Grubstakers - Episode 99: Saudi Arabia, the Mahfouz Family, and the September 11th Attacks

Episode Date: September 17, 2019

This week we look at the Mahfouz family, the billionaire family behind the first bank in Saudi Arabia, but also we look at the Saudi role in the September 11th attack in general. The Mahfouz family funded Al Qaeda, but they were certainly not the only Saudi Billionaires to do so: in 2002 the golden chain list revealed 18 Saudi businessmen with a combined net worth of $85 billion who had been giving money Osama Bin Laden. The Saudi connection into the attacks continues into various levels of the government, where employees for the ministry of Islamic affairs and the embassy in Washington served as handlers for the hijackers helping them get acclimated in the USA in the lead up to the attacks. Why was all of this covered up by the Bush administration and subsequent presidents? Why isn’t this the scandal of the century? Was all that tower 7 stuff a distraction from the very real conspiracy and cover up carried out right in front of all our faces? We try to wrestle with all those questions and more this week on Grubstakers. Politico long piece going into more detail about some of the accusations against the Saudi government: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/saudi-arabia-911-lawyer-214996 There are also allegations that two Saudi government agents carried out a "dry run" of the attacks on US soil in 1999: https://nypost.com/2017/09/09/saudi-government-allegedly-funded-a-dry-run-for-911/

I want to be held accountable for what I'm doing. This may sound like an exaggeration, but it was like the 9-11 of my career and certainly of making kombucha. Jesus is smart. This idea of income inequality, that always strikes me as a very, it's a deceptive term, income inequality. Well, let's flip it around. It comes from outcome inequality. In five, four, three, two. I got the loot, Steve. Hello, welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. My name is Sean P. McCarthy, and I'm here joined by my co-hosts.

Steve Jeffers. Yogi Poel. Andy Palmer. And so this week, well, we passed a solemn milestone in the history of America. We passed the 18th anniversary of 9-11. She's legal. September 11th attacks. And it comes at a fortuitous time because as we're recording this, September 16, we have just had Saudi Arabia themselves suffer their own 9-11 attacks.

Mossel. This is like, and again, I'm not, well, so for those not familiar there was a an attack on the saudi oil infrastructure the aramco uh oil processing uh plant aramco is the saudi uh state-owned oil company the largest oil processing plant in the world as well as one of their oil fields was attacked uh houthi rebels from yemen claimed responsibility uh they've had to shut down the saudis have had to shut down 5% of the entire global oil supply just from this one attack. And according to just Twitter an hour ago, Zachary Cohen for CNN, he reports that the U.S. special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, held a call with U.S. Hill staffers and said that the saudis view this attack as quote their 9-11 unquote does that mean that they also did it yes but yes this attack on oil infrastructure

where literally zero people died did someone call police on some dancing hoothies celebrating yeah well they should have known uh a month ago when iran tweeted a picture of an airplane flying into their oil fields to threaten saudi the the new york times has like pictures of the impact points and respect to the houthis like they hit a bullseye on each one of these tanks it's like perfectly lined up so there's four huge silos. Yeah. With drones. They might have been cruise missiles. Yeah. I thought they were little drones packed with explosives.

Well, so the Houthis in their statement said that they sent out 10 drones, and now the United States is claiming that Iran launched cruise missiles at the things. So, you know, by the time time we release this the world could have ended so we'll find out but soundcloud or patreon i guess survives yeah there's four huge silos and it's just like bullseye each of them whoever did that nice work good aim yeah yeah so before we really start digging into 9-11 i um made a word map of the episode we're about to record. And let's see, the top words that we use are, let's see, thermite, building seven, missile. Obviously.

The Jews. It sounds like the metadata of my resume on LinkedIn. Put that in white text underneath the black text. White text underneath the entire layer, like Carl was saying. It was like my old Tinder profile. Sorry, I didn't finish. The Jews had nothing to do with it. That's all the words

together um uh but yeah like andy's getting at so today or for this week andy's getting at about the jews doing 9-11 well that's the thing is like look for this week's episode we're going to talk first uh probably about half about the september 11th attacks and probably about half about the mafuz family is a family of saudi billionaires that funded al-qaeda so a family of saudi billionaires any family we're just focusing on tower seven that's the half yes of 9-11 recovery but but so this is what i'm getting at here because you know andy mentions you know these conspiracies about the jews and then yogi mentions the tower seven shit and i think something that fascinates and bothers me a lot is that because of you know loose

change and the 9-11 truth movement and all that the idea that there was a 9-11 cover-up is like something people roll their eyes at right we're we're all so um uh immunized against that that we're like yeah no they told us everything in the 9-11 commission report you know and and if you raise any questions you're just like a fucking tinfoil thermite in tower seven guy but it's like it is very clear that the bush administration and subsequent presidents after him obama and now trump covered up the very real role that the saudi government had in carrying out the september 11th attacks and that's just like simple logic which is like the majority of the hijackers did not speak english had never lived in the united states before and so how do

they get apartments how do they pay their rent how do they get driver's license well it turns out a lot of the people who happen to do that according to the 9-11 families that are suing they had connections in the saudi stand-up community a lot of the people uh who who did that according to the 9-11 families who are suing the saudi government they say they've identified at least 11 people who were on saudi government payroll who helped the hijackers either get apartments or driver's license or flying lessons or whatever else the case may actually supported themselves by walking dogs they're all WAG employees. But, you know, and so it is just something where it's like the Bush administration, there's an article in the New York Post about how the Bush administration directed Robert Mueller, who was then the head of the FBI, to not pursue all of these different leads against Saudis, to let Saudis, including bin Laden's family, leave the country immediately after September 11th,

when, you know, many of them were credibly accused of funding and being a part of this terrorist activity. They should have been questioned or held, you know. By the way, if you're also interested in some of Robert Mueller's greatest hits before the Trump investigation, look into the anthrax attacks that he was also in charge of not finding an answer to i'm so mad that mueller she wrote makes so much more money than mueller he wrote oh no it's mueller she wrote yeah because it's feminist somehow oh they're so pretentious i got in a fight with them and they were like um on our podcast we discussed the concept of sexy justice

that's really what they said in the twitter that's what they said to me you got served dog they blocked me after i refused to respect whoever was running that account because they were a troop mueller she wrote the death warrant for that 16 year old shia boy who protested the regime my i'm i'm all i know is that one of the um hosts who runs the account claims to be a troop and as a woman when you say troop do you mean veteran or do you mean improv troop because they have a pretty big distinction here i guess uh it could be both but apparently served in as a veteran of foreign wars and so i'm just going to speculate uh without any uh anything to go off that she was the one who pointed at the dude's penis

in the uh abu gharib prison torture oh yeah you know what it would be kind of ironic if she served in iraq because the guy she made a podcast about didn't investigate the Saudi connection. Because like, look, this is my working theory of September 11th attacks here, is that I don't think the Bush administration had advanced knowledge of the attacks. What I do think is entirely clear. What? What I do think is entirely clear is that the Bush administration had the attacks and it's like, we have a golden golden opportunity now now we have project for a new american century we can go into iraq so let's just shut down every lead into investigating the saudis and make this look like saddam hussein there was one indication of an attack like i think it was a cia uh briefer showed uh bush uh it might have been a couple months before the attack happened like oh there's this al-qaeda

thing um there it looks like a plant's imminent and apparently at the end of it bush reportedly said okay you've covered your ass really yeah dismissed him i mean you say it's conspiracy sean but my man head coach of the seahawks sees clearly 9-11 truth is out there and he's looking for it. Yes, Pete Carroll, Seahawks coach, has been way ahead of us on this. That's right. So credit where credit is due. The same method that got the Seahawks to win a Super Bowl and lose a Super Bowl is the same guy heading the 9-11 truth movement. He's going to pass when he should run.

And John McCree of cake. Oh, really? Yeah. heading the 9-11 truth movement. He's going to pass when he should run. And John McCree of cake. Oh, really? Yeah. Pete Carroll blamed his decision to pass instead of run on being distracted by dancing Israelis. You know, it is crazy, though, when you look at the list of people

that were supposedly going to be on that flight or in the towers. The amount of celebrity that nearly avoided death is very intriguing because I just learned previous to this podcast that Michael Jackson was supposed to be in the towers at this time, but he canceled all his meetings because he was tired after performing all night in New York and his family didn't know, so they thought he was dead for a moment. But then if you remember the court cases they have in 2005, but Stephen and Sean were saying

that those had been going on for a few years, but there's a chance if Michael Jackson died in 9-11, we would remember him as the pop king and not the person he ended up becoming. I just like all those celebrities living. It's like, yeah, it turns out it pays to be on the saudi embassy mailing list fucking attend some parties there it might save your life they got a newsletter wait wait here's here's my impression of uh john mccree talking about 9-11 yeah you know there's still some things we need to look into

because cake uses the vibra slap it's it's his number one instrument who's this john mccree of cake oh that's true got it yeah well i hope our listeners get the reference yeah i had no idea what the fuck you're talking about but um before we talk about the mafuz family i wanted to uh just kind of go through something you might have heard a little bit about is the so-called 28 pages this is uh um the there was the original congressional investigation in like december 2002 released the joint congressional investigation into 9-11 and the bush administration ordered 28 pages of that classified and all of those 28 pages related to Saudi Arabia. Coincidentally, just before we launch a war with Iraq.

