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Yassin Al-Qadi
Last Updated: January 06, 2009

Since the early '80s, his close colleagues have been big-time money sources for both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. 

Three weeks after September 11th, Saudi banker Yassin Al-Qadi was declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), charged with directly sending millions to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, through US-based business and Muslim charity fronts.

For the previous six years, Al-Qadi was the major shareholder in a small startup company - Ptech –  somehow given control of the U.S. Government’s most vital computer systems. Included, among others, were the Departments of Defense, State, Energy, Transportation and Justice.

Eerily unknown is the fact that this Bin Laden banker’s company developed the FAA’s National Airspace System, newly in operation on the morning of September 11. Even less known is that the Ptech computer chief who created and installed the new FAA software was Felix Rausch, former Deputy IT Chief of the White House, and overall IT Chief of INTERPOL.

Al-Qadi could and should have been arrested several years earlier. In early 2002, Robert Wright, head of the FBI’s Terror Finance Unit (“Vulgar Betrayal”), publicly charged that since 1998, his superiors had blocked him from arresting Al-Qadi.

From the outset he’d been ordered by FBI top brass to drop the case, despite direct evidence that Al-Qadi had already delivered millions of dollars into Bin Laden controlled bank accounts. When Wright refused, he endured four years of harassment, demotion, invented administrative charges and finally dismissal, before a federal judge ordered his reinstatement.

Al-Qadi was also among the group of Arabian bankers operating a New Jersey finance firm named BMI, which former counterterrorism chief Richard Clark belatedly described as a “who’s who” list of terror financiers.

Among the principals of both Ptech and BMI was Abdurahman Alamoudi, a regular guest of President George W and co-founder, with White House favorite (and former Jack Abramoff partner) Grover Norquist, of the Islamic Institute. Alamoudi’s exalted political status ended with his 2003 indictment and subsequent 23 year sentence for terror funding.

Ptech and BMI shared numerous other investors, officers and directors later officially described, designated, or convicted as terror-financiers. They included:

  • Soliman Biheiri - BMI President and Ptech Board member. Convicted of perjury.
  • Musa Abu Marzook - SDGT leader of Hamas, laundered miliions through both companies.
  • Hussein Ibrahim - VP of both companies, and a director of the SAAR Foundation, umbrella group for more than a dozen terror-linked charities in Herndon, Virginia. They were raided by the Treasury Department in March 2002.
  • Yaqub Mirza, overall Executive of the SAAR Foundation charities, and a Board member of Ptech.. He’s also a Board Director of Amana Al-Qadi was Director of one of the largest charities “Blessed Relief”, funded by
  • Khalid Mahfouz –billionaire bailout provider for George W Bush’s failing oil company in the ‘80s. He was also principle shareholder of the global outlaw bank BCCI, Bush Sr’s Iran-Contra conduit, and after its $20 billion collapse, described by prosecutors as the “greatest financial fraud in world history.”
  • Two of Osama BinLaden’s nephews.
  • Saleh Kamel (whose Saudi company provided a no-show job in San Diego for the man who housed two 9/11 hijackers. Kamel’s bank in the Sudan held millions in Osama Bin Laden’s accounts. Kamel and Mahfouz are both on the “Golden Chain” list of Al Qaeda’s top 20 funders, seized during a Bosnian anti-terror raid.
A group of “Muslim moderates” who protested the March ‘02 Virginia charities raids was provided a private meeting with Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill two weeks later.. It was arranged by the Islamic Institute, co-founded by George W’s Muslim money raising lobbyist Grover Norquist.. The group’s spokesmen were:
  • Khaled Saffuri - the other co-founder of Norquist’s Islamic Institute, who formerly reported to Ptech investor (and imprisoned terror financier) Abdurahman Alamoudi.
  • Talat Othman - Chairman of Norquist’s Islamic Institute, and former Board Director of George W’s Harken Energy company. Othman gave a benediction at the 2000 GOP National Convention. He’s also a Director of Amana Mutual, part of Saleh Kamel’s Al Baraka Bank, along with Trustee Yaqub Mirza (head of the raided charities’ umbrella group).
The moderate Muslims’ leaders, according to Grover Norquist’s Islamic Institute, were encouraged by their meeting with the head of the United States Treasury Department.

By mid 2002, as he later disclosed, Secretary Paul O’Neill was convinced the Bush administration lacked the commitment to go after all terror financiers, regardless of their business or political connections. He was asked to resign before the year’s end.

