When waging modern warfare, often the loudest sound is the one you don’t hear.
Why is no one reporting that “Faisal the Fizzler” is tied to Israeli-American Leon Black and Israel-dominated organized crime syndicates dating back to the 1920s? Why is no one reporting the ties to junk bond king and Israeli-American Michael Milken? How can Americans make informed choices without access to the real facts?
Faisal Sharzad—AKA The Times Square Fizzler—reportedly was trained by the “Pakistan Taliban” for a deadly deed that went horribly wrong.
Not only did he lock his keys in the car, including his apartment key, his Rube Goldberg contraption of alarm clocks, Walmart propane tanks and firecrackers failed to explode.
Apparently he was also expertly trained to purchase fertilizer that could not possibly explode.
Happily, Pakistani Evil Doers did not train him to drive. He could have ended up in New Jersey.
Somehow he found his way to one of the busiest streets in midtown Manhattan just as the United Nations—in midtown Manhattan—was preparing to debate a treaty to create a Middle East free of nuclear weapons.
Was that part of the story missing from the coverage you saw of this incident? Perhaps you were watching Fox News though for non-coverage any mainstream source would suffice.
That U.N. treaty, first proposed in 1995, would force Israel to forfeit its nuclear weapons, a goal first sought by President John F. Kennedy in June 1963.
What’s become of this Muslim Evil Doer after he miraculously found his way to Times Square—after miraculously eluding airport security during his 16 trips abroad to train with the Pakistan Taliban?
Though this well-timed incident added plausibility to a narrative supporting the “Global War on Terrorism,” the facts suggest that the Fizzler’s storyline has since become problematic.
Branded as “news you can trust,” CNN briefly showed a photo of Apollo Management, his employer. That photo appeared on CNN for about a second. End of story and no mention since.
Here’s the online Newsweek account of where the Fizzler worked from 2006-2009:
May 4 (Bloomberg) — Faisal Shahzad, charged with attempting to bomb New York’s Times Square, worked for three years at a company controlled by Leon Black’s private-equity firm, Apollo Management LP.
Who is Leon Black? And why isn’t his three-year employment of the Fizzler newsworthy?
Remember Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood Shooter? His job history provided critical clues to understanding his bizarre behavior. Is that why he too has disappeared from the news?
Are the Clues Hidden in Plain Sight?
Imagine if the intelligence that induced the U.S. to war in Iraq was proven “fixed” around a preset goal. What if the common source of that treachery is poised to become transparent?
If you were complicit in a deception of that magnitude—a clear act of treason—how would you obscure the facts?
How would you sustain a “Muslim terrorist” narrative? And a storyline built on a widely share belief in the threat of Islamo-fascism?
What happens to the storyline if the pre-war intelligence is proven a fiction traceable to a common source? What then for the storytellers?
For those marketing The Clash of Civilizations, Major Hasan’s psychotic break at Fort Hood in Texas was a well-timed blessing. See if you detect a common component in these accounts:
- At Family Security Matters, President Carol Taber described this incident as “the Ft. Hood terrorist attack” by an “Islamist gunman.”
- Editor Pam Meister promoted “the shocking TRUTH (sic) behind these attacks so that we might ward off those yet to come.”
- Executive Vice-President Linda Cohen, who also serves as a trustee of the Anti-Defamation League, offered this advice: “No one is safe now. Not you, not the military, not your children, not office workers nor subway riders, nor anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Why was The Times Square Fizzler at just the right place at just the right time?
Advancing the Narrative
Is there a precedent for combining aberrant personal behavior and “terrorism” to advance a preset agenda? Do you recall the sniper attacks around Washington, D.C. in October 2002?
That murder spree began one day before debate commenced on Senate Resolution 46 proposed by Senator Joe Lieberman to authorize the use of U.S. forces in Iraq.
In the immediate aftermath of 911, Lieberman and Arizona Senator John McCain urged that the U.S. focus its forces not on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan but on regime change in Iraq.
Meanwhile the nation’s capital became a city under siege when those attacks created widespread insecurity and heightened anxiety as serial murders left ten dead and three wounded over a 10-day period.
Those random shootings quickly transformed the emotionally wrenching terror of 911 into a personal reality for Washington residents, including U.S. lawmakers considering whether to invade Iraq.
Meanwhile Lieberman and McCain—citing phony intelligence—promoted the invasion of a nation that had no hand in that mass murder.
Assets and Transnational Treason
Was Faisal Sharzad a Pakistani patsy? In the psy-ops parlance, was he an “asset”? An asset is a profiled personality who can be catalyzed to act out known dysfunctions in ways that advance an agenda based on the time, place and circumstances of their behavior.