And so, under like immense public pressure, Obama declassifies most of this in 2016. But there's still three pages worth of redactions. Oh, interesting. Which is all just, you know, Saudi names and other stuff. I think we talked about this on another episode, but like most of those 28 pages are from a source

who was tortured so much that he lost an eye and can't remember how he lost it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember you mentioned that. Well, I don't know how much of that is true. I mean, like,

I know the guy was tortured by the CIA and lost an eye. I just don't know how much, like, that is, the 28 pages are based on that. From what I mean, I know the guy was tortured by the CIA and lost an eye. I just don't know how much the 28 pages are based on that. From what I read, it cites him throughout. Well, I did want to just cite a couple things. Yo, you could forget losing an eye.

Think about that for a second. What happened, bro? I woke up and didn't have 20-20 vision. I had 10-10. Barely that. Because I was nearsighted before all this started too uh well i did just want to quote from some of the 28 pages and then we'll kind of talk about the mafouz family and then we'll go back to you know what we know about the september 11th attacks and just how clear the saudi connection is do they make prescription monocles is that a thing

like if you ain't got one prescription that's're all prescription. That's the purpose, isn't it? Or are they magnifying? I have never known what a monocle is supposed to be outside of letting people know you're rich. Examining diamonds? Oh, okay. Abu Zubaydah is his name. What if

Dan Crenshaw and Abu Zubaydah so like, what if Crenshaw lost the right eye and Abu lost the left eye? So they tape their heads together and then they can play football again. They get their depth perception back by working together.

And it's like a buddy comedy because it's like, I'm like a right-wing psychopath and you're an Al-Qaeda member. But you know, like we can put the differences aside. Well, he was also a guy who was barely affiliated with Al-Qaeda member. But, you know, like, we can put the differences aside. Well, he was also a guy who was barely affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Yeah. But said that he was under torture to get it to stop. There's, like, an awkward moment in the buddy comedy

where they, like, play with a football made out of pigskin. But then Dan Crenshaw gets, like, more of an open mind and he's like, you know what? All religious practices deserve respect and we should play with a synthetic leather football. Wait, hear me out. Abhu Zubeda and Dan Crenshaw,

they do face-off. And no one notices that it's a different eye. An eye for an eye brings everyone on the same side. Honestly, I worked way too hard on that in my head, so I don't care if no one liked that. You try and think of a better word than blind.

Face off, but with two people of very different complexions. Yeah. Suddenly, Dan Crenshaw becomes a really good congressman. Abu Zubaydah just actually joins Al Qaeda. I think ISIS made a version of face off as well. Well, it's face plus the stuff behind it. But regardless,

what I wanted to do here was read before we get to the Mahfouz family, the Saudi billionaires, I wanted to just read a little bit from some of what was declassified from the 28 pages. And maybe you can understand why the Bush administration decided to keep these 28 pages classified before we invaded Iraq over September 11th. Nice. Page 415, quoting, while in the United States, some of the September 11th hijackers were in contact with and received support and assistance from individuals who may be connected to the Saudi government. At least two of these individuals were alleged by some to be Saudi intelligence officers.

Page 417, one of the individuals identified in the pages as a financial supporter of two of the 9-11 hijackers later received quote a significant amount of cash unquote from quote a member of the saudi royal family unquote during a 2002 trip to houston and then quoting page 421 a deleted you know redaction dated to july 2 2002 indicates quote incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists inside the saudi government page 421 and again this is all put together in 2002 so we knew all this shit before we went to 9-11 we in fact knew all this shit very the government at least did very soon after the september 11th attacks and of course remember you know 15 of the 19 hijackers were saudis and the people who support pages were these again uh 415 417 421 okay of uh the uh i believe this is the joint inquiry into 9-11 joint congressional inquiry

into the september 11th attacks but i guess like i wanted to start with just kind of the family to give you an idea of the Mahfouz family to give you an idea of the kind of Saudi billionaires that funded Al Qaeda at least before 9-11. And then we will circle back and kind of go through what we know about the September 11th attacks. And I guess just what the families are looking for, because something we didn't mention that I will mention now is that just there, there was a law that was passed that was originally vetoed by Obama and the Congress overrode that veto in 2016, which gave the families of 9-11 the right to sue the Saudi government. And they are having a lawsuit that is ongoing. And then just last week,

the Trump administration decided to declassify an FBI report that was written in 2012 that looked into possible Saudi support for these terrorists. And the basic story of what the Trump administration decided was there were two men, Fahad al-Thammari and Omar al-Bayomi. God damn it, Bayomi. Send your complaints of the show to GrubstakersPod on Twitter. They were both attached to the Saudi Arabia's U.S. Embassy, and they were 100% handlers for hijackers called the San Diego Cell.

At least two hijackers that came in through San Diego dealt with these people. And we'll get back to this story later. But the important point is there's a 2012 FBI report that details a third Saudi who is believed to be essentially the handler of these two handlers, the guy above him. And this name has been redacted up until now. And then last week, the Trump administration said, we will release this name to the lawyers of the 9-11 family who are suing families, who are suing Saudi. And maybe it will be more

widely declassified after that. But it is just something where it's like, we're coming up on 18 years and the U.S. government has been fighting tooth and nail against, you know, the survivors and on behalf of the Saudi government.

And it is just a very disturbing thing. And I think the 9-11 truth and loose change and all that has really prevented this from becoming the scandal of the century because everybody just assumes, yeah, there's no cover up with the September 11th attacks. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think it's certainly exceedingly intentional to subvert the idea of what the truth is on this entire attack. I mean, even the fact that the conspiracy theorists are called truthers is so funny. Like, literally, they're looking for what they believe is the truth, and that is somehow being construed as, like, they are the fucking crazy ones. Like, if they're like, we're trying to unearth the dirt, you can at least be like, okay, calm down, buddy. But when someone's like, we want to find the truth,

you've got to give them the benefit of the doubt. Be like, I mean, that's all they're looking for. They think something's fishy. And it's not that hard to look at what went down and to think to yourself, I don't know, not all this adds up. But then again, I guess I'm just against America. Yeah, well, not all of us have the mind of Seahawks coach Pete Carroll. It's crazy how many celebs that you don't think about lied about 9-11 as well.

Whether it's like Steve Ronazzisi being like, I was in downtown and I was in the attacks. And then 14 years later being like like none of that shit actually happened apparently i just found that uh russell peters was in toronto with mark walberg so mark walberg's whole if i was on that flight i'd fuck up them terrorist shit was a lie too potentially well he would have fucked up those terrorists that's not the point mark walberg's claim that he would have been if he was on that flight i guess that's really where the part of the the story comes a little loose because could mark walberg beat up these terrorists most likely he's beating up an asian man and nearly made him blind because he was a bigot at one point in his life now he's completely fine by the way but mark walberg

claimed that he was supposed to be on those flights, and since he wasn't, the terrorist attacks happened. But Russell Peters, in this interview from 2015, says that they were both at this Toronto film festival. I don't think that the Vietnamese guy who he beat up had martial arts training, mace, and box cutters. Yeah, that's a fair point. But, I mean, I just feel like the Boston Energy Wahlbergs guy could beat up anyone.

You put a Pabst Blue Ribbon inside of him and all hell is going to break loose. Yeah, he definitely flies strong. Yeah. So I wanted to talk a bit here about the Mahfouz family. And then we'll go back to some of the strange coincidences with the September 11th attacks. The Mahfouz family goes back to a guy named Salem bin Mahfouz, is a Saudi who actually grew up in poverty in Yemen. He moved to Saudi Arabia, people say, sometime in 1912, actually,

when he was six years old. And so Salem bin Mahfouz, according to the New York Times, he was employed as a currency exchanger, a money changer, as it were, in Mecca. Like pilgrims would come to Mecca and he would change money for them. Yeah, that makes sense. You know. Try to find a bid in the shop? The kind of people Jesus had a real problem with.

They actually, at that point, they nailed the tables to the floor so that they couldn't get flipped jesus saw this and he was like in 1991 i am going to send crusaders here to punish you for money changing uh but so uh what happens is you know we talked about this a little bit on the the premium episode about rihanna's boyfriend. But in 1945, of course, the United States and Saudi Arabia begin what would be their relationship continuing up to this day, where, you know, Saudi becomes the main source of U.S. oil and allows, you know, U.S. global hegemony. And in exchange, you know, the U.S. guarantees Saudi security. So, you know, he's a Salem Ben-Mafuz is a money changer.

