"A
tire iron for your thoughts."
“Rahim” is indeed
Koutchesfahani’s real first name, we learned, after contacting a former
U.S. operative who spent much of the 1970’s in Iran and is still in close
contact with a gaggle of Generals among the Iranian exile community in
Southern California forced to flee when the Shah was deposed.
Cicchese had heard
Koutchesfahani call himself "Rahim." He recognized Koutchesfahani’s voice
immediately,
though the men’s paths
hadn't crossed since a decade earlier at The Moonlight Beach Lodge Motel in Carlsbad, an upscale San
Diego suburb.
“He was always trying
to fake an Indian accent,” said Joe. “I’d heard Sam fake an Indian accent
a million times at the motel, to size up people coming to rent rooms to
see how much they could pay.”
The next morning, Cicchese
reported the death threat to the Corvallis Oregon police. An officer told him
several days ago that they have called in the FBI on the case.
Cicchese had reason to be
frightened. Incurring Sam’s wrath could apparently involve tire irons…
“He told me he did arms deals for the Shah,”
said Cicchese. “And I believed it, because he was a really violent character.
He and I didn’t get along too well, because I didn’t hide the fact that he
didn’t know the first thing about motel management.”
A host of non-technical applications
“Then one day he called me into his office
because he was pissed about something,” Cicchese continued, “and he told me he
was going to beat me with a tire iron.”
“Later that day I had to leave the front desk
for some reason, and I saw Sam walking towards me up the center drive running
through the motel, and he had a tire iron in his hand!”
“And a customer came up to him and asked him
about something, and Sam kept looking back and forth between the customer and
me the whole time he talked with him. If that customer hadn’t stopped him, I
think he was going to hit me with it.”
When a man who walks around brandishing tire
irons delivers a death threat, people listen. It must clearly be taken
seriously. We pondered the incident, looking for a reason to explain the
threat…
Sam Koutchesfahani has never been questioned
in connection with 9.11, to our knowledge.

The MadCowMorningNews was first to report
evidence of his association in San Diego with Abdussattar Shaikh, a man called
the "best chance to uncover the Sept. 11 plot before it happened” in the
Congressional 9.11 Intelligence Committee report.
Both Abdussattar Shaikh and Sam
Koutchesfahani worked, strangely enough, for the San Diego FBI as confidential
informants. Both have changed their names.
Koutchesfahani later admitted in court that
during this same time period he was running a network in San Diego
which successfully infiltrated several hundred Middle Eastern men
illegally into the United States.
No wonder he doesn't want any witnesses
talking.
A utility player covers all the bases.
In a bizarre twist, Koutchesfahani was also
been the owner of the mansion where 39 Heaven’s Gate cultists committed
suicide in nearby Rancho Santa Fe in March of 1997, we learned from researcher
Kelly Cooke, both of whose parents perished with the cult.

A check of court documents reveals that
Koutchesfahani had been a full-time confidential informant for the San Diego
FBI at the same time he served as the cultist’s landlord.
In an even more bizarre twist, Cooke said, at
the time of the Heaven’s Gate cult suicide the FBI had been running a massive
operation, called—you won’t believe this—“Operation Heaven's Gate.”
(This must all just be freak coincidence.
When Koutchesfahani phoned his death threat to Joe Cicchese, the call hadn’t
been from prison.)
Strangely, there are also suggestions that
there may be links between the world of the much-traveled Koutchesfahani and
that of Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff, currently embroiled in a scandal which
one wit called “Dances With Sharks.”
In a 2003 filing in U. S. Bankruptcy Court in
San Diego, for example, Koutchesfahani stated he had been doing business under
the name TAN TRADING AND CONSULTING GROUP.
Abramoff’s and Delay’s partner in crime in
the Mariana's was Asian Underworld biggie Willie Tan, whose Tan Holding
Company ran gambling casinos as well as sweatshops accused of slave labor.
Making
up the 'truth' as they go along... and getting away with it.
Could these business entities somehow be
related? Reinforcing this suspicion is the striking similarity between
Koutchesfahani’s and Abramoff’s treatment of the truth.
In the same way that flight schools in
Florida provided “cover” for Mohamed Atta and his terrorist pals, a handful of
bogus “Universities” in San Diego appear to have provided cover for another
contingent of suspected terrorists.
And Koutchesfahani himself tried to pass
himself off as a Psychologist with California authorities through use of a
bogus PhD. His efforts met with some success… The Nov 16, 1997 Chicago Tribune called him
“San Diego psychologist Sam Koutchesfahani, though his “doctorate” was from a
diploma mill called “Newport University.”
Here’s a description of the campus of
"Newport University" from the June 09, 1996 SALT LAKE TRIBUNE:
“A couple of clunker cars sit in the driveway
of a 40-year-old brick house, which sits squarely in a commercial zone: a
hardware store in back, an equipment-rental company in front and a McDonald's
expanding up the street.”

