds had launched Operation
Green Quest in an attempt to stop the financing of terrorism. Here’s
what Dr. Magdy Elamir’s former attorney had to say on the subject:
"The lifeblood of terrorism is
money, and if we cut the money we cut the blood supply," said
assistant attorney general Michael Chertoff, the head of the Justice
Department's criminal division. (17)
The next day, on
October 26, 2001
, Michael Chertoff testified before Congress and had this to say:
“As an integral part of this
national effort, the Department of Justice and the FBI have established an
interagency Financial Review Group to coordinate the investigation of the
financial aspects surrounding the terrorist events of September 11th
and beyond. All members of this Committee recognize the importance of
understanding the financial components of terrorist and criminal
organizations. These financial links will be critical to the larger
criminal investigation, while also providing a trail to the sources of
funding for these heinous crimes. The importance of "following the
money," in this instance, as well as in the investigation of all
criminal enterprises, cannot be overstated.
The members of this Committee are
also well aware that money laundering constitutes a threat to the safety
of our communities, to the integrity of our financial institutions and to
our national security.” (18)
On
March 25, 2002
, CNN reported:
“Assistant
Attorney General Michael Chertoff is the Dick Cheney of the Justice
Department. Brainy, intense and well connected, the former federal
prosecutor can usually be found at Attorney General John Ashcroft's elbow
as the department's top counterterrorism tactician. And last week Chertoff
vanished to an undisclosed location.
With
no deputies along and no publicity, Chertoff was on a stealthy swing
through
France
,
Belgium
and the
Netherlands
. His mission: sell Western European governments on a new Bush
Administration plan to post U.S. Justice Department prosecutors overseas
in unprecedented numbers. "The sinews that hold a terrorist network
together are money, communications and transportation," Chertoff told
TIME before his trip. To help sever those sinews, Chertoff wants to have
American prosecutors stationed in key capitals, where they can work behind
the scenes with their counterparts to overcome the legal and cultural
obstacles to shipping evidence to the
U.S.
for use in court.”
Perhaps
Chertoff could have saved some time and effort and looked in his own
backyard for evidence of terrorist financing. To date, Dr. Magdy Elamir
and his brother have not been arrested and are still free.
I have a theory that Elamir was not arrested, because
if his case did come to court, then Chertoff’s role as his lawyer in the
HMO case might have been exposed. Since Elamir’s HMO was supposedly a
front for Bin Laden and millions of dollars were allegedly skimmed from
the HMO to fund terrorism, Chertoff himself might be implicated in some
way since he had to have had access to the HMO’s books and Elamir’s
finances when he defended him.
I also have a theory that this may be why Operation
Diamondback remained a criminal case and not a counterterrorism case.
As head of the Criminal Division in the Department of Justice, the case
would have been under the control of Michael Chertoff himself. Was this
the real reason why the case came to a screeching halt with only a few
arrests? Was this the reason why Randy Glass was told to drop the matter
by federal agents when the case started focusing on Dr. Elamir’s brother
Mohamed El Amir? Was this the reason why so many federal agents were
frustrated because they felt the case hadn’t received the attention of
higher ups in federal law enforcement? Maybe it had?
On
April 22, 2003
President Bush nominated Michael Chertoff to be the Federal Circuit Judge
for the Third Circuit. Judge Chertoff now presides over federal cases in
New Jersey
,
Pennsylvania
,
Delaware
and the
Virgin Islands
.
Part
2: The Good Doctor Who Wasn’t So Good
Sources:
(1)
Las Vegas
Sun, Indictment Against Mosque Leaders Unsealed, by Kirstan Conley,
Associated Press,
August 10, 2004
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2004/aug/10/081003703.html
(2) Dateline
NBC, On the trail of arms merchants,
August 2, 2002
http://www.msnbc.com/news/788686.asp
(3) Dateline
NBC, Stinger missile sting operation,
March 18, 2003
http://www.msnbc.com/news/887141.asp?cp1=1
(4)
Palm Beach
Post, Con Man Turned Patriot
Tells All, by John Pacenti, Cox News Service,
August 2, 2002
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/coxnews080202.html
(5) Time
Magazine, Al-Qaeda Moneyman Caught,
by Elaine Shannon,
May 1, 2003
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,448922,00.html
(6) Times of
India
,
India
helped FBI trace ISI-terrorist links,
by Manoj Joshi,
October 9, 2001
(7) The
Washington
Post,
U.S.
Reopens Arms Case In Probe for
Taliban Role, by John Mintz,
August 2, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33797-2002Aug1?language=printer
(8) The
Palm Beach
Post, Intelligence
Panel Hears from Glass, by John Pacenti,
October 17, 2002
(9) The
Washington
Post, A
Cloak But No Dagger, By Richard Leiby,
Saturday, May 18, 2002
(10) Medical
Economics Archive, Why
was this doctor allowed to
start a health plan?,
By
Wayne
J. Guglielmo, Senior Editor,
Oct. 25, 1999
(11) The Record
(
Bergen County
,
NJ
), Immigrant’s HMO Dreams End In
Financial Nightmare, By Lindy Washburn,
January 24, 1999
(12)
New Jersey
Law Journal, Lawyer, Three Doctors Arrested for Using Runners Charges are
product of 19-month undercover sting of suspected auto insurance fraud
ring, By Tim O’Brien,
July 23, 200
(13)
The Record (
Bergen County
,
NJ
), State Eyes New Probe of
HMO Operator; His Five MRI Centers Don’t Have Licenses,
January 4, 1999
(14) Nuclear
Regulatory Commission Issuances, July 1-
December 31, 1998
, Volume 48 pages 1-415.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr0750/nrci48.pdf.
(15) NRC NEWS, U. S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION, OFFICE OF
PUBLIC AFFAIRS, REGION I, NRC STAFF
BARS PRESIDENT OF NEW JERSEY MEDICAL FIRM, CONSULTANT , August 4, 1997
www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/
news/1997/97-098i.html
(16) Senate Confirmations 2001
http://www.leadershipdirectories.com/fmfyb5.htm
(17) CBS News, Feds Launch 'Operation
Green Quest',
Oct. 25, 2001
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/10/25/attack/main315901.shtml
(18) Prepared Testimony of the Honorable Michael Chertoff Assistant Attorney
General, Criminal Division United States Department of Justice,
10:00 a.m.
,
Wednesday, September 26, 2001
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2001_hr/092601_chertoff.html
(19) CNN, Ashcroft's
man on a mission, By
Elaine Shannon,
May 25, 2002
- http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/2002/04/01/mission.html
-
- Resources:
-
- The Randy Glass Timeline,
created by Paul Thompson
-
- http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=randyglass
-
- The
Randy Glass Video, A fascinating
video relating to an important unheeded warning of the 9/11 attacks
was shown on WPTV, an NBC TV station in Florida on October 7, 2002.
-
- http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=glass-graham_video_wmv
-
- Sander Hicks Interviews Randy
Glass on INN TV
-
- http://innworldreport.net/video/2004-07-02/glass.html
|
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