
Flatly
contradicting the repeated assertions by the White House and FBI that the Bush
administration played no role in the flights, an exclusive
MadCowMorningNews investigation has uncovered numerous connections between
the White House and the air charter companies involved in the evacuation of the
members of the Saudi Royal
family after the 9/11 attack.
Two of the
six Saudi charter flights scrutinized by the 9/11 Commission were flown by air
contractors involved in CIA renditions, while a third had close
ties to imprisoned Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
With 57
charter operators nationwide, and hundreds of Boeing 727s to choose from, the composition of the
hastily-assembled airlift which can be pieced together from the released
documents reveals a secret world which has gone, as yet, completely unreported...
One of the
six Saudi charter flights was flown by the national carrier of the
African nation of Gabon, to cite just one little remarked example, whose President would soon pay Jack Abramoff $9 million
for a promise of an Oval Office meeting with President Bush, which indeed did
take place, in May of 2004.
The CIA, The Mob & Universal Weather
We’ve
covered two of the Saudi flights in previous stories.
The
Tampa flight, where the Bush
Administration, the FBI, the FAA, and even
defense contractor Raytheon knowingly lied by repeatedly denying that one of the
flights—from Tampa to Lexington KY on Sept. 13th—had even taken place. When the
flight was eventually confirmed by the 9/11 Commission three years later, Bush
Administration officials didn’t even have the good grace to blush.
And the
Providence flight,
which flew an unnamed Saudi Sheik and his entourage from Providence Rhode Island
to Paris on September 14, 2001 on a jet owned by a close business associate of
New England Mob Boss Raymond J. (Junior) Patriarca. Yet there is no mention of the organized crime connections of Northstar air
charter company owner Frank Zammiello in either the
9/11 Commission Report or the
recently-released
FBI documents.
Today
we’ll look at two more:
-
The
charter flight called “The
Universal Weather Flight” by the FBI has led to the discovery that
all three of the top corporate air charter companies in Houston, Texas are CIA
contractors deeply involved in “extraordinary renditions.”
-
And
the PAX flight, an air
charter of Saudi royals anxious to flee Las Vegas, on a
727 sporting, ironically enough, the
Christian symbol of peace, a dove, on it’s tail, and which belonged to a
Christian broadcaster, PAX-TV.
(The
series will finish later this week with a report on the most controversial, the
bin Laden flight.)
"The murky sludge-filled bottom"
"In trying
to get to the bottom of (the Saudi flights) you find a lot of difficulty
navigating that murky, sludge-filled bottom," said commissioner Tim Roemer, a
former
Democratic lawmaker. "There are just not a lot of solid answers on this."
Murky or not,
the FBI and the 9/11 Commission have insisted that the Saudi flights were
adequately screened by law enforcement officials and the FBI to ensure that the
people on these flights did not pose a threat to national security.
FBI officials
indicated that they were unconcerned with the departure of the Saudis, including
Bin Laden's family members, and that no one of interest to the FBI with regard
to the 9/11 investigation was allowed to leave the country.
However their
assurances ring a little hollow in light of what has since been learned of
methods that can only be described as more than a little flat-footed.
The New York
Daily News (June 10, 2004) reported “a top FBI source” confided to
the paper that before 9/11 the FBI repeatedly dangled a $5 million reward in
front of Bin Laden's siblings living in the U.S. for help in tracking down the
terrorist.
"Red-carpeting the entourage"

