Special Report: By Wayne Madsen and Umberto Pascali

July 15-16, 2005 -- Islamic fundamentalist link to British Fascists; liaisons between "renditioned" U.S. intelligence asset Italy and Al Qaeda cells in Balkans; U.S. links to Al Qaeda all coming together in a nexus of intrigue and deception

Although British law enforcement has tied the London Transport bombings to three British citizens of Pakistani origin and one British citizen from Jamaica and the British and American governments are citing Al Qaeda links to the bombers, the fact remains that there are well-defined links between British fascists and Islamic terrorist groups.

The head of Britain's anti-terrorism branch, Peter Clarke, has identified the bombers as Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Husain, and Mohammad Sidique Khan - of Pakistani descent - and Lyndsey Germail (aka Jamal), a Jamaican by birth. They have been linked to Mohammad Barbar, a Queens, New York computer specialist arrested last year by U.S. authorities after he took part in an Al Qaeda summit in Pakistan.

David Myatt, a native of England's Midlands, was the founder of a fascist group called Combat 18, the security service for the British National Front. Members of British intelligence penetrated the group as a way to insert agents into Northern Ireland's Protestant paramilitary groups. Myatt, an Adolf Hitler admirer and self-styled "Satanic Fuhrer" since the 1960s, has been trying to stir up an ethnic war in Britain by pitting his followers against Africans, Asians, and Jews. The founder of a Fascist satanic occult group, the Order of the Nine Angels, Myatt's blueprint for a fascist takeover of Britain was contained in his 1997 book, "The Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution."

However, according to an article in the Birmingham, UK Sunday Mercury in 2003, Myatt experienced a metamorphosis from white Aryan nationalist to Islamic fundamentalist follower of Osama bin Laden. In his writings and web postings, Myatt/Aziz continues to attempt to meld Nazism with Islamic fundamentalism. Myatt converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdul Aziz. He also used the names Abdul bin Aziz, Abdul Aziz ibn Myatt, and Abdul al Haqq and has used the email address sheikh@al-qaeda.com.

Myatt/Aziz continues to fan the flames of British Fascism while adhering to his newly-found Islamic beliefs. He runs Britain's National Socialist Movement and a web site called Aryan Nation at the same time he leads a pro-Al Qaeda group called the Islamic Liaison Group. In many Islamic circles in Britain and abroad, Myatt/Aziz, who has become an "expert" on the Koran, is viewed as an Islamic "scholar" and even a "holy man."

After 911, Myatt/Aziz began echoing the most extreme Al Qaeda propaganda. He continued to pen such anti-Semitic tracts as "The Crusader War Against Islam" and "The Zionist Quest for World Domination." Myatt/Aziz's extremism was embraced by one British Islamic extremist group, Al Muhajiroun, whose leader, Sheikh Omar Bakri, told The Mercury in 2003, "I am very keen to meet up with him [Myatt/Aziz] as we both share a lot in common and I am sure he can help the Islamic cause." Although he moved from his Worcestershire home in 2003, Myatt/Aziz has continued to post inflammatory messages on Islamic and Nazi web sites using various aliases.

Now comes word from The Guardian that the fascist British Nationalist Alliance and British National Front are planning a series of incendiary anti-Muslim marches and seeking support from British football hooligan groups in West Ham, Milwall, Crystal Palace, and Arsenal (oddly, Arsenal, in particular, has multi-ethnic players), which contain cells of racist and neo-Nazi football club fans.

British Nazi-Al Qaeda Links? They are unmistakable and definite

The Independent reported on July 10, 2005 that Al Qaeda may have hired a gang of "white mercenary terrorists" to carry out the London bombings.The Daily Mirror reported on July 16, 2005 that the four bombers may have been "duped" into carrying their bomb-laden backpacks on to the Underground and a bus.

There is also intelligence that points to Italian neo-fascist, Pentagon Task Force 121, and Balkan Islamic fundamentalist links to the London bombers. French counter-terrorism official have reported that Balkans or Eastern European-origin military grade explosives were used in the London blasts. A major Italian investigation into the operations of a secret parallel neo-fascist network called DSSA, a hybrid group of Pentagon-CIA Special Activities Division covert operators working under the umbrella of Task Force 121, and the Balkans and Italian operations of CIA asset Husain Moustapha Omar Nasr (Imam Omar), a fundamentalist Imam kidnaped by the Pentagon covert operators from Milan on February 17, 2003 and flown on an "extraordinary rendition" flight to his native Egypt where he was tortured. But Imam Omar had another function. He was, according to Albanian intelligence sources, a CIA asset who kept tabs on Al Qaeda activities in the Balkans, particularly among Albanian Islamist extremists in Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia. With French intelligence reporting that the explosives used in London were Eastern European or Balkan in origin, it is important to revisit the U.S. relationship with Al Qaeda elements in the Balkans.

