MOHAMED ATTA WORKED FOR
ELITE U.S.—GERMAN
GOVERNMENT EXCHANGE PROGRAM
world exclusive
by Daniel Hopsicker
copyright 2003 MadCowMorningNews
may not be printed without
permission
VENICE, FL—April 24
For at least four years
while living in Hamburg during the 1990’s terrorist ringleader Mohamed
Atta was part of a 'joint venture' between the U.S. and German Governments,
the MadCowMorningNews has learned, an elite international “exchange”
program run by a little-known private organization with close ties to powerful
American political figures like David Rockefeller and former Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger.
The jointly-funded government
effort picked up the tab for Atta on sojourns in Cairo, Istanbul, and Aleppo
in Syria during the years 1994 and 1995, as well as employing him as a
“tutor” and “seminar participant” during 1996 and 1997.
Moreover Atta’s financial
relationship with the U.S.—German government effort may even extend back
to his initial move from Egypt to Germany in 1992, after being “recruited”
in Cairo by a mysterious German couple dubbed the “hijacker’s sponsors”
in a recent news account in the Chicago Tribune.
Mohamed Atta, before becoming
a ‘terrorist ringleader,’ enjoyed the patronage of a government initiative,
known as the “Congress-Bundestag Program," overseen by the U.S. State
Department and the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development,
the German equivalent of the U.S. Agency for International Development
busy currently supervising the secretive bidding race for tens of billions
of dollars of post-war reconstruction contracts in Iraq.
All the news that fits...under
the rug
News that Mohamed Atta had
been on the payroll of the elite international program surfaced in a curious
way just a month after the 9/11 attack: a brief seven-line report by German
newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Oct. 18, 2001, under the headline
“ATTA WAS TUTOR FOR SCHOLARSHIP HOLDERS.”
The story quoted spokesmen
for “Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft,” described as a “German international
further education organisation,” as having admitted paying Hamburg cadre
principal Atta as a “scholarship holder” and “tutor,” between 1995
and 1997.
But what makes the story
curious is that the German paper concealed the shocking implications
of their story, that Mohamed Atta had been on the payroll of a joint U.S.—German
government program, through the simple expedient of neglecting to mention
that the “Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft” was merely a private entity set
up to administer the "exchange" initiative of the two governments.
The U.S. end of the program
is run out of an address at United Nations Plaza in New York by CDS International.
The letters stand for Carl Duisberg Society, also the name of its German
counterpart in Cologne, the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft. Both are named
for Carl Duisberg, a German chemist and industrialist who headed the Bayer
Corporation during the 1920’s.
The list of elite power brokers
backing CDS International ranges from the aforementioned Kissinger and
Rockefeller to former President Bill Clinton and other Democratic heavyweights
like former First Lady Hillary Clinton and Clinton White House adviser
Ira Magaziner.
One reason Kissinger bowed
out
Kissinger, to cite just one
example, had at one time addressed over 100 international business leaders
at an anniversary dinner organized and celebrating CDS International held
at the River Club of New York June 2, 1987.
Kissinger congratulated CDS
International on its 20 years of service in keeping close business ties,
not only between Germany and the United States, but more recently through
career development programs for participants from other countries as well.
Five years later, Mohamed
Atta became one of these participants from "other" countries.
Then-President Bill Clinton
also found a lot to like about CDS International. During his visit to Germany
to commemorate the Berlin Airlift he noted that the United States "will
be working hard to expand our support" for the "Congress-Bundestag" exchange
which "has already given more than 10,000 German and American students
the chance to visit each other's countries."
Were he to give the same
speech today, he would no doubt change the wording to read "the chance
to visit and vaporize" each other's countries.
CDS International, states
the organizations literature, provides opportunities for young German engineers.
Mohamed Atta wasn't, strictly speaking, a "young German engineer," but
apparently Kissinger's praise for "career development programs for participants
from other countries as well" had been taken to heart by the friendly folks
at the Carl Duisberg Society.
"These young German engineers
earn real world experience and are given assignments to contribute from
the start,” a program spokesman enthused in a newspaper interview.