”The back yard has an old cedar fence, a
rusting clothesline and an overgrown shade tree. Inside the house, a
secondhand desk, some office chairs, bookshelves and a pair of torch lamps are
assembled in the living room…”
“Welcome to Newport University, Utah's newest
private college.”
A think tank for the ages.
Compare this charade with testimony this week
in the Abramoff/Delay Tribal and Casino Gambling Scandal
showing an oddly similar attitude towards the truth.
Hired to promote Indian tribes' casino
interests in Washington, Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s modus operandi
also involved use of bogus organizations and dummy corporations and think
tanks…
Abramoff charged exorbitant fees for work he
didn't do, and set up fake charities to shelter the ill-gotten gains. There
were phony grass-roots Christian groups. Phony billing statements. And
nonprofits with phony purposes.
Phoniest of all was the "premiere
international think tank" called the American International Center through
which rivers of cash was funneled.
Senate investigators discovered the “think
tank” was being “run” by two boyhood friends of Abramoff partner Michael
Scanlon: a yoga instructor and a lifeguard named David Grosh, who brought the
Senate hearing to a halt with laughter during his testimony about how he had
been selected to run an international think tank.
The American International Centre was
promoted as "bringing great minds together from all over the globe" under the
"high-power directorship" of Mann and Grosh.
Yet Grosh told John McCain’s Senate hearing
on Indian Gambling that Scanlon had simply asked him, "Want to be head of an
international corporation?"
"I was like, sure," said Grosh. "It was a
hard one to turn down. I asked him what I had to do, and he said 'Nothing'. So
that sounded pretty good to me."
Thus Grosh became the director of the grandly
titled and totally fictitious "American International Centre," used to launder
millions of dollars back to Abramoff and Scanlon.
One beneficiary was President George W. Bush.
Abramoff was his chief fundraiser.
Grosh prepared a two-sentence statement to
preface his day on Capitol Hill. "I'm embarrassed and disgusted to be a part
of this whole thing. The Lakota Indians have a word, wasichu, which aptly
describes all of us right now."
He did not elaborate, but reporters learned
that ‘wasichu’ means "he who steals the fat.”
"Go
long till I trip the referee."
Something about this story seemed out of the
same “playbook” used by Abdussattar Shaikh, the key 9.11 witness nobody heard
testify because of the FBI’s unconstitutional refusal to produce him before
Congress.
Imagine the Watergate Hearings without John
Dean.
Incredibly, while working as a confidential
informant for the San Diego FBI, Shaikh had two of the hijackers living in his
house in San Diego.
When the FBI claims ignorance (hard
not to believe about the FBI), their claim of ignorance strains credulity past
the breaking point, and leaves the distinct impression that there is far
more going on here than is visible so far.
A homemaker who lives next door to
Shaikh's house, for example, told the FBI she is "positive" she saw Mohamed Atta there.
Marna Adair said the polite, clean-shaven Atta was frequently at the home of
Abdussattar Shaikh between August and early December of 2000.

Several other neighbors testified told the FBI
the same thing. Deborah Fortner remembered Atta "was the one that was scary.
He's got these piercing eyes. That's something you never forget about him."
Sounds like our boy. But what was he doing
with Shaikh?
Shaikh was identified in wire reports as “a
retired professor of English at San Diego State,” and “Vice President for
International Projects at American Commonwealth University.”
But a MadCowMorningNews investigation
revealed that Shaikh’s status as a “professor” was merely his ‘cover.’
Abdussattar Shaikh never taught at San Diego
State, has never been a Professor of English, and possesses a phony PhD from a
bogus diploma mill run by people with U.S. military and intelligence
connections.
The "University" for which he was said to be
‘Vice President for International Projects’ does not, in fact, exist.
And—if that weren’t enough to raise eyebrows
skyward— ‘Abdussattar Shaikh" is not his real name.
The lighter side of the news
The just-released Internal review of the
Sept. 11 attacks states that the FBI investigated whether Shaikh was involved
in the attack.

“A polygraph was inconclusive, but the San
Diego FBI concluded he had not been part of the plot.”
This is truly chilling news... so chilling
that we think it best to close on a lighter note:
Undeterred by the intense controversy over GOP lobbyist
Abramoff’s dealings with Indian tribes and their casino interests, Rep.
J.D. Hayworth, (R-Ariz.) pushed for a bill this week which would exempt all American Indian
businesses (especially casinos) from federal labor laws.
We admit to a back-handed admiration for the efforts of
a man who refuses to be slowed or stifled by his
unfortunate resemblance to a cloning experiment grafting human
cells to those of a pig. But someone in his position, we believe firmly,
should pay especial attention to timing.