The Family, continued

I probably bit off much more than any one blogger could hope to masticate when I said (in a post below) that I hope to draw a connection between the Litvinenko murder and 9/11. At first glance, such a claim will strike most people as quite outrageous. Alas, a single blog post, even a long one, cannot convey the reasons why my suspicions run in that direction. For now, I can only hope to offer glimpses of that story.

Our first two glimpses must be of two interviews conducted by Daniel Hopsicker in which we encounter cryptic references to "The Family." We have discussed these mysterious comments before. The term appears in this interview with Amanda Keller (Mohammed Atta's girlfriend) and in another videotaped interview with a restaurant owner who overheard the hijackers shortly before the attack on the World Trade Center.

Both interview subjects offered the phrase independently and without prompting. In both cases, the hijackers seemed to make reference to a larger "control" group.

That same nomenclature -- "The Family" -- describes a group of Russian oligarchs who came to prominence during the Boris Yeltsin years. These insiders robbed the nation blind after the transition to what was laughingly called capitalism.

This Russian "Family" achieved a large measure of covert control over the former superpower as Boris Yeltsin declined in both health and mental capacity. They ruled ruthlessly and conspiratorially, smearing opponents and staging provocations as they bled dry their Motherland.

The godfather of the Family was and is magnate Boris Berezovsky, former employer of Alexander Litvinenko. The group's godmother, so to speak, was Yeltsin's daughter Tatanya. (Interestingly, Yeltsin himself was on poor terms with Berezovsky toward the end.)

Vladimir Putin was also a member of the Family. After a fierce and convoluted succession struggle, he followed Yeltsin, achieving power in no small measure through the good graces of Berezovsky. Putin seems to have followed a course similar to Martin Boorman's, operating behind the scenes with quiet efficiency while the national leader slowly lost his faculties. After he gained control of Russia, Putin turned against many of the oligarchs -- specifically, against Berezovsky. From his place of exile in Britain, Boris Berezovsky has plotted vengeance.

The reader should understand that "The Family" is not just a fanciful name applied by one or two writers. Russian journalists often use this label to describe the powerful network which congealed around Boris Yeltsin. Moreover, members of this group refer to themselves as "The Family."

The sources cited in my previous post indicate that Russia's "Family" became embroiled in the Afghan drug trade and with the Islamic extremists in Chechnya. Osama Bin Laden was the "behind the scenes" ruler of Afghanistan, where much of the world's heroin is grown. He was also a source of inspiration to Basaev, who trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.

For these reasons and others, I believe that Atta's "Family" and the Russian "Family" are one and the same.

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There also appears to be a connection between the Family and the American right -- although at this writing, I cannot claim a full understanding of this linkage. Haliburton is partner in a company called Far West, which, according to some sources, functions as a business front for the Family.

At least one important representative of the Family, Alexander Voloshin, attended a meeting at Adnan Khashoggi's villa in the south of France in July of 1999. Although Berezovsky's creature, Alexander Litvinenko, has denied in print that such a meeting took place, we know from reliable sources that it did occur (Khashoggi having admitted as much) and may have lasted as long as three weeks.

At this meeting, Voloshin (Putin's Chief of Staff, who quit when Putin turned against the Family) met with Chechen warlord Shamil Basaev, the chieftain of the most extreme Islamic faction within Chechnya. Such an encounter would strike many Russians as unthinkable, since most Russians despise Basaev. Imagine how most Americans would react if you told them that Andy Card secretly conferred with Osama Bin Laden after 9/11.

Yet this "impossible" meeting was both recorded and photographed.

Moreover, according to John Dunlop (see below), the fanatical jihadist Basaev received covert funding from none other than Boris Berezovsky.

Some aver that the 1999 Khashoggi meeting cemented a plan called "Storm in Moscow," designed to place Putin (then a Family member in good standing) in power by engineering a series of terrorist bombings, which would be blamed on the Chechens. These attacks led to a second Chechen war. Nothing frightened the Family more than the prospect of reformists gaining control in the Kremlin.

Even as The Family fueled Russian fury against Chechnya, Berezovsky funded Basaev and the Chechen extremists, while undermining Chechen moderates.

The meetings in Khashoggi's villa were recorded by Israeli and French intelligence. Although published sources do not reveal which agency planted the eavesdropping devices, I believe that this task fell to the Israelis, who have a special expertise in this area, and who have every reason to keep tabs on Khashoggi. To operate freely on French soil, Mossad would, of necessity, have had to share the intelligence haul with the French.

Obviously, the hidden microphones must have picked up more than one meeting.

If the Israeli/French spooks listening in on Adnan Khashoggi and his houseguests overheard plans for what has been called "Russia's 9/11," did they also get advance word of our 9/11?

The issue of 9/11 foreknowledge is quite complex. Many foreign services seem to have had some idea that a strike was in the works, and many nations conveyed appropriate warnings to the United States. However, the French do appear to have given the CIA specific information about an attack on U.S. soil. Also, the invaluable Cooperative Research timeline offers this intriguing paragraph:

Late August 2001: French Warning to US Echoes Earlier Israeli Warning

French intelligence gives a general terrorist warning to the US; apparently, its contents echo an Israeli warning from earlier in the month (see August 8-15, 2001). [Fox News, 5/17/2002]

The wording here implies that the Israelis and the French offered the same details, presumably from the same source. I tentatively posit, but cannot prove, that the Khashoggi eavesdropping operation may have been that source.

I would also like to draw one further parallel between the war against the Chechens in 1999 and the later war on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2002. From John Dunlop's important essay "Storm in Moscow":

The commander of a Russian special operations team in Dagestan told a correspondent for Time magazine that on one scorching August day in 1999, “he had Chechen warlord Shamil’ Basaev in his sights…. With a simple squeeze of his finger, [he] could take out Basaev… But [he] says that he received the following order over his walkie-talkie: ‘Hold your fire.’” “‘We just watched Basaev’s long column of trucks and jeeps withdraw from Dagestan back to Chechnya under cover provided by our own helicopters,’” the Russian officer recalled. “‘We could have wiped him out then and there, but the bosses in Moscow wanted him alive.’”

Exactly similar stories surround Osama Bin Laden's escape from Afghanistan, down to the "in our sights" claim.

Did Litvinenko know of Berezovksy's connection with Chechen warlord Basaev? Did Litvenenko know the true details of "Storm in Moscow"?

Obviously, Litvinenko must have had some reason to lie about that meeting at Khashoggi's villa. We know that Litvinenko planned to blackmail the exiled oligarchs. (He and his one-time patron, Berezovsky, had a falling out.) If Litvinenko planned to reveal that either the Russian or American terror attacks were "Family" affairs, then an obvious motive for his murder suggests itself. Khashoggi's motive for funding disinformation also becomes clear.