The facts suggest that Nidal Hasan was such an asset. But don’t expect to find this analysis in mainstream media. You will not find this on the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Fox News or in his many newspapers.
Assets are typically profiled and developed over lengthy periods of time. Their potential to act out a known personality disorder is held in reserve in much the same way that a military commander holds troops in reserve for deployment at an opportune time.
How is an asset developed in plain sight and “tasked” at the opportune time? Only a careful investigation can identify those influences particular to Dr. Hasan. That includes the decisions that led to his transfer to Ft. Hood and the circumstances there that triggered his behavior.
That’s also true for The Times Square Fizzler. While hardly the brightest light in the shed, he was sufficiently competent to drive a car though he may have picked up the wrong fertilizer at Walmart. God only knows where he bought the fireworks. Perhaps in New Jersey.
A similar history surrounds the Christmas Day Bomber whose failed exploit mirrors that of Sharzad. Rebranded The Crotch Bomber, this young Nigerian was helped by an Israeli airport security firm to evade detection in Amsterdam and board an international flight to Detroit.
What’s the common component in each of these well-timed “incidents?”
Who had the means, motive, opportunity and insider intelligence to perpetrate this “terrorist” act in midtown Manhattan?
Is The New York Times correct in its May 22nd editorial: “As the aborted Times Square and Christmas Day bombings proved, militant groups are determined to strike here again.” Is that what these incidents proved?
Is it sufficient to decide that this latest incident is traceable to the Pakistan Taliban? Does that evidence alone explain how such operations are pre-staged and orchestrated?
What role was played by Sharzad’s employer?
As a combat-stress psychiatrist, Dr. Hasan dealt daily with injured and mentally troubled veterans at Walter Reed Hospital where the most grievously wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan are sent to recover. Many of them are amputees, disfigured or otherwise handicapped for life.
While coping with that vicarious trauma, he was taunted for his Muslim beliefs and harassed for his Middle Eastern heritage even though he was born, raised and educated in the U.S.
What happened to Faisal Sharzad during his three years at Apollo? Did he encounter an experience similar to Hasan? Is that why the Leon Black story disappeared so quickly?
That question brings us to the curious history of Mr. Black, his investment banking firm and the question of what is proven by this latest in a series of high profile ‘terrorist incidents.’
The Mental Environment
The National Crime Syndicate convened its first nationwide conference in Atlantic City in 1929. That’s where the mobsters began to divide the U.S. into 24 exclusive markets in order to stop murderous disputes over territory that created unseemly political problems.
Those territories were finalized in 1931 at a Jews-only conclave at the Franconia Hotel in Manhattan. Five of the 24 markets were established in and around New York City.
The Outfit has long been a source of pop culture narratives, including The Godfather movies starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino and The Sopranos, a popular television series. Both storylines branded organized crime as Italian or Sicilian with Jews playing only a minor role.
This is Hollywood after all.
To say Sicilian organized crime is OK. To say Jewish organized crime assures a charge of anti-Semitism—unless you’re Jewish. Then the charge is “self-hating.” Those remain the only two alternatives when speaking candidly about organized crime.
Estonian Kalle Lasn saw firsthand how facts could be displaced in plain sight by those skilled at targeting the mental environment. In March 2004, he published an article in Adbusters noting that while less than two percent of Americans are Jewish, 26 of the top 50 neoconservatives advocating war in Iraq are Jewish (52%). Those are the facts.
He titled the article: “Why Won’t Anyone Say They’re Jewish?” He soon found out. He was attacked as an “anti-Semite” for asking the question. Don’t ask. Don’t tell.
Yet the facts remain. The bulk of those who “fixed” U.S. intelligence around the predetermined goal of invading Iraq were either Jewish or assets whose careers were developed by pro-Israelis. Lasn’s subtitle for Adbusters, a magazine he founded: The Journal of the Mental Environment.
Could the mental environment be the target for this series of well-timed “terrorist” attacks that could plausibly be blamed on Muslim Evil Doers?
But first back to Mr. Black and a glimpse into the “fields within fields…within fields” of relationships through which transnational organized crime operates across time and distance.
Discrediting and Disabling the U.S.
Leon Black first appeared on the national scene in 1975 when his father fell to his death from the 44th floor of Manhattan’s Pan Am Building. Two years later, the son emerged as head of mergers and acquisitions and co-head of corporate finance at Drexel Burnham Lambert where he worked closely with Michael Milken, the firm’s “junk bond” specialist in Beverly Hills.
In the 1970s, Cincinnati’s Carl Lindner and his American Financial Group began investing in United Fruit. The name was changed to United Brands and then Chiquita Brands International in order to escape its notorious past. After the death of CEO Eli Black, Lindner assumed control.