As in Britain, there are Italian Fascist-Islamic terrorist connections in Italy. C'era Franco Freda, the original neo-Fascist terrorist connected to the "Servizi Deviati" in Italy, which is being currently being probed by a Genoa magistrate, Freda was also pushing "Islamist" radicalism. Freda, it should be noted, created the group of anarchists who were used as front of for the Gladio/P2-backed neo-Fascist Milan bombings in 1969. Like Myatt in Britain, Claudio Mutti of the National Front of Thilger and other neo-Fascist Italian groups "converted" to Islam and created groups of Italian Islamic fundamentalists. The links between the neo-Fascists and Islamists in Italy are as unmistakable as those in Britain.

On October 16, 2001, weeks after 911, the Russian news agency Novosti reported an Al Qaeda training at Ropotovo, Kosovo, near an American base at Kosovska Kamenica. The report stated that according to Russian peacekeeping forces in the breakaway province, "the camp is now training 50 Afghan and Algerian mujahideen, led by Zaiman Zawahiri. He is reportedly the brother of one of the closest associates of international terrorist Osama bin Laden.

This camp prepares militants for terrorist formations in Kosovo and Macedonia. Their 'instructors' are former [ethnic] Albanian officers who, in 1991-92, deserted from the Yugoslav Army." The Independent (UK) reported on October 21, 2001 that "Interpol has linked bin Laden to Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) crime gangs, and that he "supplied one of his top military commanders for an elite KLA unit" in Kosovo." The Al Qaeda units were also operating in neighboring Macedonia. The Macedonian daily Dnevnik reported on Oct. 19 that the group led by the brother of ">Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the closest associate of bin Laden, had crossed the border from Kosovo into Macedonia. Quoting intelligence sources, Dnevnik wrote: "The younger brother of the chief of the Balkan headquarters of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, with around 50 mujahideen, has entered Macedonia and has started building fortifications in the Skopska Crna Gora region. The aim of the terrorist group is to attack the water supply" for Skopje.

The newspaper reported that the gang had been stationed earlier in the training camp near the village of Ropotovo, Kosovo-as Novosti also reported-and received orders to enter the Macedonian town of Matejce. On Oct. 16, a convoy of refugees, who were previously expelled by the KLA, were supposed to visit their destroyed houses. However, the observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe entered the village first, and reported that at least 50 armed men had communicated they were going to fire on the convoy if they dared to enter Matejce. The OSCE order to the heartbroken refugees was: Go back, we cannot guarantee your security. Dnevnik reported, "A deputy director in Macedonian intelligence was quoted in an interview in the Canadian Halifax Herald stressing: ``We have already provided a substantial dossier to the CIA, and obtaining further proof [of the link between bin Laden and the KLA] is our ministry's number-one priority.'' The intelligence official revealed that the Macedonian forces had contained the KLA assault in May, despite the KLA's superior armaments, because Ukraine supplied helicopter gunships. However, the KLA was able to neutralize this Macedonian advantage. He said, ``Shortly after that, our helicopter pilots reported being targeted by sophisticated [U.S. made] Stinger [anti-aircraft] missiles. It is our information that the (KLA] received these Stingers from their mujahideen connections in Afghanistan.''

During the time of the Al Qaeda/Albanian incursions into Macedonia, Macedonian intelligence began reporting about the narco-terrorist connections between the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the Taliban, and between these two groups and high-level U.S. and British intelligence agencies. This network, which was linked through Turkish intermediaries, figures largely in what former FBI Turkish/Farsi/Azeri translator Sibel Edmonds discovered while working for the FBI and explains why the Bush administration invoked a state security provision on her to prevent her from revealing what she knew about U.S. cooperation with and coddling of Islamic terrorist groups and Middle East and Balkans drug cartels.

On Oct. 23, 2001, Gwen McClure of Interpol's Criminal Subdivision officially informed a group of parliamentarians from NATO countries that Interpol has evidence that bin Laden is linked to Albanian gangs which have taken over the growing web of crime across Europe. Their investigations have also shown that bin Laden deployed one of his top military commanders for an elite KLA unit during the NATO war in Kosovo. ·

The Interpol confirmation of the direct collaboration between bin Laden networks and the NATO-KLA operations during the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, is further confirmed by an article in the Swiss financial daily (Neue Zuercher Zeitung) on Oct. 25, 2001: "According to Egyptian and French intelligence services, in the late 1990s, bin Laden brought 500 Arab mujahideen to Tirana [Albania]. They are reported to have fought side by side with the KLA and to have been involved in the most brutal acts of revenge against Serbian civilians.''

·McClure also stated that a meeting took place in Albania, in the presence of bin Laden, according to Albanian police. Several Algerian terrorists were present at the meeting. "It was during this meeting,'' she stressed, "that many structures and networks were established for propaganda and fundraising activities and for providing the Algerian armed groups with logistical support.'' During and immediately after the Kosovo war, when the KLA took over the province, heroin and weapons trafficking exploded unchecked. The so-called ``Albanian mafia'' ended up controlling 80% of the heroin distribution in Western Europe, when Kosovo had become a NATO protectorate.