But in 1949, you know, after 1945, FDR and the king of Saudi meet at Bitter Lake. 1949, he becomes a partner in like a currency business, you know, making a lot more money. Now the oil money's coming in. And then in 1953, he actually convinces the King of Saudi to give him the license to open a bank. It was called the National Commercial Bank. It's still around. It was at one point the largest bank in Saudi Arabia.

I believe now it's like number two. But the National Commercial Bank will unsurprisingly be linked to funding al-qaeda which we will get we will get back to but uh regardless uh salem bin mafouz gets a license from the saudi king in 1953 to establish this bank and then it's like there's so much fucking money coming in uh in particular after like, there's like a huge spike in revenues for the kingdom. According to the book Alms for Jihad, the 1973 oil crisis is when OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies, countries, excuse me, they embargo the United States for supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. And this embargo like drives the global price of oil up through the roof right so

just according to the book alms for jihad oil revenues in saudi arabia spike from 8 billion annually to 34 billion annually in less than a year wow so like in 1973 there's an explosion of money yeah so it's like you know more than triples right so the way you know uh salem uh ben mafouz managed to become a billionaire is he was the banker for the largest oil reserves in the entire world all right you know just in time for oil prices to to spike astronomically and make him a fortune and so uh but it's kind of interesting like he's uh generally portrayed as kind of a smart guy uh of course he made his fortune with you know royal connections that's the only way he was able to do it but he was originally like an illiterate pretty smart he was originally an illiterate

yemeni uh immigrant who rose from being a money changer to essentially a billionaire wow um but he dies in 1986 and then his son Khaled takes over. Khaled? It depends on how many letters are in the name. How does it spell it? I've seen K-H-A-L-I-D, but also K-H-A-L-E-D. So the L-I-D, the musician, is Khalid. But I think the E-D is Khaled.

So if you want to try, you can do it that way. But I'm pretty sure you're going to say... Well, it's also transliterated from a language with no vowels in there. Writing. Well, needless to be. I mean, I think Sean's getting it wrong. Khaled posts the picture of the plane flying into the CN Tower in Toronto. And he goes, another one.

We the best. This is what I'm going to do if someone makes me a pussy yeah god damn it uh okay but so it's just interesting where like his he dies uh the father dies salem dies 1986 his son takes over the business i believe he had like 11 kids i think it's his middle kid takes over and he's just like a complete idiot and kind of runs the business into the ground in a pretty fascinating way. Whoa, whoa. You're telling me nepotism's bad? I thought the roots of people that are great are always good.

All that glitters is gold. So, like, essentially what happens is Khaled, here it's spelled K-H-A-L-E-D, but whatever the case may be. Could it be two different people? Does he have two kids named Khalid versus Khalid? No, no. I think it's just people go back and forth on the spelling. All right. Yeah.

So Khalid takes over in 1986, but what happens in the late 80s is there's a recession in global oil prices and such. Right. So he ends up taking over this national commercial bank that happened to have like a bunch of outstanding loans to members of the Saudi royal family. So in 90 and 91, according to the book Alms for Jihad, senior members of the Saudi royal family start defaulting on their huge loans, putting the bank at risk. And there's rumors that that included the king of Saudi Arabia. Oh,ia oh really yeah had taken out

like fat loans from this bank and not paid it back what really gets uh khaled in trouble is between 1986 and 1990 he he uses the money he's inherited to purchase a 20 stake of what's called the bank of credit and commerce international or bcci um you might be familiar, actually, Bryan Cranston made a movie, The Infiltrator, where he plays a businessman who goes undercover in a fictional version of this bank to bust the Medellin cartel. Right, right. Like, BCCI was notorious in the late 80s, early 90s.

It was nicknamed the Bank of Crooks and Criminals. It was this institution that was founded in Pakistan and essentially had, like, no regulatory oversight whatsoever. crooks and criminals it was uh it was this institution that was founded in pakistan and essentially had like no regulatory oversight whatsoever you know like all of the managing directors and everybody was engaged in outright fraud but they were also just money laundering for every drug cartel every terrorist organization and uh unsurprisingly also being used by the cia to hide whatever black operations they wanted to hide from congress right um say it yogi why does it gotta be black i can't they be white operations yes

but so you know like cia white ops right but so khaled like again between 86 and 1990 he buys 20 of this thing like right before it gets raided by the feds essentially but he also becomes the chief operating officer of it the coo so not only does he like lose his ass on this huge investment but he gets indicted criminally in new york court like um well there's a convenient way to maybe um get rid of that he does manage to just pay a fine and get rid of it uh just like just a basic wikipedia quote i mean that's a first step yes so what's the last step and how many steps are there um i mean i i think we're gonna get to that yeah uh so just a basic like and so with bcci like this could be an entire future episode and it

might be but just like a basic wikipedia quote to give you an idea here uh bcci has been accused was accused of opening accounts or laundering money for figures such as saddam hussein manuel noriega uh samuel doe and for criminal organizations such as the medellin cartel and abu nadal is uh the precursor to Fatah. Saddam Hussein's the guy who did 9-11, right? Yes. And so John Kerry actually did an investigation when he was in the Senate. In 1999, a guy named William Van Rab, R-A-A-B,

told the Kerry committee in 1991 that the Central Intelligence Agency held, quote, several accounts at BCCI and which were used for a variety of covert operations, including transfer of money and weapons during the Iran-Contra affair. This kind of like an unregulated money laundering bank that's also just like straight up stealing from depositors is like the ideal place for the CIA to hide its black operations from Congress. So between BCCI, the Vatican Bank we talked about on our Patreon episode coming out this Thursday, and what was the other bank we talked about recently that hid money from Nazis and shit? Swiss? Yes, the Swiss banks. Was BCCI as big as Swiss or the Vatican one? bank we talked about recently that hid money from nazis and shit swiss yes the swiss banks was bcci uh as big as swiss or the vatican one bcci opened in 1972 about a decade later they had excess of 20 billion u.s dollars in asset making them at the time the seventh largest private bank in the world wow so they collapsed around 1991 But at their prime, they were like part and parcel of the global financial system. Oh, nice.

All right. But so what happens with Khalid Ben-Mafuz is that in 1991, he's indicted by a New York State grand jury. The charges include bank fraud, bribery, illegal shipping of arms, and other offenses. We the worst. He pays a fine uh no admitting of wrongdoing 225 million dollars um but the interesting thing here is just like and again we could do an entire episode on bcci we might in the future i don't want to get too bogged down

we have a lot of stuff to cover here but um uh so the uh bcci is uh he makes this 20 investment after inheriting the Saudi National Commercial Bank. According to the Irish Times, National Commercial Bank had an intimate relationship with BCCI, where BCCI, quote, parked hundreds of millions of dollars of loans with the Saudi bank. The Guardian alleged that BCCI was using cash from deposits to fund operating expenses rather than make investments, which is extremely illegal for a bank to do. from a somewhat legitimate bank into a giant fraud and money laundering operation, was guided by the head of Saudi intelligence with a view to enabling it to finance covert American intelligence operations at the time in the aftermath of Watergate. Again, we talked about this a little bit on the premium episode, but after Watergate,

there were congressional investigations into the CIA. But something I found very interesting was a journalist, an investigative journalist named Joseph Trento, argued that BCCI's transformation from a somewhat legitimate bank into a giant money laundering and deposit theft scheme was guided by the head of Saudi intelligence at time uh in order to enable it to finance covert american intelligence operations in the aftermath of watergate something we talked about a little bit on the premium episode about rihanna's boyfriend is that uh after watergate there were congressional investigations into just what the cia was doing so they needed a place to store their money off books so it makes sense that it's like the head of this giant Saudi bank maybe was asked by the government to buy 20% of this kind of unregulated Pakistani bank

and then like turn it into a front for money laundering for the Central Intelligence Agency, among others. And this is like maybe a collaborative project between Saudi intelligence and U.S. intelligence. So, you know, and we'll probably never know the extent of the relationship there, but I do recommend taking a look at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International

because it's a fascinating story, and we'll probably do a follow-up episode in the future. So, like, let us know other interesting little tidbits about it that you happen to know. If you got dirt on it, send it to us. Yes. Oh, I do love uh you might be familiar with u.s senator former senator orin hatch was the senator for utah so bcci in

the late 80s starts like being very credibly accused of money laundering for terrorist cartels all this stuff uh so he makes u.s uh orin hatch then a u.s senator in 1990 makes an impassioned defense of of the bank on the floor of the Senate. And it just so happens that Hatch had previously successfully solicited the bank to approve a $10 million loan to his close friend. What? Which I just love, you know, just the kind of like garden variety corruption that's always brushed under the rug when it comes to these, you know, respectable senators. Of course, of course. Other such, you know, dignified people who are so much better than the trump republicans but yes so the

bcci was 100 like balls deep in the iran contra affair um and so just a couple other things about caleb bin mafouz uh in a 1990 he buys an irish passport according to the irish times he meets uh with the minister of justice a minister for justice of ireland at the time in 1990 and promised him him to he'll invest 20 million pounds if he can get passports and so he manages to over lunch get passports for him and like 10 members of his entourage what yeah really uh according to the irish times uh the passports were handed over before the necessary naturalization procedures were completed and the requirement that the applicant square swear an oath of fidelity to the state was waived which is in violation of the procedures and just so happens like his his descendants own

a piece of carry airport in ireland to this day and they have like a board seat on the airport in ireland um yeah so it's just like one of those like nice little schemes uh of selling passports is uh something that the mix were getting up to maybe they're just into jameson they wanted to do yearly trips and let's just get passports now we don't have to deal with the visa situation every time. So Khaled bin Mahfouz, he loses his shirt in National Commercial Bank in Saudi when he invests all of this into this... That's rough, because that's Haram.