United Fruit became a key conduit for moving Israeli arms into covert wars throughout Latin America, culminating in the Iran-Contra scandal of 1987. That scandal discredited the presidency of Ronald Reagan when he was forced to concede that his administration sold arms to Iran, an avowed enemy, and used the funds to arm Nicaraguan rebels despite a Congressional ban.
The term “Banana Republic” traces to the corrupting influence of United Fruit over decades. The U.S. was discredited throughout Latin America and the Caribbean by the firm’s bribery of foreign officials and its use of armed force to control and impoverish indigenous peoples.
Along with insurance firms owned by Meshulam Riklis and Saul Steinberg, Lindner’s American Financial Group was an early investor in Drexel’s high-yield (“junk”) securities packaged by Milken in deals coordinated with Leon Black in midtown Manhattan.
Riklis’ Rapid-American Corp. became an acquisition vehicle for Lerner Shops, Playtex and other companies such as RKO film studios, previously owned in part by bootlegger Joseph Kennedy, father of President John F. Kennedy. JFK was murdered five months after he sought to end Israel’s nuclear weapons program in order to avoid a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
In 1967, in one of the first junk bond-financed leveraged buyouts (“LBOs”)—while Michael Milken was still an undergraduate at the University of California Berkeley—Riklis acquired Lewis Rosenstiel’s shares in Cincinnati-based Schenley Industries.
The Istanbul-born Riklis paid for Schenley with junk bonds issued by Rapid-American Corp., a firm that Riklis owned with Lindner. Under Lindner’s leadership, United Fruit’s purchase of 40% of Rapid-American reportedly provided majority owner Riklis and his colleagues with resources to purchase for General Ariel Sharon his ranch in Israel’s Negev Desert.
Rosenstiel’s wife, Leonore, left him to marry Walter Annenberg, Ronald Reagan’s “best friend for 50 years” according to Nancy Reagan. Annenberg also served as Richard Nixon’s ambassador to Great Britain. Son of Chicago mobster Moses “Moe” Annenberg, Walter laundered profits from the family’s racing-wire service through Triangle Publications, publisher of T.V. Guide and Seventeen.
Leonore Annenberg was raised by her uncle, Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures. First married to Belden Kattleman, a Las Vegas businessman, she then married Rosenstiel. During Prohibition, Rosenstiel bootlegged liquor from England, Europe, and Canada via Saint Pierre and then by truck into Cincinnati, building what became Schenley Distillers.
Enabling the Networks
As the National Crime Syndicate was being formed in 1929, the racing wire service provided the sinew that bound together organized crime’s gambling operations dispersed across the U.S. and Canada and into Mexico and Cuba. As Walter Annenberg steadily distanced himself from organized crime, he steadily gained legitimacy and influence in Republican politics through his ownership of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
In 1989, Annenberg liquidated $3 billion of his wealth, including The Racing Form, in a sale to Rupert Murdoch. With those proceeds, he donated $150 million to Annenberg communication schools at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California.
While president, Ronald and Nancy Reagan routinely spent their New Year’s vacation at Sunnylands, Annenberg’s extensive estate in Rancho Mirage, California near Palm Springs. Walter’s father also gravitated to sunnier climes. After double-crossing a partner in Chicago, Moe fled to south Florida to seek the protection of National Crime Syndicate “Chairman” Meyer Lansky until he and his son relocated to Pennsylvania.
Fields Within Fields…within Fields
Why take you down this circuitous route in an account of the Times Square Fizzler? Read on to close the circle.
In the mid-1950s, former Phoenix mobster Gus Greenbaum managed and then sold the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, one of the premier properties controlled by the Chicago Outfit. The buyer was Cincinnatian Riklis, a former member of the Haganah, a paramilitary outfit active in Palestine from 1920 to 1948 when it became the Israel Defense Forces.
Riklis tutored Milken, then a young bond broker, and reportedly was Milken’s first customer. Fellow Cincinnatian Carl Lindner emerged as a father figure to Milken who oversaw a massive “control fraud” at Lincoln Savings and Loan in Phoenix, Arizona.
The face on this fraud was Charles Keating who previously served as general counsel to the Linder-controlled, Cincinnati-based American Financial Group.
Arizona Senator John McCain led a group of five Senators known as “the Keating Five” whose delay of needed reforms raised the taxpayer cost of that nationwide fraud by an additional $50 billion, to exceed $150 billion.
Lindner boasts on the firm’s website that he is the “largest non-Jewish contributor to Jewish causes in the U.S.” Alan Greenspan, then a consultant to J.P. Morgan, was retained by Keating to help recruit the Keating Five.
