Caterair, George W. Bush & Mohammad Abdi--Can you hide a gun in a meatball?

The Finnlist: Swedish Meatballs with Lingonberry Sauce

When you finally get a juicy piece of meat in your mouth, it makes you realize what mean fare you’ve endured on the steady diet of BocaBurgers served up by the Bush administration. Such was my sensation when I clicked on an internet document called The Finnlist. Starving for truth over these past six years, I was doubly surprised to learn along the way that George W. Bush was a caterer.

My thanks goes out to Team8Plus—a specialized 9/11 research group for first linking me to the document, and to the indispensable cryptome, for keeping it up even under difficulty. It is supposedly a confidential FBI list naming 370 people suspected of helping Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

"It contains names, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail, even some social security numbers, of terrorists involved in the attacks of September 11, sympathizers, and those suspected of providing conduits for terrorist finance,” according to a June 10, 2002 article in London’s Telegraph.co.uk. The UPI reported on November 11, 2001 that the Bush administration confirmed the list, and said it came from the U.S. Justice Department.

It is an investigative file that was distributed confidentially to European counter-terrorism agencies for help in tracking down the so-called al-Qaeda terrorist network. It accidentally was posted on the internet in early October, 2001, by Finland's Financial Supervision Authority (RATA,) which shut down the website when the error was spotted, but not before it had been mirrored elsewhere, hence the name Finnlist.

The FBI has strictly controlled the release of information on the 19 hijackers who they say took part in the September 11 attacks and they were reportedly furious over this breach of security. The document contains raw data, often based on hearsay and unverified leads, on a myriad of Middle Eastern and Islamic names beyond the named hijackers, and it carries with it potential for misinterpretation and abuse. However, it also provides the clearest view yet into the state of American intelligence at a particular moment in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. It also raises more questions than it answers.

For instance, the Finnlist include a reference, “Possibly Deceased,” beside a subset of names, which correlates with the names released to the public of the 19 hijackers, with two exceptions: Hani Hanjour and Nawaf Alhazmi, who are on the Finnlist, but without the nominator. Lists of hijackers were publicly released on the 14th, and the 27th of September in 2001, and then again on January 24, 2002. We haven't been updated since.

Only one name with the nominator “Possibly Deceased” is on the October 3, 2001 Finnlist--but not on the hijacker’s lists. That name belonged to a 30-year-old from Ashdot, Israeli, Alona Avrham, and it appears instead on the list of victims of Flight 175.

Perhaps like the dual American/Israeli citizen Daniel Lewin, a former officer in an elite unit of the Israeli army--who was trained to kill terrorists with his bare hands, yet he fell victim on Flight 11--she carried with her some sort of special status.

Did Hani Hanjour and Nawaf Alhazmi have a special status? The earliest FBI list, coming 72 hours after the attacks, contains an oddly phrased request, “that anyone who may have information about these individuals—even though they are presumed to be dead—to immediately contact” the bureau.

The expanded September 27 Release, which was the first look the public had of photographs of the 19 hijackers, carried the caveat, “It should be noted that attempts to confirm the true identities of these individuals are still under way.”

In its third release of January 17, 2002, the FBI had upgraded with new photographs of some of the suspects, although without improving their web site, which still only just limps along, with most of the photographs failing to open, which makes it difficult for the public to lend any assistance. The new images of the Flight 77 suspects are formal shots in traditional Arab dress, the ghutra head scarves held in place by black-corded agal. They must have been provided by Saudi authorities in the interim, but why then does the FBI still describe the men as being possible Saudi nationals?

This third release, The FBI Suspected Hijackers List, starts off with five new names and photographs, of pre-suspects, or suspects-in-waiting, if you will, “believed to be part of the Al-Qaida terrorist network,” with the warning that the images, “depict five persons believed to be ready to martyr themselves” in attacks on America. These martyrs-to-be, or as I prefer, "martyr-ready," show the slack-jawed visages straight out of some B-movie central casting.

In the three publicly disclosed FBI hijacker’s lists, which both pre-, and post- date, the Finnlist, the five Flight 77 suspects, who are said to have flown into the Pentagon, are thought to have possibly resided in San Diego, Phoenix and New Jersey, in various locations often associated with flight schools. But on the once-secret FBI list, all five have addresses in the suburban Washington D.C. area, in close proximity to federal intelligence-gathering facilities, such as the NSA, the FBI, and the CIA.