Yeah. This massive fraud that's shut down, or that's the BCCI shut down. He loses his whole investment there. There's lots of people suing him, trying to get their money back, who lost their money in this bank. So National Commercial Bank in Saudi, even though he inherited it,

it kicks him out of the CEO role, and it brings in some Citibank guy to restructure it and all that. Sure, back cleanup. Yes. But so what happens is then he returns, and he gets to run it again in 1996 happens is then he returns and he gets to run it again in 1996 and then he runs it into the ground again so just like according to forbes he

returns you know play the hits he returns in 1996 uh and then uh by 1999 quoting from forbes things got so nasty in 1999 the saudi government stepped in buying a controlling 50 stake in national commercial bank from khaled for at least 1 billion partly used to wipe khaled's debt from the books khaled and his family retained 34 ownership but he again surrendered management positions so so they bought him out they nationalized it yes the saudi government nationalized it in about 1999 now do you think how much was he worth pre this billion dollar um buyout so i believe at the time of his death which was 2009 he was worth about 3.4 billion u.s dollars 3.35 billion dollars estimate net worth at time of death so this could have been maybe between 30% to 70% of the money he made from this deal? Yeah, I mean, like, he really just kind of inherited his dad's money.

And then it seems like he loses money in points, but mostly at points. But mostly he just manages to kind of, like, stay flat. Sure, sure. Which is, like, very impressive when you consider that capital. Like, if you do absolutely nothing with it, supposed to return eight percent a year so if you manage to knock that down to zero you're really just hitting it out of the park right um but it is interesting where you know the saudi state comes in and bails them out uh and you know to this day uh national commercial bank is nationalized though they've recently ipo'd like a 25 stake um

and so according to forbes like we don't know the extent of his mismanagement in national commercial bank uh because it has not issued audited numbers i believe this forbes article is 2002 but from 98 to 2002 it did not issue audited numbers, but it did acknowledge last year, I think 2001, that bad loans in 1999 and 2000 reached $934 million, covering 86% of its doubtful debt. So he comes in 1996, runs up like more than a billion in just unrepayable loans, and then has to be nationalized and bailed out by the Saudi state. But, you know respect yeah you can only fail upwards if you just are born into uh government connections um and then the saudi audit did find substantial discrepancies in the books of national commercial bank um but so you know the saudis they nationalize national commercial bank uh apparently mafou's family members are able to maintain 10 stakes like each he has like three kids um and they have seats on the boards um but you know it's nationalized and uh there are suspicions which

i'll get to right here that uh the bank had funneled quote millions to charities that were serving as bin lad fronts. Hell yeah. Yeah. So, like, the other thing is, you know, in addition to the intelligence operations, when BCCI was, you know, of course, funding terrorism, but also Khalid bin Mahfouz sets up some charities that are very much suspected of being fronts for Al-Qaeda. In particular, there's one, this is a Forbes article.

What, Al-Qaeda isn't a charity? There's a charity called MUFAQ. M-U-W-A-F-F-A-Q. And before you make fun of me, you don't know how to pronounce it too. Okay, MUFAQ seems close enough. I'm not gonna fault you on it, too. Okay? Mufox seems close enough. I'm not going to fault you on it, but I'm pretty sure you're wrong.

A charity that was murdered by Scar in front of Simba. It's better than the word that we thought we knew how to pronounce, but we actually didn't slightly in a past episode. Sure, sure. But so, you know, this is like a charity. And interestingly enough that I found amusing. So it's very credibly alleged that this is a front to funnel money to Al-Qaeda. And would you like to guess who was auditing this charity's books? Who?

It was the accounting firm Arthur Anderson, which you might know was shut down because of the Enron scandal. Oh, yeah. They were the people who were auditing Enron's books and being like, yeah, everything's fine here. And this is how we connect this to Elizabeth Holmes. This is where the nanotainers come into 9-11. Arthur Anderson was like, so this $100,000 invoice for box cutters, if we could just change that to management expenses.

What do you think was a harder cover-up for them, Enron or funding Al-Qaeda? I think Enron. Yeah, probably. So this $9 million line that says safe houses throughout the United States. If we could just change that to janitorial services. But yeah, so Arthurerson was auditing the books of um this uh this charity

and um the u.s treasury uh described it in october 2002 uh the charity as quote an al-qaeda front that receives funding from wealthy saudi businessmen um and then uh caleb ben mafouz would notoriously start suing a bunch of people after the september 11th attacks because people pointed out that he funneled a bunch of money to al-qaeda um like in uh in 1995 a africa confidential is a british newsletter again this is from forbes it accused the charity of having connections with terrorists i will say after the last few months hearing that something was funded by, quote, wealthy businessmen and isn't

an international pedophile ring. Right, right. Like, it's kind of like, oh, it's just terrorism? Okay, then. Whatever. There was, again, from the same Forbes article, there's a former

U.S. ambassador gives the quote that he said that Mufak was part of a push after the Gulf War by Saudi rulers to shore up their long political relationship with puritanical Wahhabi religious leaders by financing the building of mosques and schools outside the kingdom. He believes that the royal family often got Saudi tycoons to foot the bill for such efforts, which Osama bin Laden was able to hijack and use as cover for 9-11, or for Al-Qaeda, I should say. And so, you know, like the amount that Khalid bin Mahfouz funneled to Al-Qaeda is in dispute. I've heard figures of like $100 million.

But it should just be noted this guy has sued so many fucking people over these allegations. He's dead now in 2009, but I wanted to just kind of quickly go through. I just want to say, though, move fuck, but do move love. I wanted to quickly go through. In June 2006, so we've talked about libel tourism. He'd sue these things in London court because it's much easier to win a judgment there.

In June 2006, he sues a book called the forbidden truth in april 2006 he sues a book called funding evil how terrorism is financed in july 2004 he sues a book called terrorism financing roots and trends of saudi terrorism financing uh in uh 2004 he sues the book house of bush house of sod and prevents it from being published in the United Kingdom. Like it was published in the United States before the Bush-Carrie election, but he sues it in the United Kingdom to keep it out of there. He also sues the book Alms for Jihad in 2006 and gets the publisher to pulp it and destroy all copies of the book. So if you actually want to get a copy of the book, it's like $70 used on Amazon, or you can just go to WikiLeaks

and they have a copy up there. I think the lesson here is don't publish your book in the UK. But so, you know, he... And I guess just like two other things on Mahfouz, and then we'll go to the 9-11 thing, but we should mention here the Golden Chain. According to Alms for Jihad,

the Golden Chain is a to Alms for Jihad, the Golden Chain is a list of mostly Saudi wealthy rappers that are about to be signed by Rockefeller Nation. When they get that gold chain, that's when they know their life's changed. The Golden Chain is a list

discovered in 2002 by Bosnian police in a charity that's actually a front for Al-Qaeda. And it is a list of like the names of 20 or so wealthy Saudi businessmen. According to Alms for Jihad, six of them were bankers, 12 of them were businessmen, two of them were unknown of these Saudis. And they say, Alms for Jihad says the net worth of the 18 identified Saudis as of 2002 was 85 billion U.S. dollars. So this is basically every billionaire in Saudi Arabia is on this list. Almsford Jihad quotes that as 42% of Saudi Arabia's GDP for that year, 2002,

is represented in this list of 18 names. And interestingly enough, of the six bankers, all of them were principals in the three largest banks in Saudi Arabia. Just a note to our UK listeners, please do not tell any Saudi billionaires about our podcast. Think about how many Toyotas you could buy with that amount of money. The Grubstickers are so excited when they get their free trips to the United Kingdom.