O’Neill was replaced by John Snow, whose transport company had just sold its shipping line to George Bush Sr’s Carlyle Group. Snow’s company then did a billion dollar deal with Dubai Ports, the same UAE-owned company that Secretary Snow later rubberstamped to manage the United States’ major ports

Ptech specialized in what is called enterprise architecture, widely reported as descendant of PROMIS software, the precursor of “artificial intelligence” developed in the early ‘80s. Federal courts and Congress later declared that PROMIS had been stolen from its rightful owners by then Attorney General Edwin Meese and his business associates.

A hidden “back door” feature was then created, enabling those controlling the program to secretly remove, or even replace information in any system where its installed. John Zachman, considered the father of enterprise architecture, later will say that with Ptech software in control “You would know where the access points are, you’d know how to get in, you would know where the weaknesses are, you’d know how to destroy it.”

In October 2001, after Al-Qadi’s SDGT designation, several suspicious Ptech employees contacted the FBI but were ignored. Five months later, Indira Singh, a JP Morgan IT executive, met with Ptech representatives, and was alarmed by their immediate attempt to access the bank’s operating system. After learning about Al-Qadi, and his role in Ptech, she too contacted the FBI.

Still no action was taken until the Treasury Department learned that a WBZ-TV reporter in Boston named Joe Bergantino was pursuing the story. WBZ-TV held the story for three months at the request of federal authorities citing national security issues, as did ABC and NBC. In December 2002, just before Treasury Secretary O’Neill was fired, U.S. Customs (part of the Treasury) raided Ptech’s offices as part of its Operation Greenquest.

The FBI was furious, despite its recently revealed incompetence/indifference/ interference in genuine attempts to prosecute terror financiers. A turf war between Justice and Treasury soon resulted in Operation Greenquest being turned over to the politically compromised FBI.

Just hours after the Ptech raid, in which numerous carloads of documents were removed, White House and Homeland Security officials assured the public that Ptech’s software was “completely safe.” Never a word about its owner’s ability to transmit the nation’s secrets, along with funds, to the nation’s fanatic enemies.

In 2004, Ptech CEO Oussama Ziade was still bragging of the company’s continuing White House contracts.

Ptech eventually changed its name to GoAgile and moved to Egypt, working with what it called “Horizon” software. In 2005, the USAID agency actually financed GoAgile/Horizon to improve Egypt’s technology. Perhaps coincidentally, White House favorite Grover Norquist’s Palestinian born wife, Samah Alrayyes, is an official with USAID.

NOTE:   As of December 2008, Horizon Software's website identifies its United States operation as a company called Intelligile. It too has a website, Defense listed as the #1 industry it serves. A "Military Information Architecture" program is one of its major products. You can place orders, or ask for more information, by emailing them.  That's all the information you get, however. No names, addresses or client list.

Al Qadi first met Osama Bin Laden in the 1980s, and Treasury officials accuse him of funneling $3 million to Bin Laden in the mid ‘90s through the Muwafaq Foundation, funded by magnate Khalid bin Mahfouz. According to former counter-terror chief Richard Clarke, it was Mahfouz’s National Commercial Bank that al-Qadi used to transfer the money.

Billionaire Mahfouz’s former US financial representative was James Bath, George W’s National Guard buddy, chosen despite being in his mid twenties, with no financial experience
The Treasury Department also accused Al-Qadi of transferring nearly $1 million to Hamas through the “Quranic Literacy Institute,” and Hamas operative Mohammed Salah.

Since being declared a SDGT, Al Qadi has weathered a few international squalls.. Albania investigated him, along with Abdul Latif Saleh, for real estate fraud, and the U.N. designated him as a terror financier. Turkey designated him as such, too, although in 2006 an appeals court rejected it, allowing Al Qadi to “walk freely and conduct business” there.

As of early 2008, Al-Qadi was said to be doing those very same things in Saudi Arabia. The FBI put a gag order on Robert Wright, the FBI terror finance chief whose evidence from 1998 was finally used in October 2001. Wright wrote a book about his investigation being shut down, but the FBI blocked the its publication. One of the few things Wright has been able to say in public about the case is that he has a “whopper” of a story to tell.

Categories

International Finance | Information Technology | Terror Funding | 9/11 | Homeland Security | Defense

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