Hani Hanjour, Khalid Al-Midhar, and Majed Moqed shared an address at 5913 Leesburg Pike, in Falls Church, Virginia, 8 miles from the Pentagon; while their teammates Saleem Al-Hazmi and Nawaf Al-Hamzi (apparently an “alias” for “Naweq” “Al-Hazmi,”) lived less than a mile away, on Row Street, in Falls Church. Three other men on the list have addresses in Falls Church: Ibrahim Al-Forahy, Dawood Natto, and Meshal Al-Hajri.

The FBI had an open investigation under way, Case I.D. # 199-I-WF-213589, focusing on Abdullah Bin Laden, who was President and Treasurer of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, or WAMY, a suspected terrorist organization, prior to September 11th, 2001.

Ibrahim S Abdullah and Sameer Moabbir are listed as Vice-Presidents. Abdullah Bin Laden lived with his brother Omar at 3411 Silver Maple Place in Falls Church until August 1997, while WAMY is headquartered at 5613 Leesburg Pike, only a few blocks from the hijackers' residence.

Abdullah and Omar's other brother is named Osama. All the extended bin Laden family members in the United States were given special leave to fly out of the country while the airways were still closed to general aviation.

Falls Church, Virginia could be described as the epicenter of conservative American culture. Supreme Court Justice's Scalia and Thomas worship at a Latin mass in a parish close by, along with ex-FBI Chief Louis Freeh (and incidentally, so did his friend, former FBI double agent for Russia, Robert Hanson.) Father Stephen McGraw, the Opus Dei priest of only a few months standing, but a former Justice Department lawyer to boot, whose photograph showing him kneeling at the side of wounded victims before a burning Pentagon building circled the globe on 9/11 and then back, also works nearby.

The BBC reported that Hani Hanjour and his four Flight 77 accomplices spent their last days in the Valencia Motel on Route 1, which is actually right outside the gates of the NSA complex in Laurel, Maryland. They left the Valencia early on the morning of September 11 to go to Washington’s Dulles Airport, and destiny.

James Bamford, an expert on the NSA, said, “The terrorist cell that eventually took over the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon ended up living, working, planning and developing all their activities in Laurel, Maryland, which happens to be the home of the NSA.” So why did the FBI publicly report them as living in California, Arizona and New Jersey?

The size of the NSA is classified information, but it goes so far to say it would rank in the top 50 Fortune 500 companies, in terms of both its budget, and the number of employees. Other sources say the workforce of 38,000 is sworn to a lifetime of secrecy. In the Operations Building, a monument of black granite is carved with the admonishment, "They Served in Silence."

The surrounding communities are dense with powerful Military-Industrial-establishment figures—-such as retired politicians and executives, who remain vital parts of a shadow government system. So it's interesting to find out they were living alongside a good quota of fanatic Muslim ideologues as well.

Within 72 hours of the attacks, Flight 11’s Waleed Al-Shehri had been credited with using seven different birth dates, with three potential residential addresses in Florida, according to the FBI. However, the address of the rooming house where he stayed on Orrin Street in Vienna, Virginia, may never have been disclosed, had not the accidental release of the Finnlist occurred. That address, incidentally, is three blocks from the CIA's headquarters.

On the three hijacker lists made public, Flight 93 and Flight 175 appear to be merely afterthoughts; with its reputed hijackers appearing like neglected stepchildren to the rest. Seven of the nine, are dismissed with just a cursory “possible residence(s) in Delray Beach, Florida”---while only two get birth dates. But on the once-secret Finnlist the identities of these men come to vivid life---with residences and military associations all over the United States.

McLean Virginia, is home to major defense contractors, along with Flight 93’s Saeed Al-Ghamdi. He is also given an address at 2401 Quarters Road in Lee, Virginia. That is the home of the US Army Logistics Medical Center at Ft. Lee, a facility that also served the medical needs, apparently, of another “suspect,” Abdulrahman Al-Ghamdi, of Vero Beach, Florida.