That's a lot of white Toyota trucks. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Reinforced armor. But so, of course, the principles of the three largest banks in Saudi Arabia are on this list. And that, of course, includes Khalid bin Mahfouz of the National commercial bank in his defense is that this list is written either 1988 or 89 when, you know, us policy was still funding essentially Al Qaeda in Afghanistan,

the precursor to it. And so he says he, I think his excuses, he donated something like $270,000 to bin Laden, but back when the us government liked him, you know but it's like, it's not very conceivable that you would do that and just stop before 9-11. Right.S. government liked him. But it's not very conceivable that you would do that and just stop before 9-11.

Right, right. It's a little odd to stop before a national, international tragedy that occurs. And so, you know, National Commercial Bank, again, you know, one of the three largest banks in Saudi Arabia. That's where the Mahfouz family gets their fortune. They're being sued by the 9-11 families as well as insurers like uh the insurers who had to do the insurance policy

on 9-11 have sued them and other people in saudi arabia for something like 4.3 billion damn um and i just wanted to quote a 2008 philadelphia inquiry inquirer article on this lawsuit against National Commercial Bank. The primary vehicle for the money laundering scheme, the plaintiffs allege, was a now defunct charity called the Mufak Foundation, which was established by two former senior officials of the bank. They charged that Mufuz and his partner founded Mufak while they were affiliated with National Commercial Bank in the early 90s, used it to funnel money to al-Qaeda.

And they also funneled the plaintiffs, filed reports by a German intelligence service asserting that the National Commercial Bank was used to launder money into al-Qaeda. And they filed what the plaintiffs said was a cable from the former French ambassador from Saudi Arabia from 1998 to 2004. In the cable, the French ambassador says,

Saudi authorities had unearthed information that Ben Mahfouz had been involved in fund transfers from national commercial banks to an Islamic charity that in turn directed the money to bin Laden. And then there was testimony from the house committee on international relation in october 2001 uh where a former chief of counterterrorism at the cia said quote there is little doubt that a financial conduit to ben laden was handled through the national commercial bank unquote so i hope we've been able to establish here that at least up until september 11 2001 he was funneling money to Al-Qaeda. Right. And then, you know, he...

Is every terrorist plot riddled with people that are funneling money around the world? Like, I mean, maybe I shouldn't be so shocked that groups that are militias or guerrillas or terrorists have a backing of finance that's corrupt. But it seems to me that that's always the case. Is that true? Well, the Boston bombers were pretty DIY. They just had the FBI funding them. Yeah, I mean, like to carry out like an operation like 9-11, the cost estimates I've heard is between like $350,000 to $500,000. It's pretty cheap.

Yeah, so it's not that expensive. I guess the... You could take out a mortgage to buy a 911. Yeah, you really could. I was going to say... Flip that house. We know Massad didn't do 911 because they would have haggled about the price.

Send your complaints to... Virtual Texas. I wanted to mention uh two last things about ben ben mafuz and then we'll talk a bit about the september 11th attacks uh in the book house of bush house of sod again written in 2004 they do actually establish a bit of a connection between george w bush and uh caleb ben mafuz uh, mid eighties, he was living in Houston, Texas, and he had kind of a tertiary link with George W. Bush, uh, just quoting from a guardian writeup of the book. Um, well, they paint together. Yeah. In 1987, a Saudi associate of, uh, Caleb Ben-Mafuz helped a young George Bush and his struggling oil firm hearken energy by buying 17%

of its stock. Then in 1990, the Prime Minister of Bahrain, who just so ha- Bahrain? Bahrain? Bahrain. Bahrain. Bahrain. Bahrain. Bahrain, but bye? Yeah. And Iran that swings both ways?

It's like- It's really enforced by. There's's a social police. Just like hanging heteronormative people from cranes. So, Byran, Bayran. Byran? Byran.

In 1990, the Prime Minister of Byran awarded offshore drilling rights to Bush's company, Harkin. But it just so happens that he was a huge shareholder in previously mentioned BCCI. So this is like another connection where the prime minister of Bahrain was like really heavily involved in this very shady bank who just so happened to give uh be like 20 owned by khalid bin mafouz and who also um gave you know lucrative oil rights to george w bush and then in 1995 the book asserts that uh khalid bin mafouz his two sons invested 30 million u.s dollars in 1995 in the Carlyle group, which you might know from our previous episode on them

was paying George H.W. Bush like a million or a hundred thousand a speech to go around and solicit foreign market opportunities for them. Man, I'm so excited when we're like five, six hundred episodes deep and we're just like, okay, so we've mentioned three of these

things. You might remember this from star star starbucks episode 18 okay we talked about this they're actually involved in this child sex cult this is the northwest one there's actually saudi money behind it if you remember episode uh 135 episode 135, 278, and 432, they were actually raping children on the planes as they went into the buildings. The episodes will still be like 60 minutes long, but like 30 minutes of that will be like, so you might remember on episode 23

we talked about this, but also on episode 45 we set up this. So if you refer back to that. So episode 237 uh is uh odd to kubrick and uh what we've made sure to do is include epstein's manifesto that links him to the kubrick murders which also links to the tom cruise nicole kidman divorce which was led in the fact because they had a island near uh the epstein Island. And of course, as was established in episode 138, this is all being orchestrated by the British royal family.

But so, Caleb Ben-Mafuz dies of a heart attack, 60 years old, in 2009. He's worth about $3.35 billion at his death. Can we just plain tentatively, by the way, to make episode 138 about the British royal family? Yeah, awesome. I'll lock that away. We committed here.

He has two sons and a daughter. Abdul Raham is his son, as well as his brother, Sultan. And I believe the daughter is called Iman. But so there's a 2002 United Nations report that alleges Kaylin Ben-Mafuz had funneled about 100 million US dollars to Osama Bin Laden. He also

sued the authors of that report. Wow. But so, you know, regardless, they inherit the money, and they've kept a low profile since then, understandably. The Mafuz family members, according to Al Jazeera in 2018...

It would be pretty baller, though, if they got into New York high-end nightlife. Just like at every red carpet event. Like, yeah, we paid for 9-11. Stop us. You can't. We own your government. Petro dollars. I hope y'all

stocked up on petro dollars because, man, that attack has sent brent crude through the roof 20 higher than it was uh two days ago highest percentage increase since the invasion of kuwait wow yeah much love to the uh to the Yemenis for pulling that off. So I hope you held on to those petrodollars. And then also sold your anime and manga dollars. Because Japan is so fucked in terms of oil hegemony. Really?

Yeah. Yeah, we have to go to war with Iran because they fucked up my commodities puts. So in 2018, Al Jazeera reports that three billionaire members of the Mahfouz family were detained in the quote-unquote corruption crackdown that was carried out by MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. And what we've kind of talked about, again, on the premium episode,

is that this corruption crackdown was really just a way of the royal family to bring all the billionaires into heel they detained a lot of billionaire businessmen and said hey uh you know pay us a bribe or invest here or make your company into an arm of the saudi government or there will be trouble like you will be uh either murdered or just have your assets confiscated. Right here in River City? With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool? But so, you know, like... You want to back me up on that? Okay. It seems like...

What is that, Andy? It's the music band. I don't know what that is. Oh. Well, suffice to say that pool is haram and banned in Saudi Arabia. You can only play billiards to finish out the mafuz family uh the the kids it seems like they're just kind of collecting their money like there's a there's two companies there's the holding group al marjan group is the holding company and there's also sedco capitals s-e-d-c-o capital uh they recently bought some fucking fedex facility

in the middle of the united states uh they've been investing in real estate but apparently the way sedco works is like the majority of board members are non-family so it's like the kids inherited this uh oil bank wealth and now they just kind of let other people run it and they cash the checks that they do whatever the fuck they do they stay out of the press except for apparently um one of the sons was you know the uh the seashells meeting between eric prince and uh a russian sovereign wealth fund guy is that the one by the seashore yes right before trump was inaugurated you know this was like an obsession of rachel maddow's for a little bit and you know i'm sure they talked about diplomatic shit but for whatever reason um uh the son um abdullah was there he was at this meeting so yeah so you know like eric prince was another

billionaire apparently there as like an unofficial representative of uh abdul raham was the son excuse me but he was there at this meeting between Eric Prince and some guy who runs the sovereign wealth fund of Russia, a sovereign wealth fund of Russia who's connected to Putin. But, you know, we'll see what they do in the future. But I guess, like, with the time we have left, I wanted to talk just a little bit about the September 11th attacks and why we know what what saudi arabia has

done there sean why are you hard so where were you guys on september 11th 2002 steve uh in middle school but you sean where are you at i like how andy said 2002 i was at no i'll tell you where i was uh september 11th 2002 i was at a Sherry's, which for those who don't know, it's a high-end Denny's knockoff on the West Coast. And they had a little 9-11 memorial. And there was a family decked out in American flags that walked up to the Sherry's 9-11 memorial in the middle of a strip mall and looked upon it

and got really misty-eyed really yeah i was also in middle school but i thought andy meant 2001 and i won my middle school election for president and i didn't realize that when you win a uh student body in middle school like oh man now I gotta deal with 9-11. Well, you had to give up your lunches. You had to do working meeting lunches. And I was like, I'm trying to eat. I'm trying to work during a lunch meet. But we had like a bus stop ad

that we could paint whatever we wanted to paint on it. And so all of the other student body kids were like, let's do like pro-America 9-11. And I was like, why would we do that? Why would we make people waiting for the bus think about 9-11 and i was shot down immediately and then i walked out of office some call me the richard nixon of eaton elementary school yogi was like you kids it might really endanger my re-election bid if we make people start thinking about 9-11.