“We started
every conversation with 'Hey, how'd you like to make $5 million?'"
the “top” FBI source told the Daily News. “And they'd just look at us, like,
'Are you kidding?'"
Could this be what
commissioner Roemer meant by “that murky sludge-filled bottom?”
A
close reading of the newly-released government records clearly illustrated the
active role played by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in aiding some of the
Saudis in their departure.
Of course,
the FBI strenuously disagrees.
"I say
baloney to any inference we red-carpeted any of this entourage,"
an FBI official wrote in a 2003 internal note which was released.
“Red-carpeting the entourage” appears to be the least of it.
Pre-positioning the excuses
Labeled
“The
Universal Weather Flight” by the FBI, the
Saudi charter exposed a secret world a world authorities were at some
pains to conceal.
The official
statement about the flight seemed unusually, even suspiciously, terse:
“A
Universal Weather & Aviation, Inc., flight with four Saudi nationals departed
from Boston’s Logan International Airport at 12:30 P.M. on September 18,
2001.”
Also, the
9/11 Commission Report, pre-positioning their excuses, said they
only learned of the flight while preparing for their final hearings.
All of which
piqued our interest...
Just who, or
what, is
Universal Weather?
“Universal
Weather & Aviation Inc. is a $ 150 million a year corporate aviation service
company with 300 employees in Houston,” reported a March 7, 1998 story in the
Houston Chronicle.
Collecting from slow-paying Sheiks
Dealing with Arab
potentates is apparently all in a day's work at Universal Weather. They’ve been
doing it for decades. From a Washington Post article on January 11, 1979:
“According to
Houston's Universal Weather and Aviation Inc., the president of the United Arab
Emirates has until Jan. 20 to pay for $188,000 in services
allegedly owed on a $7.5 million jet.
“Sheik
Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan owes for services rendered over a six-month
period, the company said, and unless payment is made, the jet, grounded in
Savannah, will be sold.”
While we
could find no resolution in newspaper reports, “Universal Weather’s” robust
corporate health seems to indicate they have no trouble collecting unpaid bills.
“Universal
Weather” has recently been reported to be a CIA contractor engaged in
extraordinary renditions. The company was named in an article about an ACLU
lawsuit against Jepperson, a San Jose, CA. aviation contractor also alleged to
be flying CIA extraordinary renditions.
Italian
investigative journalist Claudio Gatti alleged that Jepperson and three other
companies were involved in CIA rendition flights. Gatti’s report, initially
published in Italian business daily, Il Sole 24 Ore, named Universal Weather &
Aviation Inc as one of the companies directly involved in servicing CIA flights,
along with Jepperson, Air Routing International and Baseops Flight Planning.
The Geo-Texan CIA

We’d heard
the names of the other two named CIA contractors— Air Routing International and
Baseops Flight Planning—before, in the Houston Chronicle story on corporate
aviation quoted earlier…
“Houston is
home to three major players—Universal Weather, Air Routing International,
Baseops International Inc—in the corporate aviation service industry,” the
Chronicle reported.
All three
major civilian aviation contractors in Houston are involved in CIA renditions.
The
geo-Texan nature of this, seems, at least to us, more than a little odd.
So, too, do the people running the firm:
Universal
Weather’s chairman, Marjorie Evans, is a Director on the board of a small
Houston college, The University of St. Thomas, where her son, the
President of the firm, is an alumnus.
Sam the Sham & The Big Fey One
Really
ardent conspiracy buffs will recall that the University of Saint Thomas was
attended briefly by Adnan Khashoggi henchman John Gray,
author of “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.”
At the same
time Gray was a student,
Marshall Applewhite was an instructor.
After a
scandal involving inappropriate touching of an unnamed male student, Heaven’s Gate cult
leader-to-be
Applewhite was forced to leave.
Perhaps
coincidentally, Gray left at the same time. Gray left (fled?)
the school and become the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s “personal secretary.”
Although he
appears not be make a point of it—like he does his mail order PhD.—
Gray became the first student of Transcendental Meditation ever to learn to
“fly.”
Applewhite went on to lead a cult which committed mass
suicide in a Rancho Santa Fe CA, mansion owned by Sam Khouchesfahani,
a former Iranian SAVAK Agent convicted in 2001 in San Diego of infiltrating
several hundred Middle Eastern men the U.S.
'You can't make
this shit up"
Why
we say the Saudi flights are a portal into
the Secret World:
Later, while
working for Khashoggi—who picked up his Mars-Venus book on its way to the
remainder tables and made it an international bestseller with an infomercial
campaign from a Khashoggi lieutenant named Ramy El-Batrawi,
currently on the run from multiple counts of securities fraud, Gray helped fund
the mis-named 9/11 Truth Movement...proving that
Saudi money is liable to turn up just about anywhere.
Helping to explain all this is the fact
that
John Gray’s father, who committed suicide under exceptionally bizarre
circumstances (even for Texas) was a CIA agent.
Saudi flight on the down-low