A short article which appeared from the Egyptian Mideast News Agency on Sept. 8, 1996, entitled "Al-Jihad Terrorist Claims Strong CIA Terror Ties.'' It read:

"An important cadre in the al-Jihad organization, who has returned from Afghanistan, has disclosed that there are strong relations between the CIA and British intelligence on one side, and terrorist leaders in Egypt and the Arab countries. Ahmad Rashid, the former ideologue of the Jihad, said that (Ayman al-Zawahiri, the military commander of the Jihad organization, had asked the CIA for $50 million) early in the 1990s to stage a coup in Egypt."·

Other reports say that it was actually a man called al-Amriki ("the American'' in Arabic) who made the offer. The $50 million offer was accompanied with the assurance that the United States would not interfere with an ``Islamist'' takeover of Egypt, and allegedly proposed a (modus vivendi) between U.S. forces and the ``Islamists'' in the Balkans.

Reportedly, al-Amriki was known among Islamist circles as a CIA go-between to various militant groups especially connected to the Afghan Jihad. And, connections among the CIA, British intelligence, and Afghan ``fighters'' are nothing secret or surprising, given that Western agencies provided support, training, logistics, and financing for those who were willing to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. ·

In January 1998, in an interview with the French journal Le Nouvel Observateur, former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, an advocate of a ``Clash of Civilizations'' between the West and Islam, confirmed that, indeed, secret CIA support to the mujahideen started six months before the date given officially. The secret support was intended as a provocation to the Russians, to lure them into the "Afghan trap.''

Brzezinski stated: "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, on Dec. 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely the opposite: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the President in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.''

When asked if he regretted that provocation today, Brzezinski replied, ``Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap--the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: `We now have the opportunity of giving to the U.S.S.R. its Vietnam War.' Indeed, for almost ten years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some whipped-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?''

So, it is not hard to see why the ``Islamists'' would have an open channel with Western agencies including the CIA. The man who reportedly presented to al-Zawahiri the $50 million proposal and the encouragement to destabilize Egypt, is known as Abu Mohamed al-Amriki, ``Mohamed the American,'' real name Ali Mohammad. An Egyptian military man, al-Amriki joined the Jihad organization in 1981, the year that the Jihad claimed credit for the Oct. 6, 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Among the persons arrested for that assassination was Ayman al-Zawahiri, charged with illegal weapons possession. The stories of al-Amriki and al-Zawahiri tend to intersect not only in Afghanistan and Egypt, but also in the United States. It was al-Amriki who organized the visit of al-Zawahiri to New York, California, and Texas, to collect money, officially, for the families of the Afghan war victims. In reality, part of the money, according to the courtroom testimony of Khalid Abu-al-Dhahab in Cairo 1999, was used to finance the bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Al-Amriki reportedly began his career as the elusive ``American'' in 1981, when he first arrived in the United States immediately after having joined the Jihad organization, and was enlisted in a U.S. Special Forces school for foreign officers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

In 1985, after leaving the Egyptian Army, he came to California and married. In 1986, he joined the U.S. Army. As a sergeant, he was stationed again at Fort Bragg's Special Warfare center, and in the late 1980s he popped up at an Afghan refugee center in Brooklyn, New York. There he gave combat training to Afghan and Muslim recruits who were to be sent back to Afghanistan to fight the Russians. Al-Amriki in 1992 went to Pakistan and Afghanistan to train the bin Laden men, providing especially ``military and basic explosives training,'' according to U.S. court records. Al-Amriki terrorist career took off from there, putting him in contact and in a position of leadership with virtually every major Islamist terrorist organization. Al Amriki/Mohammad was indicted and convicted for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. One of the prosecutors in that case was Special Prosecutor in the RoveGate case, Patrick Fitzgerald. Nevertheless, Al Amriki/Mohammad was a prized contact for Pentagon special operations personnel. One of his closest colleagues, a former member of Delta Force, is now involved with Task Force 121 and the Pentagon's Strategic Support Branch (Project Icon) and passing intelligence to the neo-conservative parallel intelligence unit operating inside the Pentagon. Task Force 121 is the group responsible for the kidnaping of Imam Omar from Milan and other irresponsible and dangerous adventurism around the world.

SIDEBAR July 16, 2005 -- A small newspaper in Oklahoma is now reporting that former high-ranking Department of Justice officials are now admitting there was a cover-up of the McMurrah Federal Building bombing in 1995. The McCurtain Daily Gazette is reporting ties between the bombing and a Christian fundamentalist and white supremacist compound in Elohim City in eastern Oklahoma. Former FBI agent Mike German, a 17-year veteran of the FBI, resigned after he discovered the Bush Justice Department and FBI were not interested in pursuing dangerous right-wing "end time" groups.