Haggai Harmon - The Chameleon Conspiracy

We sat at the table closest to the water. Benny hadn’t changed much during the past year or so since I’d last seen him. But his mustache had grayed, he had gained a little weight, and he had lost much of his hair. He was starting to look older than his years. I knew why. He took his job more seriously than anybody I’d ever known. To him it wasn’t just a job, it was almost some sort of sacred obligation.

“World travel is treating you well,” I said, looking at his belly.

“Age has its indignities,” he said wryly. “In 1975 I was interested in acid rock, and now I’ve got acid reflux. Besides,” he added, “look who’s talking. You don’t exactly look like the slim serviceman you once were.”

He had a point, of course, and I was quick to change the subject. After schmoozing for a while and catching up on our respective families, I moved on to business. I told Benny about my debacle in Sydney, without giving him any telltale details or mentioning Ward’s name.

Somehow Benny wasn’t surprised to hear my story, although he said nothing. I decided to whet his appetite.

“Ever heard of Nada Management?”

Benny left his fork stuck in the huge red snapper he was dissecting.

“Sure, why? Are you trying to dig dead corpses out of their graves?”

“What do you mean?”

“They went out of business and their principal figure committed suicide.”

“How come I missed that information?”

“I’m surprised. It was all over the place.”

“Do you have anything concrete on them?”

“I’m sure we do. I can send you some reading material later. Where are you staying?”

“The usual.”

“Good.”

At six P.M. there was a knock on my hotel-room door and a bellman brought me a yellow envelope. I opened it, and sat at the desk to read the printed document.

On the top it read “The Central Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations,” the official name of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-intelligence service. Below that were today’s date and a handwritten note. Dan, I’m attaching the documents you have requested. Most of the information has already been made public. Some of it could be outdated or inaccurate, so treat it wisely and don’t regard it as evidence, but as uncorroborated intelligence to develop further leads. I’m here for the rest of the week if you need me. Regards, Benny.

To the note was attached a thick, bound, printed document which seemed like a photocopied section of even a bigger document. Nada Management aka Nada Management Organization SA, Switzerland, fka Al Taqwa Management Organization SA. A financial institution in Lugano, located at Viale Stefano Franscini 22, Lugano CH-6900 TI, Switzerland, not far from the Italian border. The company was previously named Al Taqwa Management (fear of God in Arabic). Al Taqwa is believed to have played a major part in laundering money for Osama bin Laden. Swiss and Liechtenstein police raided Al Taqwa’s offices in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, respectively, and Swiss police raided as well the home of its principal, Huber, in Rossimattstrasse 33, 3074 Muri, Bern (see more below), and the homes of Youssef Nada and Ali Ghaleb Himmat, two other Al Taqwa directors. Al Taqwa’s accounts in Swiss banks were frozen. Separately, Italian police closed an Islamic cultural center in Milan used as Al-Qaeda’s European logistical center. The center was financed by Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, a Kuwaiti businessman who was also an Al Taqwa director. Three months later, Al Taqwa was shut down permanently. The U.S. government’s Office of the Coordinator of Counterterrorism distributed a list of sixty-two organizations and individuals suspected of involvement in terrorist activities. Nada Management was included on the list. Al Taqwa was the financial arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. That organization was founded in Egypt in the late 1920s and has fought for the formation of a pure pan-Islamic theocratic state.

Obviously the document was sanitized, and anything meaningful had been redacted. What was left was history, not intelligence, I concluded, and just leafed through the rest of the pages. Since Nada Management and Huber were all dead, it was all very interesting, but what would I do with it? I pushed the bulky document aside and called Benny.

“Thanks for the stuff, but the organization seems to be as dead as its directors.”

“Frankly, I don’t know where it takes you,” said Benny, reading my mind. “That’s the only unclassified material we’ve got on these guys. There’s one thing you should know though, unless your friends at CIA have already told you.”

“What?”

“We heard rumors that, immediately after the Islamic Revolution, the Iranians and their subsidiary terrorist organizations were looking for genuine travel documents issued by the U.S. and other major Western countries.”

“Why? Didn’t they have their own version of Tibor who could manufacture genuine-looking passports?” Benny and I knew well the Mossad’s Hungarian-born document artist.

“I’m sure they do. But why forge and risk detection, when you can use the real thing? National passports are becoming more and more difficult to forge, because they don’t know what hidden markers are included in the passport. Besides, maybe in this case whoever took the passport needed not only the passport, but the identity.”

Benny had unwittingly just supported my earlier suspicion. And the real Ward-where was he? I had an idea, but wasn’t in the mood to dwell on it just then. I wondered why he had brought up the passport issue when, on its face, it had no connection to Ward’s case. Was he subtly trying to send me a message?

“Dan, let’s meet tomorrow. I’ve got some ideas,” said Benny, suddenly breaking my train of thought.

“Sure. Want to come to my hotel at one o’clock?”

The next day, Benny arrived unusually late. “You’ll have to excuse me, I had a small emergency,” he said as we sat at the restaurant downstairs.

“As always,” I teased him.

Benny glared at me and got to the point. “I have more information on Nada Management. Although they were shut down, the money-laundering activity continues. Terror organizations need money, and if you dry up one swamp to keep the mosquitoes away, another one will pop up in no time.

“On April 19, 2002, the U.S. government blocked all assets of Youssef Nada and Bank Al Taqwa, both of which were designated as terrorist financiers by the Department of Treasury on November 7, 2001.”

Benny pulled out a document from his briefcase and leafed through the pages. “Here it is.” On the same date, the U.S. Treasury also named four additional individuals as terrorist financiers connected to Al Taqwa: Zeinab Mansour-Fattouh, Mohamed Mansour, Albert Friedrich Armand Huber, and Ali Ghaleb Himmat. The Al Taqwa group has long acted as financial advisor to Al-Qaeda, with offices in the Ca rib be an, Italy, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland. Ahmed Idris Nasreddin and Youssef Nada are both founders and directors of Bank Al Taqwa. Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda organization received financial assistance from Youssef Nada. Al Taqwa provides investment advice and cash-transfer mechanisms for Al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups.

“Fine,” I said. “So they’re probably having a good time somewhere in the Middle East, or they’ve dug in a hole in Afghanistan enjoying the company of seventy virgins, without even having to blow themselves up.”

Benny smiled. “Maybe. But they left a job half done.” “Meaning?” I was wondering why Benny, an Israeli Mossad executive, was reading out U.S. government material to me. “How does it help my case?” I asked pointedly.

“There’s a need for their services. Now, when they go under, who’ll take care of the financially orphaned terrorist organizations? Where will they go?” he said in a mockingly sorrowful voice. Then his tone changed. “Listen, unless we’re ready for them, we’ll lose the war on terrorism, and our only option is going to be choosing the magnitude of our humiliation.”