This article is the first in a series.

The truth about 9/11 and the fatally flawed post-9/11 strategy is NOT that it was an ‘inside job’ but that there was a coverup of the truth about who was ultimately behind it. One of the many reasons why former and current political leaders will not identify or fight the real threat to America is because they’re severely compromised and consequently, very weakened. They’re more interested in protecting their own legacies and hides than in honoring their oaths.

Meanwhile, America’s enemies have continued to advance.

America’s leaders – past and present – must come clean, whether voluntarily or with the help of courageous people with less power, be they high-profile journalists, members of Congress, former high-ranking government officials, etc; it is the only way for America to survive. When it comes to Bush 41 and Bush 43, the former should come clean about Iran-Contra and the latter should come clean about Iran’s role in 9/11 as well as why he didn’t target the Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the U.S. in the months and years that followed.

Iran-Contra and Mena
According to a then retired CIA asset named Terry Reed, Vice President and former CIA Director George H.W. Bush became a major figure in what would become known as the Iran-Contra scandal, which began during the first term of Ronald Reagan, with Oliver North (aka John Cathey) in charge of a CIA operation run out of Mena, Arkansas when Bill Clinton was the Governor. The operation had allegedly been approved by Bush. Fake companies were set up in Mena that secretly manufactured untraceable weapons that would then be secretly flown to the Contras in Nicaragua. That’s what the airport in Mena was used for. Called out of retirement, Reed says he was hired to train Nicaraguan pilots.

The reason for the covert Mena operation – according to Reed – was to circumvent Congress and the recently passed Boland Amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill that prohibited the U.S. Government from assisting the Contras in their effort to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.

Oliver North (aka John Cathey)

According to Reed, he was re-assigned to Mexico in 1986 and was eventually setup by the Feds, who began to question his loyalty to the cause. Reed discovered a container filled with cocaine was in his warehouse. He took two bags to use as leverage later.

Among other things, Reed was charged with mail fraud for an act he was instructed to commit as part of the operation. In 1990, Reed was acquitted after putting the Feds in check mate (there, it can be done) despite attempts by the first Bush administration to railroad him and send him away for a long time. That’s if you believe the compelling case made in his book; you can see the Judgment of Acquittal from 1990, on page 466; it certainly does bolster the credibility of his story.

The larger operation began to unravel after a cargo plane carrying some of those weapons was shot down over Nicaragua in 1986. The body of American pilot William Cooper was found on the plane. The added scandal that involved the selling of weapons to Iran for money diverted to fund the contras was introduced by Attorney General Edwin Meese at a press conference. That wasn’t good either; a diversion was needed:

The real diversion ended up intertwining a major foreign policy initiative with the scandal that was erupting and had to be contained. What better way to contain it than to shroud it in secrecy and blend it with true national security interests? Putting a humanitarian edge on it and masking the scandal behind the release of the American hostages in Beirut was a stroke of genius by the CIA…

…North was working overtime with the White House. He was on his way to Israel trying to work out the problems connected with another secret shipment of arms to the Iranians. His trips coupled with increased hostage negotiations activities became the foundation for grafting the illegal Contra support operation to national security interests in the Middle East. From this, the term Iran-Contra was invented. [1]

As to Reed’s claims that the CIA was trafficking in drugs, this short clip from a 1993 installment from 60 Minutes does validate the claim. In the clip, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) told Mike Wallace that the CIA had been caught illegally trafficking cocaine:

If Reed’s story is correct, Iran would seem to have some leverage on the U.S. Government. That leverage could one day conceivably cause the U.S. Government to coverup Iran’s involvement in savage acts of war that would take the lives of thousands of innocent American civilians. The dealings of George H.W.’s son could one day conceivably cause the U.S. Government to coverup the involvement and support of Muslim Brotherhood front groups in financing terrorism and waging stealth, political jihad in the U.S. as well.

George W. Began Playing in the Dirt
Something else happened in 1986 and 1990, respectively. In 1986, George W. acquired hundreds of thousands of dollars in Harken Energy stock and became Director. The next year, a Palestinian-American Muslim named Talat Othman would join him on the Board of Harken at the request of a Saudi Board member named Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh. George W. and Othman would work together in their respective capacities for years.

It’s worth noting that at this time, the U.S. had been secretly supporting the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Mujahideen from Pakistan, against the Soviets. In 1986-87 however, the adage about the enemy of my enemy being my friend may have helped to facilitate such partnerships between a future U.S. President, a wealthy Saudi businessman and a Palestinian-American.

Smack dab in the middle of the working partnership between George W. and Othman, the then future President did something that would raise eyebrows more than a decade later. On June 22, 1990, George W. sold a boatload of Harken stock under suspicious circumstances for more than $800,000, but not report it for 34 weeks, as the UK Guardian reported in July of 2002, writing:

A decade ago, Mr Bush blamed the SEC, which he said had lost the forms he had filed. When the story resurfaced last week, the White House admitted that this had not been the case. Instead, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer blamed the delay on “a mix-up with the attorneys”, but could not shed light on how the confusion arose.

George W.’s sale of Harken stock on June 22, 1990, coupled with his failure to disclose it for 34 weeks, didn’t become news until 2002. Why? According to the Guardian, someone leaked the SEC report “presumably to embarrass” the President.

Ari Fleischer

In a 1991 Wall Street Journal article, Othman’s access to the White House began just a couple of months after George W. sold the stock:

Two years ago (1989), Talat Othman didn’t have the president’s ear. But since August 1990, the Palestinian-born Chicago investor has attended three White House meetings with President Bush to discuss Middle East policy.

Mr. Othman’s political access coincides with the remarkable ascendance of a little Texas oil company on whose board he serves alongside George W. Bush, the president’s oldest son. That company, Harken Energy Corp…

At the time, George W. was an adviser to his father. Did the insider sale of this stock and the enriching of George W. have anything to do with Othman’s sudden access to the White House? The answer to that question is not known but it is certainly a fair question to ask.

Though it’s not known for sure, there may have been a far less nebulous motive for leaking that SEC report than simply embarrassing George W. when factoring in something known as Operation Green Quest (OGQ). OGQ commenced in October of 2001 to actively go after terrorist financing groups. In March of 2002, OGQ conducted a major raid on the Muslim World League (MWL) and International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) offices in Herndon, Virginia. Pressing forward would have gone a long way toward exposing Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S.

That’s not what happened. A 2005 article reveals that…

Just two weeks after the Customs task force raided the Saudi-backed groups in northern Virginia, two leading Muslim activists with ties to the groups were allowed to meet with Paul O’Neill, then the secretary of the Treasury Department (which, at the time, controlled Customs) to complain about the conduct of the raids. The meeting was arranged by Grover Norquist, the influential Republican activist; Norquist is also the founder and former chair of the Islamic Institute…

…One of the Muslim activists who met with O’Neill was Talat Othman, a longtime friend and former business associate of President Bush.

Approximately one year before the 9/11 attacks, Othman was introduced as the Chairman of Norquist’s Islamic Institute, by Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson, at the 2000 Republican National Convention. Othman then delivered a Muslim prayer to close the first day’s proceedings:

Part two of this series is forthcoming and will be linked to here once published.

[1] Terry Reed and John Cummings, “COMPROMISED: Clinton, Bush and the CIA; How the Presidency was Co-opted by the CIA,” p. 302, SPI / Shapolsky Publishers, 1994.

Note: An excerpt from an American Free Press article included in the original version of this article has been removed. While it’s quite possibly accurate and much of what’s in the AFP article was corroborated with other sources, the part originally included could not be sufficiently substantiated. Its inclusion was also not critical to this report.