Fearing for his life, Sami al-Arian, an admitted terrorist financer and one-time acquaintance of President George W. Bush, has refused to provide information to a federal grand jury regarding a Northern Virginia-based criminal network with connections to the U.S. government.

For nearly five years, investigators have been attempting to untangle the complex web of corporations, charities, and think tanks, which have allegedly been used by al-Arian and his associates to launder money for terrorist activities overseas and in the United States.

Although it has been grossly underreported in the mainstream media, the network under investigation has been intimately linked to the U.S. government, suggesting that some of the group’s activities have been sanctioned, protected, and possibly even coordinated by U.S. intelligence.

Sami al-Arian and another convicted terrorist supporter, Abdurahaman Alamoudi, both of whom have alleged links to 9/11, met several times with senior Bush Administration officials in the run-up to the attacks.

In June 2001, for instance, as a member of the American Muslim Council (AMC) (which was founded by Alamoudi) al-Arian was “invited to the White House complex for a briefing by Bush political adviser Karl Rove.”

Bush with al-Arian and friends

Similarly, in 2000 Alamoudi “was one of several Muslims invited to meet with [presidential] candidate [George W.] Bush in Austin, Texas”; and remarkably, just three days after the 9/11 attacks, Alamoudi was invited to a prayer service with the president.

Bush with Alamoudi

In addition to founding the AMC, Alamoudi also co-founded a U.S. government-contracted company known as Ptech, which U.S. intelligence officials have described as a CIA front “on the level of Iran-Contra.” More after the fold...

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Ptech, which has been reportedly connected to money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing, maintained contracts with numerous U.S. government departments and agencies, including the Army, the Air Force, Naval Air Command, Congress, the Department of Energy, the Department of Justice, Customs, the FAA, the IRS, NATO, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the White House.

Ptech’s primary investor and owner, Yassin al-Qadi, has been identified as one of Osama bin Laden’s “chief money launderers”. Al-Qadi escorted U.S. officials around during their official visits to Saudi Arabia and, prior to being publicly connected to money laundering and terrorist-financing, al-Qadi openly and regularly spoke of his friendship with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Furthermore, Ptech cofounder Alamoudi also founded a U.S. Army chaplain program for which he served as a consultant for over a decade. “The right to select military chaplains,” the ultra conservative Front Page Magazine has noted, “offered Alamoudi and his colleagues the chance to recruit still more Islamists with specialized and highly useful skill-sets.”

At the center of the investigation, the National Review noted, is Yaqub Mirza, who was also a Ptech board member and who is said to have contacts high within the FBI.

“Mirza has been publicly linked to the alleged financing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad through his organizations International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and Safa Trust,” the National Review reported.

According to investigators, IIIT was once the largest contributor to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which they allege was a front group run by Sami Arian, who is now refusing to testify before a federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida.

There are indications that prior to 9/11, al-Arian, Alamoudi, al-Qadi, Mirza, and other members of the alleged criminal network were protected from prosecution by high-ranking US officials, effectively preventing the FBI from stopping 9/11.

FBI Agent Robert Wright, who was in charge of investigating the Virginia-based network during the 1990s, said the FBI “intentionally and repeatedly thwarted and obstructed” his attempts to arrest terrorists, seize assets, and expand his investigation.

Approximately three months prior to the 9/11 attacks, agent Wright wrote a memo warning that American citizens would die as a result of the FBI's incompetence. He said there was “virtually no effort on the part of the FBI's International Terrorism Unit to neutralize known and suspected international terrorists living in the United States."

According to former Justice Department prosecutor John Loftus, even after 9/11 "people in the intelligence community came and said-guys like Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian and other terrorists weren’t being touched because they’d been ordered not to investigate the cases, not to prosecute them, because there were being funded by the Saudis and a political decision was being made at the highest levels, don’t do anything that would embarrass the Saudi government.” He went on to say:

“[W]ho was it that fixed the cases? How could these guys operate for more than a decade immune from prosecution? And, the answer is coming out in a very strange place. What Alamoudi and al-Arian have in common is a guy named Grover Norquist. He's the super lobbyist. ...Grover Norquist's best friend is Karl Rove, the White House chief of staff, and apparently Norquist was able to fix things.”

Norquist started an Islamic lobbying group, founded with seed money from Alamoudi. The group, according to Front Page Magazine, “has placed a number of questionable Muslim activists -- including the son of a Wahhabi preacher who helped Osama bin Laden's second in command raise money -- inside the Bush administration, including the White House, the Transportation Department and the Homeland Security Department, as well as other sensitive agencies.”

The American Monitor