But so I wanted to kind of quickly go through some of the September 11th stuff because there's this great actually... Well, here's a fun fact about Yogi. You know when he's about to travel internationally because he shaves his beard. Yeah, I have done that several times. So there's a BBC documentary. It's on Netflix.

It's called 9-11 Truth, Lies, and Conspiracies. And it goes through just a little bit of this stuff. And I find it all pretty interesting. Where the two hijackers we referenced earlier that are sometimes called the San Diego cell. Their names are Nawaf El-Hazmi and Khalid El-Midrar. Is that Klingon dog what you're reading, son? I do have the Spock haircut, so the listeners can't see that.

So what I wanted to say was, according to this documentary, both of them were on CIA watch lists. In 1999, late 1999 they traveled to malaysia for like a terrorist summit where uh the people there are planning attacks on america from what we know uh you know what people don't know is malaysia is spanish for bad asia andy just threw me a book the arabic alphabetphabet, How to Read and Write It. Did you learn Farsi, son?

It's an Arabic book. It doesn't say the Farsi alphabet. The script is the same. Oh. Andy got this because this podcast has radicalized him. He's going to fucking go to a Chechnyan camp. You're enrolled in a flight school. Yeah, we... He was a Saudi handler.

You guys, it's hard for us to do the podcast without Andy, but we have to admit, he really did better promotion than we'd ever been able to do before. The hits are through the roof. Ever since the incident. Okay, so these two um uh future 9-11 hijackers uh in 1999 they're at this terror summit in malaysia the cia has them on a watch list

the cia is aware that their visas uh are stamped to allow them i just want to see like terrorists wearing lanyards and like they're, are you going to this panel? This panel on C4, like suicide detonation. It's going to be fucking sick, dude. One of them has in little text, Al Nusra. And another one has in little text, ISIS. Yeah. Another one in little text, the Montana Patriots front.

There's a TED x yeah if you fuck up the name they get all shitty like it's it's pronounced new wave idiot uh but so you know the cia has them on a watch list they're in this terror summit in malaysia in 99 they have the cia knows that their visas are stamped to allow them to enter the United States, but they don't tell the FBI. And the speculation in this Netflix doc, according to like a former FBI agent who was attached to the CIA, the speculation is that the CIA was trying to flip these two Al-Qaeda terrorists and turn them into, you know, assets. But what actually happens is they enter the united states and the cia loses track of them and then has to tell the fbi three months before 9-11

uh there were two terrorists on a watch list who entered the united states and we didn't tell you and then we lost track of them because we want like they probably didn't say to the fbi because we wanted to flip them as spies and then we failed. But it's like, you know, so it's like, why does the CIA engage in the Bush cover up? Well, the FBI and CIA obviously fucked up a huge amount letting this attack go off. So they have every incentive to go along with this Bush administration cover up and protect their own asses. Because if it came out that the CIA was trying to flip 9-11 hijackers and then some guy went to his Dunkin' Donuts break and then they were like, where the fuck did they go?

If that came out about the CIA, that might be very damaging and potentially even destroy the organization. Yeah, of course. I'm skeptical that much of anything could destroy the CIA. All you need is a president kind of hinting at it, and then suddenly the Social Security's

planning an open-topped parade. I do think we might see in our lifetime, we might see that theory tested, because it might come out all in the same month that the CIA was running Epstein and that the CIA tried to flip the 9-11 hijackers and that the CIA knew 9-11 was going to happen what a time to be alive so that would be funny just to see if the CIA could survive they were running Epstein and they were running the

hijackers both coming out the same month and if they can survive that they can survive anything yeah practically yeah uh what would have to come out that would be crazier than all of that like they like pre-epstein they were like you guys know aliens are real and we're confirming it and everyone's like who gives a fuck and then like a month later they're like oh epstein was real and we're like what and they're like uh popeye's got new chicken sandwiches like literally the hysteria of news has gone so quickly that i don't know what the CIA could do to make us be like, man, fuck that organization. Look, Epstein was really just a front to run children, to fuck the aliens, to keep them happy. We were preventing an Independence Day style invasion.

Right. This is why the private planes flew into the Bermuda Triangle and they would land on the island, but secretly they would be beamed up from the triangle. The target was that weird sundial. Now we're trying to almost justify the Epstein mania in our minds by saying, well, actually it was part of some alien conspiracy or something. Really, it was all for mundane freaking capital accumulation a bunch of like cia uh agents run for congress on the democratic ticket being like donald trump has disrespected our alien agents who laid down their lives for this dimension in its war against the five-dimensional pedophiles. You see, if independents say we're real, instead of the president flying a jet plane to shoot at aliens,

you're like, Mr. President, aliens are about to destroy the world. You can stop it if you fuck this child. That's what's the end of it. We do the podcast, and then we get taken behind the curtain and they're like, you wouldn't understand. We need the three-dimensional pedophiles

to fight the seven-dimensional pedophiles. The only thing that can stop a bad pedophile is a good pedophile. We're uncovering all of this. White hat pedophiles. But in the meantime white hat pedophiles but in the meantime we've all been offered jobs by snl so they're just combing through all the episodes those those guys fucking suck fire them yeah we're literally being like okay apparently there's multiple dimensions of pedophiles and they all are working together and against one another somehow, and they're like,

oh, did you hear Yogi said Elon Musk eats butt in episode three? Go fucking lynch him. Here's the thing, though. We're not video recording this, and no one's just going to sit around and just listen to us saying this stuff. I have thought about this,

and when we do put the episodes on YouTube, and one of the reasons it's been stalled is because the auto-text on YouTube is pretty good with audio that's pretty decent which by the way listeners our audio is fucking decent but so our script does go into the YouTube algorithm when we upload the episodes up there so they do have there will eventually be a script version of our show which I think would be nice for the deaf community I think that

the deaf community would love to hear the billionaire dirt read. You know, you're right, though. Like, it is a good thing because putting video on a podcast actually makes it more compelling and engaging. That's right. So if we want to talk about, you know, the interdimensional pedophiles, it actually makes sense that we're too lazy to put this shit on video on YouTube because we're trying to protect our future job opportunities. You know, guy on reddit did figure it out he said uh

grub stakers uses drops to make their show seem shitty so that they'd never be popular so they can continue to do it and i was like he's not wrong that has been the entire goal if we put enough socket to me's in an episode a lawyer and or the government agencies above us will be like i mean you know come on what are we gonna stop a show that talks about eating but all right there's only one way americans there's one way to test it andy say an old-timey slur about chinese people let's see we're not on video right now so as long as we're not on video it cannot hurt our career opportunities why don't we all say one on three? Okay, everybody.

And that way no one will know who said what. It's like a firing squad. One of us doesn't have to say the slur. But three of us will say the slur. So it'll be done. Okay, here we go. One, two, three. Celestials.

Nice. I'm going to bleep that part. I didn't say anything, three. Celestials. Crack and roll. Nice. I'm going to bleep that part. I didn't say anything, actually. Sure you didn't, Steven. I said Celestials. I didn't say anything either. Because I'm still not sure how that's... I mean, I guess it's a slur, but it's also kind of like, I'd like to be a Celestial.

What the fuck's a Celestial? Look, it's an old-timey slur for... Oh, really? I said Neanderthal. Oh. The original N-word. It's an old-timey slur. Oh, really? I said Neanderthal. The original N-word. Look, as we're remembering 9-11, I think we can all commemorate the real tragedy,

Shane Gillis getting fired from SNL, which was the subject of much more furious debate than the September 11th attacks. If you look closely, you can see Shane's career fall at near freeze fall speed. No career could fall that fast, man. There's got to be some jet fuel that's hurting his career.