Neither the
9/11 Commission nor
the recently-released FBI documents seem interested in revealing anything at all
about the air charter company involved in one of the Vegas flights used by
Saudi Royals.
The FBI
documents state:
“On
9/20/2001, 18 members of the Saudi Arabian royal party and their entourage
departed Las Vegas Nevada aboard a chartered B 727-21, tail number 727PX,
destination Stamstead Airport (London) England. Before departure the aircraft
was swept, perimeter security was provided, and all persons boarding were
matched to previously provided passports and a manifest by agents of the
USCS.”
The 9/11
Commission Report was equally non-committal on the provenance of the flight,
calling it only “Chartered Flight B 727-21, Tail Number N727PX.”
“On
September 20, 2001, 18 members of the party of Saudi Prince Abdulmajeed Bin
Abdulaziz departed from Las Vegas, Nevada, for Stamstead, England. They
underwent the same vetting process as the 69 people on the flight the day
before...
“At our
request, the Terrorist Screening Center ran the names of all passengers on
this flight against TIPOFF in April 2004; there were no matches. Las Vegas
Airport was open when this flight departed.”
Unlike other
Saudi flights like “Ryan International Flight 441 (the “Bin Laden Family
Flight”) this tells us little or nothing about the real question:
Who owned the plane?
Abe Lincoln & Ozzie and Harriet

We learned
that the plane is registered in Clearwater, FL. to “CLASSIC DESIGNS OF TAMPA BAY
INC,” owned by Lowell W. Paxson, one of the founders of Home Shopping Network,
as well as the founder of Christian broadcast network PAX-TV.
While this
explains the “PX” in the plane’s tail number, it does nothing to suggest why the
FBI and the 9/11 Commission do not want the American people to know that a plane
owned by a Christian broadcast network was saving Saudi Royal bacon in Vegas one
week after 9/11.
“Pax
passeth all understanding” was the snarky headline in a London Financial
Times story about the network. “Bud Paxson found God in a Las Vegas hotel room
and now runs America's newest television network,” reported the paper.
Calling
Paxson “a mogul inspired by the Lord,” the story stated, “While
work is his calling and his pleasure, Paxson said he does try to have some fun
with his money. He and his second wife, Marla, live in a $ 12-million, 35-room
oceanfront mansion, and each drives a Rolls-Royce. His is black, hers white. He
also owns three airplanes, a 132-foot yacht and a considerable collection of
autographs of former U.S. presidents, kings, queens and entertainers. Among his
collection are the signatures of Abraham Lincoln and Ozzie and Harriet.”
Hickory dickory dock, the Diceman joins the flock

While PAX-TV
has since faded from the ether, it was apparently quite a show while it lasted.
TV reviewers had a field day:
“Taking
refuge on Tuesday's weekly show is Brett Butler, whose escalating
self-destruction prompted ABC to cancel Grace Under Fire in 1998. Looking puffy
and pasty, she's playing a benevolent waitress in "Angels, Once in a While."
“Pax
bills it as her "much-anticipated return" to TV,” read one typical
summation. “Yeah, we've all been on pins and needles.”
The Christian
network apparently had an affinity for faded stars with or without documented
substance-abuse problems: Stacy (cocaine bust) Keach and Anthony Michael (detox)
Hall. Rod Steiger, Teri Garr, Marlee Matlin, Joe Piscopo...
The
unlikeliest one-time star appearing on God-fearing, "friend of the family"
Pax-TV and plumping for the Lord: Andrew Clay Silverstein AKA “The
Diceman,” the former Andrew Dice Clay.
Church of Christ, Palm Beaches
When Paxson
moved to Florida's east coast, he had trouble finding a church home. So he
became the “creator” of an instant new mega-church in Palm Beach, Florida:
“Christ Church of the Palm Beaches.”
When a deal
to buy the Palm Beach Jai Alai fronton to house the
unfortunately-named church fell through, he bought actor Burt Reynolds
dinner theater in Jupiter, Florida.
Jesus must have been
thrilled.
When Pax-TV
fell on hard times, it changed its name to ION-TV, and was bought
out by a Chicago hedge fund, Citadel Investment
Group.
Return of The Usual Suspects

Again,
conspiracy buffs will recall that Citadel is the hedge fund which loaned $32.5
million to Jack Abramoff and Adam Kidan to buy a fleet of gambling
boats in Florida.
The same
hedge fund which had been “duped” by Jack Abramoff in a scheme involving
offshore gambling and murdered mogul Gus Boulis had also stepped in to save a
business entity whose 727 was put to service on behalf of the Saudi Royal Family
one week after September 11th.
At this news, we
found ourselves at something of a loss for words. Then we discovered the
exact detail which seemed to wrap things up neatly...
Remember
Christ Church of the Beaches? The plan was to place heavy emphasis on
contemporary music. The pastor brought in a musician from Hollywood to run the
church's music program.
His name was
Cooper Getschal, among whose many achievements is having
programmed the drums on the Michael Jackson album, “Bad.”
Proving once again that truth is stranger then anyone cares to believe.
SUNDAY: RYAN INTERNATIONAL. SHEIKS ON A PLANE
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