The organization is today
understandably shy about mentioning that their most famous recent graduate's
“real world experience” included murdering almost 3000 people in New
York City in slightly less than two hours.
A financial relationship
between the terrorist ringleader and the U.S. and German Governments has
not previously even been hinted at in America's major media. The conspiracy-minded
might conclude that the fact that the scoop is going to the MadCowMorningNews
may owe something to the program’s raft of politically-powerful boosters.
Big Juice in High Places
Having big juice in high
places may also explain more equally-curious omissions in a second story
about Mohamed Atta’s time in Germany, which appeared recently in
the March 7,2003 Chicago Tribune, under the headline “9/11 haunts hijacker's
sponsors; German couple talks of living with pilot Atta.”
The article describes the
1992 meeting in Cairo between Atta and a German couple running an "international
student exchange program," a meeting which the Tribune says led Atta
to move to Hamburg.
During a visit to the Egyptian
capital in fall 1991, the Tribune reported, the German couple had stayed
with friends who knew Atta's father, a Cairo lawyer, and his father's friends
had then introduced the German couple to Atta.
“Atta, who had recently
graduated with a degree in architectural engineering from the University
of Cairo, told the couple he wanted to study architecture in Germany, but
he had no particular idea where he should go,” the paper reported.
Though the article neglects
to mention it, the reason Atta found himself with “no particular idea
where he should go” was because although he had studied engineering at
prestigious Cairo University, he had not fared well enough to gain admission
to its graduate school.
The paper quotes the German
wife telling investigators: "In this first conversation, we suggested he
continue his studies in Hamburg and offered him a place to live at our
house."
Atta, she states, accepted
their offer right away.
This magnanimous gesture
by the German couple to an undistinguished young man they have just met
raises serious questions. Perhaps their gesture is just the very milk of
human kindness; perhaps it is something else.
Why did this German couple
running an international exchange program leap at the opportunity to help
a young man not considered promising enough to gain entrance to graduate
school in Cairo, and offer him a place to live at their house?
The Tribune doesn’t say.
And they have made it difficult
for anyone lese to follow up on their story, because they neglected to
identify either the couple or the "international" program they ran by name.
But although Tribune correspondent
Stevenson Swanson cites the German couple for “having played such an
important role in Atta's move to Germany,” he never gives either their
names nor that of the organization they worked for.
This is some curious, if
you know what we mean. After all, the story is 1200 words in length. So
its not as if they didn't have room to print the names, is it?
"Jane and John Doe from Help-A-Student
International" would have been enough.
You know: Who What When Where
and Why.
So, either the Tribune just
forgot the 'Who,' or something even weirder happened.
Was "Shock & Awe'
campaign used first September 11, 2001?
After studying German in
Cairo, Atta arrived in Germany on July 24, 1992, according to investigators'
records, and then lived rent-free for at least the next six months in the
couple's home in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood.
And since just two years
later Atta was on the payroll of the “Congress-Bundestag Program” it
is reasonable to conclude--and no thanks to the Chicago Tribune--that it
was also the "exchange program" responsible for bringing him to Germany
in the first place..
CDS International's elite
sponsors are apparently influential enough to have kept their organization’s
name out of the newspapers.
Or at any rate out of the
Chicago Tribune.
When Atta returned home several
years later for a three-month visit to Cairo, in 1995, the Egyptian
government was in the midst of cracking down viciously on Islamic fundamentalists.
Yet, strangely, Atta chose
this exact time to grow a beard, traditionally a sign of a devout Muslim,
but also in Atta's case assumed to have been a defiant political gesture
chosen to register his disgust at the secular elite that ruled his homeland.
Or, at least, that's the
way they tell the story.
And indeed, his two German
traveling “companions” report that Atta said he would not be cowed
by his home country's "fat cats," who he believed were criminalizing religious
traditionalists while bowing shamefully to the West in foreign and economic
policies.
At least that's what they
say he said.
But maybe growing a beard
and assuming an "Islamic fundamentalist" pose had instead merely been the
act of a man “singing for his supper” by going undercover on behalf
of “fat cats” from another part of the forest entirely...
Naw.
It couldn't be.
Could it?
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