There's no way just one podcast video stunts a career like that, man. Then all of them would be locked up. He was calling into Legion of Skanks and then you hear the sound of one of the towers collapsing and the phone line disconnects. All right, well, so look, I want to get through just a little,

I know we're going a little long. Chat fuel riffing doesn't melt mainstream media. But look, the theme of this episode, in addition to the fact that all saudi billionaires funded 9-11 right like that's how they made their for that was their charitable works was funding 9-11 see we're not just anti-semitic yes uh the theme of this episode is like the stuff about jet fuel melt steel beams is like you know people were speculating on twitter and even this is like i don't know if i actually believe it but it's not implausible that you know the people were speculating on Twitter and even this is like, I don't know if I actually believe it, but it's not implausible that, you know, the U.S. government would stoke these kinds of conspiracies.

They would say, like, why not promote, you know, a 9-11 truther because it prevents people from looking at the Saudi connection. And it also makes people think if you say the official story is wrong, that you're a nutcase. You've got tinfoil on your head and um just like the quick and dirty story is that again the 9-11 families have identified the lawyers claim 11 agents of the saudi government particularly the ministry of islamic affairs but also the saudi ambassador in washington prince bandar they called a bandar bush back during the bush administration he gave 130 000 from his personal account to a handler of two of the hijackers that money ended up with the hijackers so the saudi ambassador

to the united states from the 80s up until 2005 uh gave 130 000 to two of the hijackers these guys are all way overpaying for 9-11 if it only costs 350 000 dollars like that's that's the real controversy is like all all the money that's getting defrauded out of legitimate 9-11 i do like how the saudi hijackers were like anybody like getting lunch on the company credit card we're like yeah 9-11 that'll cost like two, three million dollars. Yeah, just put that on my company Al-Qaeda card. I've got the BCCI card. But yeah, so this is-

How did Visa approve this? So the Saudi ambassador pays the hijackers $130,000. Two days after 9-11, there's a photo of him smoking cigars on the balcony of the white house with george w bush real photo uh as part of this ruin the bush administration approves his request to allow a bunch of different saudis like two dozen i believe many of whom were uh alleged to be connected to this attack or funders of terrorists two dozen saudis are evacuated from the united states under fbi escort many without being questioned and this includes members of

the ben laden family so it's like why the fuck does the bush administration approve this and then you know there are a ton of former fbi agents who are working with the 9-11 families to say you know the bush administration stamped out all our leads there were a bunch of different investigations and uh as soon as they led back to the saudi embassy in washington they were like no go you know that's shut down the fbi shut down all sorts of investigations i'm telling you bro petro dollars um and so you know like uh we'll see what the third name is but uh and he has tens of thousands of dollars dollars worth petrodollars right now. He's just freaking laughing all the way to the bank with those attacks.

That's actually how much I owe in student loans. I took out my student loans entirely in petrodollars. Andy, he took out his student loans in petrodollars, and then he went on Twitter and made a burner account and tweeted things like, Yemenis are shit I'll bet you Yemenis could never damage the oil

infrastructure of glorious Saudi Arabia so this we mentioned this third name that the Trump administration is supposedly going to give to the 9-11 families there's speculation that it might be this guy identified in the Politico article. His name is Khalid Sawalem.

He was the head of DAWA, which was a department within the ministry, the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, that, according to Politico, that stated goal is spreading the religion, and, you know, they spread mosques and madrasas around the world. So, you know, what you see is the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs has founded, I believe, in 1993, and they're preaching kind of the Wahhabist, radical, fundamentalist interpretation of Sunni Islam throughout the world. And a bunch of people on the payroll of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, but also, of course, the Saudi embassy in washington are like serving as handlers for the the hijackers in various capacities right and um you know so uh and there's this great political article from 2017 that goes through kind of like one uh theory of how this all went out but i do

just want to like mention one other thing about these two handlers who were handling the San Diego terrorists. One's name is, according to Politico, Omar al-Bayomi, who many in San Diego's Islamic community assumed he was a Saudi spy, since he could often be found walking around with a video recorder taping everyone he encountered he was also paid by the saudis but had been employed in a series of ghost jobs since the 1970s according to politico so he had like no work jobs with the saudis and then the other handler was an imam at the mosque where the two hijackers in san diego went to who was also an employee of the saudi ministry of islamic affairs and you know bayami actually answers questions uh with he tells the fbi he met the two hijackers after overhearing their conversation in a restaurant after which point he helped them find apartments co-signed their leases gave them money for rent cell phones connected with them with people who got them driver's license and brought them to flight schools what uh and this is of course a likely saudi intelligence officer and also

according to politico shortly after the meeting his three thousand dollar a month saudi salary was bumped to seven thousand dollars a month uh so you know the implication here is that this third person whose name will be unredacted at some point in the future directed him to, uh, help these two hijackers get apartments and driver's license and shit in San Diego and paid him well to do it. Um, and you know,

like, look, we, there's so many different threads. I want to pull on one last one and then we can kind of talk about like what I guess the takeaway is or why all this shit happens. But the, the last free Eprey epstein well speaking of florida um the the bbc documentary i mentioned it does kind of go through this which is you know muhammad adha was in what was called the hamburg sale they came from germany to the

united states they spent some time at least six months in florida and once you get to florida their movements are like very like the timeline in the official you know 9-11 commission report and shit it kind of disappears and so what they found the florida bulldog is an independent paper in florida in 2011 they found out that muhammad had uh visited along with other hijackers at least three three times, a gated community, like a mansion in Prestancia, Florida, owned by Abdulaziz Al-Hajiz. Or it wasn't owned by, it was lived in by this guy. And so Muhammad Atta visits this guy at least three times.

And this guy, two weeks before 9-11, suddenly dips with his wife and two kids. Two weeks before 9-11, he leaves so fast that they, according to the Florida Sun-Sentinel, he departed so suddenly that they left behind cars, three cars, one of which was brand new, clothes, a full refrigerator, and an open safe. Apparently there was like fruit on the table when the police walked in and checked it out. So it was like there was clothing. It's just like very clearly if you're like leaving for any legitimate reason,

you would take some of that shit with you. Right, right. Apparently they took one computer, which maybe had some evidence on it. And this guy who evacuated very suddenly two weeks before 9-11, mysteriously, who Mohammed Adda had visited at least three times, he shows up working for Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company in, I believe, the Daily Telegraph finds him in 2012 in London, working for the

Saudi government there. What? Yeah. But so the other thing I wanted to mention is, according to the Florida Bulldog, from this house where Mohammed Adda in Florida visited at least three times, record subpoenas from the phone company linked calls dating back for more than a year

to and from the house to several of the 9-11 hijackers and other terrorist suspects, including senior Al-Qaeda member Adnan Shikrajuma. That's according to the Florida Bulldog. So he dips two weeks before 9-11. He gets a job with the Saudi state oil company. For whatever reason, Mohammed Adda was visiting there at least three times.

But the weird thing is the FBI knew about this and didn't tell it to the 2002 joint congressional investigation and didn't tell it to the 2004 9-11 commission report really this was only discovered by the florida bulldog in 2011 broke this story and then they uh freedom of information act the fbi and the fbi was like yeah there's nothing there uh and then finally they were like yeah we have 80 000 pages but uh it's all classified and you're getting none of it so they're still in court fighting the fbi to get these 80,000 pages but it is just like bizarre that i mean it's not bizarre we know why it's corruption yeah the fbi was covering up this very clear saudi link and uh you know so but i i thought

like one other interesting thing here is the guy who actually owned the house was the father of the guy, Mr. Al-Hajij, the guy who dipped and then went to a job in London. He was the father of his wife. So he was his son in law. And the guy who actually owned the house was a guy named Issam gaz gazawai gazawai and isam gazawai is um according to the florida bulldog he was a royal family consultant he was the son of a former saudi ambassador and uh he was also an interior designer and uh it's interesting where he uh in 2017 he re-emerges and he sets up a website for his interior designs. That's what he thinks is most pressing in 2017? Yes.

So it's like the Florida Bulldog has apparently used the contact information on that website to try and be like, hey, were you involved with 9-11? Right, right. And he has not gotten back to them yet um but you know like i do recommend you check out the website because you know he uh makes some uh bitchin prefabs for uh saudi princess and shit do you know that ben rhodes one of the crooked media guys uh was one of the writers of the 9-11 commission report really ben rhodes is crooked media i think so he was like obama's foreign policy guy right yeah he's like a he was like a contributor but he's one of the guys that wrote

the 9-11 report yeah i remember here i used to listen to david axelrod shitty podcast and i remember he was on they were talking about it and that's where i was like and you know the 28 pages and then rose just got really kind of quiet and uncomfortable. Yeah, obviously. Sorry, let me see. Oh, Issam. So the website, if anybody is interested,

is... What I'm saying is that Pod Save America covered up the Saudi connection to 9-11. So the website, if anybody's interested, is isam e-s-a-m g-h-a-z-z-a-w-i and then designs.com so you can look at just some really really bitching uh prefabs and you know uh there's a press tab where it shows pictures of him with george hw bush among others so he owned a house that was being visited at least three times by muhammad adha and four or

five of the other hijackers in florida uh just so happened very near the flight school that they went to king yes um and uh oh i guess last thing and uh sorry we got a little long here but um uh andy mentioned the guy who lost his eye uh abu zubaydah yeah yeah according to the fbi so i don't know if this is credible but the florida bulldog reported it uh according to the fbi an address book confiscated when zubaydah was captured contained the unlisted phone number of the company that managed the affairs of Ambassador Bandar's, Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador, his home in Colorado. He also had the phone number of an individual who at the time worked as a bodyguard at the Saudi embassy in Washington. So, you know, it is just something where like there are so many different loose threads leading back to both the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs and the Saudi embassy in Washington.