Listed for Flight 175’s Ahmed Alghamdi are seven US addresses—-one, at 10 Radford Blvd #243, Pensacola, Florida, was reported by Newsweek on Sept. 15, 2001 to be a residence for foreign military trainees at the Pensacola Naval Air Station. Newsweek also reported that Flight 93’s Saeed Alghamdi was at this same Pensacola Naval Air Station address, although that is not included among the eight addresses on the Finnlist given to Saeed. That would be evidence of omissions on the Finnlist as well. A third suspect is also listed with an address at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, where all of them applied for and received driver’s licenses or car registrations.

Saeed Al-Ghamdi is given nine aliases, with three possible birth dates, but the age range spans an unbelievably 16 years. The only prior disclosed address for him, “May have lived in Delray Beach, Fla.,” is confirmed here as accurate---now fleshed out with a, “755 Dotterel Road,” which he shared with Flight 175’s Hamza Al-Ghamdi, as well as with his fellow Flight 93 terrorist's Ahmed Al-Haznawi and Ahmed Al-Nawi—-that is if “755 Dehiterel Road, Delray Beach, FL” turns out to be a transcription error, as seems likely.

Such poor proofreading is rife throughout all of the FBI lists. Such unprofessionalism adds immeasurably to what is, for Americans unfamiliar with Islamic or Arabic names, already a very difficult task in identifying the individuals responsible for the attacks. Aliases often appear to derive solely from poor penmanship, a problem I've encountered in my credit report. Even the most basic cross-referencing would have gone far in clarifying matters, but it was overlooked.

Amongst Saeed Al-Ghamdi's various addresses in New Jersey, Arizona, Florida and McLean, Virginia, is a tantalizing one—-a mailing address at the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Time Magazine reported that “Pentagon sources confirmed that a man named Saeed Alghamdi graduated from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland, and that both Saeed and Ahmed Alghamdi appeared on a list for foreign military housing” there.

The Pittsburgh Tribune Review reported on September 26, 2001, in an article by Jim Ritchie titled, "Hijackers' names linked to sites near airports," that "Credit records examined by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review show that Saeed Alghamdi listed an address at Tyndall Air Force Base near Tallahassee, Fla. [which is] the home of the 325th Fighter Wing." The Air Force also confirmed it was investigating additional links between Alghamdi and Tyndall Air Force base. So why was the FBI so shy in giving us the facts?

The fourth member, and pilot of the Flight 93 team, Ziad Jarrah, is associated with six unique Florida addresses on the Finnlist, but none of them connect to or correspond with any of the other hijacker's addresses. That is unlikely in the extreme to be true.

Flight 77’s Nawaf Al-Hazmi, called “Nawaq” and “believed to be from Saudi Arabia,” on the earliest list, (not to be confused with a Nawaq Al-Handi of Mesa, Arizona,) who was at the Pin Del motel in Laurel, Maryland on the days preceding 9/11. They were all part of a group who were said to have worked out at a gym in Greenbelt, Maryland. Additional addresses would indicate Al-Hazmi was also connected to the San Diego and the New Jersey “cells.”

Waleed Al-Kahtani is provided an address in Radford City, Virginia, with another 15 miles away in Pulaski, Virginia—-a line between the two neatly sandwiches the Radford Army Ammunition Plant.

Al-Kahtani is also listed at an address at 3900 Richmond Lane, Montgomery, Virginia, but that could be a typo. There is no such city in Virginia. But Google Maps redirected me to that address in Montgomery, Alabama---which, surprise, surprise, sits right next door to nearby Maxwell Air Force Base. Newsweek said an unnamed hijacker trained at the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama, so that could provide a verification for Al-Kahtani.

28-year-old Mohammad Arara is a name listed at 1134 Pinemont Place, in Annapolis, Maryland, which sits directly across the water from the Naval Surface Warfare Center. He is also listed at an Elden Street address in Herndon, Virginia, which is just off the Dulles Airport access road and home of the Federal Aviation Authority.

Vero Beach, Florida

Six names are associated with the same Vero Beach address: 2805 Airport Road, while 13 names are associated with another Vero Beach address: 2840 Flight Safety Drive. Both provide temporary housing for pilot trainees at the Flight Safety Academy.

An additional 47 Vero Beach addresses are associated with other various names on the FBI's Finnlist.

