Wayne Madsen has followed up on his earlier cryptic posting (WMR Dec. 26-27, 2006) about the deflection of investigation into Russian-Israeli mafia links to 9/11 by providing one of the links he's alluding to;

SPECIAL REPORT. Scaramella-Berezovsky link to World Trade Center security firm emerges in Italian law enforcement investigation.

...The connections now discovered by Italian and Russian investigators between the Russian-Israeli-Italian-British-US private intelligence network of former intelligence agents and billionaire mobsters suggest that the "serious crimes" committed may be more than the poisoning of Litvinenko and others with radioactive materials. The investigators are wise to pursue the links to U.S. security firms and former CIA personnel involved in pre-9/11 protection functions. The FBI cannot or will not investigate the actual perpetrators of 9/11. However, the Italian and Russian law enforcement professionals are beginning to get very close. It is a shame that American law enforcement is not interested in pursuing real leads in the biggest crime in American history." - (WMR January 2, 2007)

Berezovsky and also Khashoggi were previously noted by Peter Dale Scott in this report from 2005;

The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11

...Thanks to extensive research in Russia, we now have initial evidence of a second and even more significant proposition: There exists on the global level a drug meta-group, able to manipulate the resources of the drug traffic for its own political and business ends, without being at risk for actual trafficking. These ends include the creation of designed violence to serve the purposes of cabals in political power – most conspicuously in the case of the Yeltsin "family" in the Kremlin, but allegedly, according to Russian sources, also for those currently in power in the United States.

One piece of evidence for this consists in a meeting which took place in July 1999 in southern France near Nice, at the villa in Beaulieu of Adnan Khashoggi, once called "the richest man in the world." Those at the meeting included a member of the Yeltsin cabal in the Kremlin and four representatives from the meta-group, with passports from Venezuela, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Germany. Between them they allegedly enjoyed excellent relations with:

1) Ayman al-Zawahiri, the acknowledged mastermind of 9/11 and senior mentor to Osama bin Laden.

2) Soviet military intelligence.

3) the FARC, the Colombian revolutionary group that has become increasingly involved in the drug traffic.

4) the Kosovo Liberation Army, a similarly involved group.

5) (according to a well-informed Russian source) the CIA.

The third important proposition is that a meta-group of this scale does not just help government agencies make history. I hope to show that it, and its predecessors, are powerful enough to help make history themselves. However they do not do so overtly, but as a hidden Force X whose presence is not normally acknowledged in the polite discourse of academic political scientists. On the contrary, as we shall see, references to it are usually suppressed...

...My personal suggestion to 9/11 researchers is that they focus on the connections of the meta-group's firm Far West, Ltd. – in particular those which lead to Khashoggi, Berezovskii, Halliburton and Dick Cheney, and Diligence, Joe Allbaugh, and Neil Bush...

Daniel Hopsicker has a report that also ties in the Russian Mafia to 9/11, here.

And this past year, "Opium production in Afghanistan, which provides more than 90 percent of the world's heroin, broke all records in 2006, reaching a historic high despite ongoing U.S.-sponsored eradication efforts, the Bush administration reported yesterday." - (Washington Post, Dec. 2, 2006)

A global drug network/crime syndicate with tendrils that reach into all major intelligence agencies, and of course, the reverse is true. With key players in high-level government positions, serving one of several agendas, none of which have anything to do with such quaint notions as "peace" or "prosperity", at least, no prosperity for anyone not part of the game.

Several agendas were served on 9/11; the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Thinktank-Complex got a never-ending war to fight, the "War on Terror". Under the rubric of the "War on Terror", a general trend of Imperialism gets diplomatic cover for the looting of Middle Eastern oil reserves and the destabilization of strong Arab states that don't "sit" or "play dead" when asked nicely. In tandem, the UK and USA have both introduced legislation that skewers civil rights, most significantly habeas corpus with the introduction of the Military Commissions Act. (For more on the British assault on human rights, see Nafeez Ahmed.) Clearly, the drug networks have never had it so good. With record crops in Afghanistan for Opium, cheap, high-test heroin is in abundance. Not like the bad old days. If there is merit to the notion of the Drug meta-group, then they have capital like never before, no federal agencies investigating them, and absolutely no scruples. According to anti-fascist researcher Dave Emory, even the Muslim Brotherhood is benefiting... but not in the way that you might think.

Qui bono? The question should actually be, "Who didn't benefit?"

Overlapping agendas have allowed for a very interesting blame shell-game. Who's going to be left holding the bag?