And, you know, and then Senator Bob Graham was a Florida senator who wrote the or was one of the co-chairs of the original 2002 congressional report. He's since become like a huge 9-11 official story skeptic, you know, this former senator from Florida. And he says, like, for example, the FBI has now claimed that they, like, did pass this Florida information to Congress. And he's like, I was the senator for Florida. I would have noticed if they, like, said that the Muhammad Otto was hanging out in Florida

and going to this mansion. Oh, you were out that day. Yes. We tried to get contact. They so you're out that day yes uh we tried to get contact they said you were you were out so apparently according to senator bob graham he says that when he was trying to investigate this as um the uh co-chair of this original senate uh congress congressional committee looking into it according to him among other things is from the new york post uh head of the fbi robert muller refused their demands to question a paid

fbi informant who was roommates with the hijackers and he even moved him to a safe house where they couldn't find him so the fbi was moving fucking paid informants that knew the hijackers to safe houses to hide them from congressional investigators um you know so it's like it is just one of those things where i really do encourage people to check out uh uh what senator bob graham has said about this because he says you know he tried to interview the fbi cia etc and whenever they got to saudi arabia the veil came up and they would just hide and obfuscate what was actually going on there right and uh you know and i guess what i who i think was was behind the cover-up yes country music because they had a renaissance that's right that's right the dixie chicks were in on it and that's why they were so mad but you know and um i guess what i

wanted to like kind of close out with here is one of our Patreons actually hit me up and he suggested, you know, listening to our Patreon episode, like what the fuck, why would Saudi do this? Because Saudi Arabia, at least the government has a pretty good deal going.

You know, we buy their oil, we send them cash and then the strongest military in the world protects them. You know, why would they carry out an attack on essentially their guardian they thought country music was getting stale um and look i don't have a perfect answer but as far as i can theorize as to what like actually happened what's the real 9-11 truth conspiracy what is the real truth of 9-11 my best theory, having read the little bit that I have, is Al-Qaeda was a proxy arm of Saudi Arabia.

Just like, you know, say Hezbollah is considered a proxy arm of Iran. You know, certainly the U.S. has their proxy forces around the world. And so it operates in a way that they can extend their global influence and, you know, commit acts of violence against enemies with plausible deniability. You know, Al-Qaeda can carry out attacks against Shia. Al-Qaeda can be an armed wing of the Wahhabist gospel that they're trying to spread, essentially like a terrorist organization that functions as a non-state proxy actor so i think there is something where you can lose control of those things and certainly the same thing happens with the cia in the united states where the cia will often do things that you know not even the president is aware of that the president or whoever hears about after the fact, you know, these kinds of,

um, separate power structures within government managed to establish their own authority and they can, uh, uh, carry out attacks that maybe the central government's not aware of. And I think there were certainly in the ministry of Islamic affairs and the Washington embassy of Saudi Arabia,

there were lots of people, including the fucking ambassador, who were 100% aware that this shit was going down. I think like the actual, you know, king of Saudi Arabia probably didn't know, but there were definitely a lot of people within the government who were aware and who wanted this to happen. Because, you know, the United States are crusaders and they set foot in Mecca and these sorts of things. Now, man, the real conspiracy is the Jewish Hollywood elite wanted to keep You Don't Mess with the Zohan down because of his high cast of Muslim Americans to prop up the Muslim American propaganda that they were safe to hang out with.

And so that's why they did 9-11 to slow down adam sandler's career because he was getting too big and they're like oh the harvey weinstein stuff's about to get out we got to distract them for another two decades yeah what happened with the jewish hollywood mafia is like adam sandler was like no thank you i will not go in the epstein room and they're like well we're gonna change something about your career then buddy and so adam sandler had to become part of the epstein conspiracy after 9-11 that's right otherwise they wouldn't have released the movie that's what the liner notes of punch drug love are all about um but but i guess like you know it seems very clear to me that elements within the saudi government were aware of this And I don't think the Bush administration had advanced knowledge,

but I think there's a big financial relationship between the Saudi and United States elites that the Bush administration wanted to protect. But also by covering this up, they got their Casus Belli, uh, however you pronounce that for going to war with Iraq. And, uh,

and in addition to that, what happens after the Bush administration leaves is the CIA and FBI are complicit in this cover-up. So of course, you know, the Obama administration keeps the cover-up going. Now the Trump administration keeps the cover-up going because there is so much institutional failure and embarrassment at all levels of this shit.

Well, it also helped Obama when he killed bin Laden, which if you go down that rabbit hole with Seymour Hersh, where it's very likely that bin Laden was a political prisoner of Pakistan that they were holding in case they wanted a favor from the United States found out because a guy who was passed up for a promotion walked into a CIA outpost in Pakistan and was like hey bin Laden's like right over there they set it up to basically kill him and then make it look like he was hiding instead of a prisoner

of the state of Pakistan that's what fucking happened with Deep Throat too like every scandal just gets revealed because somebody gets passed over for a promotion yeah middle management bro give everyone the promotion they deserve even if they don't deserve it

but it is just something where again you know look we've gone long we're a comedy podcast are we? not this episode but it bothers me it bothers me because you know in addition to everything else they have done the bush administration these people should be in jail they shouldn't be getting fucking retweeted by andy richter uh these people covered up the september 11th attack i'd like to call him president gas man or what do you mean by these people sean yes i mean david from in triple

parentheses no it is just something turns out he's like lutheran where you know the saudi ambassador prince bandar was like such a good friend of president bush and like probably did 9-11 and it is just something where uh if they knew that they, they made a decision they didn't want to ask those questions. And any leads that the FBI tried to or any investigative body tried to do into Saudi Arabia were stonewalled. And the 9-11 families have even talked about how the U.S. government actively worked against them in their lawsuit against Saudi Arabia. So it's just like there's so much elite money at stake here that they don't want to uncover that rock. And we don't know how high up into the Saudi government this conspiracy goes,

but I think it certainly goes, like we've said, the Washington embassy, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. Jeffrey Epstein. Probably some mid-level people, you know, or maybe even upper level. We don't know how far it goes, but I think significant elements of the saudi government and i think if it came out you know like if it came out after 9-11 there might have

been public demands to invade saudi arabia sure which would be very upsetting to essentially the international order that the united states has set up post 1945 right like we gotta find dollars we gotta go get We gotta go make nice with Venezuela and get our oil from somewhere else. We need petrodollars to ensure that the United...

that the dollar is the international reserve currency. God damn it. No. And Saudi Arabia maintains that with petrodollar recycling

and by making the oil denominated in dollars. Now, here, we should let the people know, two hosts of this podcast do not believe in petrodollars. One does, and then Yogi is indifferent. You're on the fence. I think the worst thing about 9-11 is that 18 years later and a few days, I have to edit something

that's 10 minutes shorter than fucking Citizen Kane cause Sean can't be concise in his fucking research I know I'm just saying that the uh return of the king but we will see what happens

with the uh the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia the families we'll see what happens with the Trump administration supposedly releasing the name of this other Saudi Arabia, the families. We'll see what happens with the Trump administration, supposedly releasing the name of this other Saudi official to the families, and if it comes out. And we will see how high up this conspiracy goes. But, you know, I really do hope that we will be able to do a little bit of work undoing the stigma of questioning the official story of 9-11,

because the official story is absolutely a cover-up. It just happens to lead back to Saudi Arabia and not thermite or, you know, a fucking cruise missile into the Pentagon. Allegedly. Yes. Because America needs oil to be denominated in dollars in order to maintain its global hegemony.

All right, and with that, this has been Grouchtakers. I'm Yogi Paliwal. I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Sean McCarthy. I'm Steve Jeffries. All right, bye. Thank you. Oh, hey, lastly, you know what, though? We just, this is technically episode 98, but this is episode 99 for us.

We're one away from 100, but we also just recently crossed 500,000 hits on our SoundCloud. So thank you very much to all our listeners. We do this for you. We are stuck in this, I'm going to call it purgatory for now, for you. But, yeah, keep on rocking in the free world. Love you. Doot doot. All right.

Good night, bud. Ba-da-da-dum.