The number of times that "Vero Beach" is mentioned in the “exhaustive” 9/11 Commission Report? Zero.

Which is extremely odd, especially given the fact that four men who were mistakenly named as potential terrorists in the earliest days after 9/11, Adnan Bukhari, Ameer Bukhari, Abdul Rahman Al Omari, and Ameer Kamfar, were also residents of Vero Beach.

A War Against Reality

What use would suiciding martyrs have for stolen identities, aliases, or forged documents, which is the sum story of the 9/11 Commission Report?

Subterfuge served no purpose for the hijackers, who were all apparently in the United States legally. They boarded the planes legally, carrying items that were lawful to carry on---so, why would they risk it? Such clandestine guile and cunning is pointless if unnecessary to achieve an objective, which in this case was a message they supposedly wanted shouted out to the world.

It is the total incomprehensibility of any motive giving rise to the attacks of 9/11, which adds to our terroristic wounding. However, it just doesn't stem from any Saudi hijackers.

Our government’s official case rests on these foreign pilots receiving flight training in the United States for its basic plausibility. Even some of the so-called ‘muscle” also trained to fly—-maybe an “air and a spare” rational, just so long that it doesn't interfere with the other oft-repeated talking point: those all-important gym workouts.

But any time spent in the United States then makes it implausible that it was strict religious ideology that motivated 19 sophisticated young men into a coordinated suicide plan, in order to make some abstract point about "hating our freedoms," which was never actually articulated by anybody! Hate our freedoms? They indulged in our freedoms willingly!

CBS News reported that three of the hijackers were in a strip club in Daytona Beach, Florida the evening before the attack. They spent between $200 and $300 each, on drinks and lap dances, at the Pink Pony and Red Eyed Jack’s Sports Bar. Get the picture?

President Clinton gave a speech to the Democratic Leadership Council, at New York University, on December 3, 2002, in which he shared some rather privileged information:

"We're all in somebody's computer. They know where we live, they know where we pay our utility bills, and they know how many credit cards we have. They know what our debt is. The biggest of these companies is in Arkansas. My best childhood friend works there. He called me a couple of days after September 11th and said, "we have four FBI agents here and we've already found five of these terrorists in our computers." Well, you say, that's fine, but could they have known before September 11th? You tell me. One of the men who flew an airplane into the World Trade Center had 30 credit cards, a quarter of a million of dollars in debt, and a consolidated payout schedule of $9,800 a month. If somebody has been in this country for two years, or less, and already has 30 credit cards, and a quarter a million dollars in debt, they're either really rich, or up to no good, and it shouldn't be that hard to figure out which.

Mohammed Atta, the ringleader, had 12 addresses---two places he lived, and 10 safe houses, under the names Mohammed Atta, Mohammed J. Atta, J. Atta, and his middle initial spelled out. So if somebody has been here a couple years or less and has 12 homes, he's either really rich or up to no good. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out which. That's more important than all that reorganization. That's what we ought to advocate. We ought to drive it home, as part of our homeland security position."

It’s interesting to note that of the dozen or so aliases on the secret FBI Finnlist for Mohammad Atta, the three aliases which President Clinton quoted, which came off an American credit reporting bureau, do not appear.

The name of a Laurel Maryland cleric, Moataz Al-Hallak, appears on the list. As reported by the Washington Post, Al-Hallak was being supported by a group, Solidarity USA, which was formed to help Muslims facing questioning and harassment in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Washington Post article in which Al-Hallak's name appears was primarily about the arrest of a certain Mohammad Abdi, an Alexandria, Maryland security guard, whose name and phone number were found on one of several maps in the blue Toyota registered to Nawaq “77” Alhazmi, which was left behind at Dulles International Airport on 9/11.

Mohammad Abdi's name does not appear on the Finnlist.

The Post article said, “Abdi's early work history also raised red flags for authorities. He worked for an airline catering company called Caterair, which has since been sold, at National Airport in 1993…”

A Google search of “george w bush”+caterair+”mohammad abdi” returned one hit---to the blog of a Margie Burns, titled, This is aviation security?

In it, is a tape-recording from 2003 of David Rubenstein, founder of the Carlyle Group commenting on his hiring, and subsequent termination of a former director of the Carlyle subsidiary, Caterair.

That man's name is George W. Bush.