Greenspan expended with that lobbying effort much of the political capital he amassed as chairman of a 1983 Social Security Commission (“the Greenspan Commission”). Its recommendation: work longer and levy higher payroll taxes.
A confidante of radical free market theorist Ayn Rand (Russian Alisa Rosenbaum), Greenspan reemerged as the Reagan-appointed Chairman of the Federal Reserve where he enabled the subprime mortgage fraud with sustained low interest rates and enthusiastic support for what this Rand confidante described as “financial innovation.”
John McCain wrote to Keating in 1983 after his first Congressional victory: “Of the many things to be grateful for in this world, the friendship of the Keating family is certainly among the most meaningful.” McCain’s top supporters included Keating and father-in-law James Hensley.
Here begins the closing of the circle connecting the savings and loan fraud of the 1980s and the subprime mortgage fraud two decades later. And, the facts suggest, the role of misdirection aided by this latest in an ongoing series of well-timed incidents by Muslim Evil Doers.
Murder Inc.
Notorious mobster Bugsy Siegel is widely credited with founding Las Vegas when he built The Flamingo, an early casino named after Virginia Hill, a mob courier girlfriend from Alabama who used Flamingo as her showgirl name.
The National Crime Syndicate maintained discipline through Murder, Inc., a cadre of hit men. When Siegel was found stealing from the mob, his murder in 1947 required that the syndicate relocate Gus Greenbaum to Vegas from Phoenix, leaving Kemper Marley in charge. Marley hired Jim and Gene Hensley.
After two close scrapes with federal liquor violations for which the Hensley brothers reportedly took the heat, Jim Hensley emerged with a beer distributorship that has grown to the fifth largest in the nation—owned by Cindy Hensley McCain. Hensley’s Arizona lawyer, William Rehnquist, was appointed by Reagan as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
McCain met Hensley, then 24, when he was the married 42-year old U.S. Navy liaison to the U.S. Senate. Soon divorced, relocated and remarried in Arizona, he worked on public relations for his father-in-law while being positioned for election to the Congress four years before Senator Barry Goldwater’s pending retirement.
After 911, Republican Senator McCain emerged alongside Democrat Joe Lieberman as the most insistent voices for the invasion of Iraq based on intelligence we now know was false.
Are these webs of relationships coincidental? Or is this typical of the overlapping links common to syndicate operations? Is this how organized crime is sustained through fields-within-fields of relationships that stretch across time, distance and, as here, both major political parties?
What does this have to do with the Fort Hood Shooter, the Crotch Bomb Sizzler and the Times Square Fizzler? Are these “incidents” typical of how war is waged in the mental environment by creating—and constantly refreshing—a narrative?
Does a renewed fear of terrorism help divert attention away from the latest massive financial fraud? And from the need for reforms that are not yet forthcoming—from either party?
Are these insecurity-inducing “incidents” a form of marketing to ensure that defense spending is sustained, an area? Is it coincidental that Israel is the world’s third largest arms exporter?
Is this how we persuade ourselves as a nation to assume more debt to wage more wars with no end in sight? Is this just business-as-usual for transnational organized crime?
Was the same criminal syndicate involved in the S&L fraud also active in the Enron fraud? The Dotcom crash? The subprime fraud? The failed “reform” legislation?
Did these massive financial “incidents” just happen? Or were they stage-managed from the shadows in an alliance between policy-making assets and transnational organized crime?
Did the war in Iraq emerge as a natural reaction to the provocation of 911? Or was the invasion anticipated and pre-staged, with 911 the plausible catalyst for a long-planned agenda?
Whose Agenda?
In 1948, the Joint Chiefs of Staff cautioned Harry Truman against granting sovereign recognition to an extremist enclave that was already using ethnic cleansing to terrorize the indigenous population and occupy their lands.
Their rationale: Palestinian land was rightly theirs as The Chosen because it was given to them—by a God of their own choosing.
Truman was warned by U.S. military leaders about the “fanatical concepts of the Jewish leaders” and their plans for “Jewish military and economic hegemony over the entire Middle East.” Truman chose not to follow their advice nor that of his Secretary of State, former General George C. Marshall who viewed recognition as a geopolitical blunder.
Did military leaders fail to grasp the depth of the threat posed by these extremists to U.S. national security? Did these “fanatical concepts” include a plan to deceive the U.S. so that we would deploy our military to pursue their agenda for dominance in the region?
Working as a transnational criminal syndicate, did these extremists collaborate to endanger the U.S. economy with debt?
Could the criminal roots of this operation explain why we hear nothing about Leon Black’s employment of the Times Square Fizzler?
Is the sound of silence speaking to us with an eloquence we do not yet understand?
--MORE--"Also see: Breaking News: Boston Globe Calls For Israeli War Crimes Investigation
