Chertoff's client Dr. Elamir - brother Mohamed has ties with bin Laden
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3031371 Chertoff's client Dr. Elamir - brother Mohamed has ties with bin Laden
Posted by seemslikeadream on Sun Jan-30-05 05:35 PM
“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.” (1)
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The suspects named in Operation Diamondback are now known to have had ties to AQ Khan’s nuclear weapons network operating out of Pakistan. This info was not known during the operation by the ATF and FBI Agents who worked on the case. Dateline NBC revealed this information on January 14, 2005. ATF Agent Dick Stoltz who supervised Operation Diamondback had this to say:
“In the summer of 1999, a group of illegal weapons dealers were meeting at a warehouse in Florida, their conversations recorded by federal investigators. One of the men, from Pakistan, was seeking technology for nuclear weapons. Who did he say he was working for?
Dick Stoltz: “Dr. Abdul Khan.”
Chris Hansen: “A.Q. Khan.”
Dick Stoltz: “A.Q. Khan.”
Former federal undercover agent Dick Stoltz was posing as a black market arms dealer.
Hansen: “Did you realize what you had at the time?”
Stoltz: “No. We didn't.”
But now he does -- because A.Q. Khan is considered, by some, to be the most dangerous man in the world. Why? Because Dr. Khan has peddled nuclear weapons technology to some of the countries the United States considers most dangerous, and some accepted his offers.”
I find it very interesting that Michael Chertoff, the man tapped to cut off the flow of finances to known terrorists, had in fact represented a man from 1998-2000 who allegedly had ties to Osama Bin Laden and may have sent millions of dollars to him.
I also find it interesting, that while Michael Chertoff served as Assistant United States Attorney and then United States Attorney for New Jersey from 1987 to 1994, that terrorist acts, including the first World Trade Center bombing, were perpetrated under his watch and were fueled from a mosque in Jersey City that was never shut down and still exists today. Chertoff’s former client, Dr. Magdy Elamir, is known to have supported the mosque financially while having suspected ties to Osama Bin Laden. Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 bombing, just happens to be the nephew of the 9-11 mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
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http://www.opednews.com/duncan_013005_chertoff_questions.htm Chertoff Buried Early Evidence of Bush Torture Campaign in Afghanistan
Posted by seemslikeadream on Sun Jan-30-05 06:06 PM
Public Policy: Chertoff Buried Early Evidence of Bush Torture Campaign in Afghanistan
By Dave Lindorff, ILCA Associate Member
The nominee for new Homeland Security secretary, back in 2002, worked hard to keep the public from hearing courtroom testimony that would have revealed the Bush government’s new campaign of torture, allowing it to spread from Afghanistan to Guantanamo to Iraq.
From an article of mine in the current, Feb. 14 issue of The Nation magazine (www.thenation.org ).
Back on Friday, June 12, 2002, the Defense Department had a big problem: Its new policy on torture of captives in the "war on terror" was about to be exposed. John Walker Lindh, the young Californian captured in Afghanistan in December 2001 and touted by John Ashcroft as an "American Taliban," was scheduled to take the stand the following Monday in an evidence suppression hearing regarding a confession he had signed. There he would tell, under oath, about how he signed the document only after being tortured for days by US soldiers. Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis had already said he was likely to allow Lindh, at trial, to put on the stand military officers and even Guantánamo detainees who were witnesses to or participants in his alleged abuse. >br>
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Accordingly, Michael Chertoff, who as head of the Justice Department's criminal division was overseeing all the department's terrorism prosecutions, had his prosecution team offer a deal. All the serious charges against Lindh--terrorism, attempted murder, conspiracy to kill Americans, etc.--would be dropped and he could plead guilty just to the technical charges of "providing assistance" to an "enemy of the U.S." and of "carrying a weapon." Lindh, whose attorneys dreaded his facing trial in one of the most conservative court districts in the country on the first anniversary of 9/11, had to accept a stiff twenty-year sentence, but that was half what he faced if convicted on those two minor charges alone.
But Chertoff went further, according to one of Lindh's attorneys, George Harris. Chertoff (now an appeals court judge in New Jersey) demanded--reportedly at Defense Department insistence, according to what defense attorneys were told--that Lindh sign a statement swearing he had "not been intentionally mistreated" by his US captors and waiving any future right to claim mistreatment or torture. Further, Chertoff attached a "special administrative measure," essentially a gag order, barring Lindh from talking about his experience for the duration of his sentence.
At the time, few paid attention to this peculiar silencing of Lindh. In retrospect, though, it seems clear that the man coasting toward confirmation as Secretary of Homeland Security effectively prevented early exposure of the Bush/Rumsfeld/Gonzales policy of torture, which we now know began in Afghanistan and later "migrated" to Guantanamo and eventually to Iraq. So anxious was Chertoff to avoid exposure in court of Lindh's torture--which included keeping the seriously wounded and untreated Lindh, who was malnourished and dehydrated, blindfolded and duct-taped to a stretcher for days in an unheated and unlit shipping container, and repeatedly threatening him with death--that defense lawyers say he made the deal a limited-time offer. "It was good only if we accepted it before the suppression hearing," says Harris. "They said if the hearing occurred, all deals were off." He adds, "Chertoff himself was clearly the person at Justice to whom the line prosecutors were reporting. He was directing the whole plea agreement process, and there was at least one phone call involving him."
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http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1636&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 Chertoff Denies Advising CIA on Torture
Posted by seemslikeadream on Tue Feb-01-05 07:56 AM
Chertoff Denies Advising CIA on Torture
WASHINGTON -- Homeland Security Secretary-designate Michael Chertoff privately told congressional staffers Monday that he did not advise the CIA on the legality of using specific torture techniques on terror suspects when he headed the Justice Department's criminal division.
Meeting with Republican and Democratic staff members two days before his Senate confirmation hearings, Chertoff said any legal advice he gave the CIA was broad and generalized -- and merely from the viewpoint of "what a prosecutor would look for," one aide said.
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The Capitol Hill meeting, which lasted several hours, was described as cordial. Several aides who spoke on condition on anonymity said Chertoff grew slightly exasperated after repeated questioning over whether he had any role in approving techniques that critics said violated Geneva Conventions prohibiting violence, torture and humiliating treatment.
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Chertoff repeatedly told aides he gave only basic and generalized advice as "how a prosecutor would approach the statute."
http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-chertoff-hearing,0,1001949.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines Monday, January 31, 2005 · Last updated 11:05 p.m. PT
Chertoff denies advising CIA on torture
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Federal appeals court judge Michael Chertoff speaks during the announcement by President Bush of Chertoff's nomination to be his new secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Jan. 11, 2005. Chertoff is expected to win confirmation easily following his Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2005, hearing, although Democrats said they plan to question him about his role in advising the CIA about torture standards. (AP Photo/Susan Ann Walsh/File)
WASHINGTON -- As he prepares for his upcoming confirmation hearing, Homeland Security Secretary designee Michael Chertoff has denied advising the CIA on using specific torture techniques on terror suspects when he headed the Justice Department's criminal division.
Chertoff is expected to win confirmation easily following his Wednesday hearing, although Democrats said they plan to question him about his role in advising the CIA about torture standards.
Meeting with Republican and Democratic staff members Monday, Chertoff said any legal advice he gave the CIA was broad and generalized - and merely from the viewpoint of "what a prosecutor would look for," one aide said.
The Capitol Hill meeting, which lasted several hours, was described as cordial. Several aides who spoke on condition on anonymity said Chertoff grew slightly exasperated after repeated questioning over whether he had any role in approving techniques that critics said violated Geneva Conventions prohibiting violence, torture and humiliating treatment.
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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1152&slug=Chertoff%20Hearing