By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
For 14 years, the FBI kept secret that a top al Qaeda leader captured in Pakistan in 2002 possessed the unlisted phone number of an offshore company tied to Saudi Arabia’s U.S. ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
The news got out last year after President Obama ordered the release of the “28 pages,” a long-suppressed chapter of a 2003 congressional report on 9/11. Also disclosed: FBI agents in Denver were assigned to investigate the company, ASPCOL Corporation, which the FBI described as “the umbrella corporation that manages the Colorado residence of Prince Bandar.”
But agents assigned to investigate ASPCOL, whose unlisted number was found in the phone book of “high-value” Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah, quickly suspended the probe.
“The Denver office did not attempt to make any local inquiries about ASPCOL, as they believed that any inquiries regarding ASPCOL would be quickly known by Prince Bandar’s employees,” the 28 pages said. “Due to the sensitivity of this matter, they decided to hold the investigation of ASPCOL in abeyance until they received additional guidance from FBI headquarters.”
The guidance Washington gave its Denver agents is not known, and FBI spokesmen won’t discuss it. It now appears, however, that the FBI never restarted its suspended investigation. Two witnesses told Florida Bulldog the FBI never contacted them to inquire about ASPCOL.
Witnesses not interviewed
One witness owned a company identified in the 28 pages of Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11 as having provided security at Bandar’s magnificent 15- bedroom, 16 bath residence in Aspen known as the Hala Ranch. The other is a well-known Washington attorney who helped incorporate ASPCOL and served on its board of directors.
The FBI’s Denver office identified the company as Scimitar Security, but provided no other details about it. Colorado corporate records identify Scimitar’s president as Hans Marschler. In an interview, Marschler, who now resides near Houston, confirmed that he owned the now-closed Scimitar Security and that the company had worked at Hala Ranch.
“It was a very small operation, one person during the day and one at night. We spent time watching the house. People came to work, we kept an eye on them,” Marschler said. “The FBI never contacted me.”
Marschler added that when Bandar was present he was accompanied by additional heavy security. “They brought in their whole teams,” he said. “Whoever was head of security, I don’t know.
Another Scimitar Security, this one a still active company based in San Diego, CA., has a connection to allegations of terrorism, but owner Abdul Halim Mostafa said his firm never worked for ASPCOL, Bandar or anywhere outside California.
Mostafa’s son is Jehad Serwan Mostafa, who is wanted by the FBI “for his alleged terrorist activities and acting as an operating member of al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based terrorist organization” with ties to al Qaeda. An indictment charging Mostafa, a U.S. citizen who was licensed as a security guard from 2000 to 2006, with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization was unsealed in 2010. The U.S. has a $5 million bounty on Mostafa’s head.
The Duttons of Arabia
The second person with information about ASPCOL the FBI never contacted is Washington attorney Nancy Dutton. Dutton represented the Saudi embassy for several decades until last year. Similarly, she represented the Saudi foreign ministry from 1975 until about two years ago.
Dutton and her late husband Fred Dutton, an attorney and key strategist to many big-name Democrats in the 1960s and 1970s who later became a counselor to Prince Bandar and a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia, incorporated ASPCOL in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles in December 1988 and later served on its board of directors.
“No, the FBI never called me and I doubt whether they called Fred or I would have known it,” said Dutton, a White House aide under President Kennedy. She declined further comment.
Another person involved with ASPCOL is Aspen attorney William “Willy” Jordan III, who would not be interviewed. Jordan represented Bandar’s interests in the area and served as APSCOL’s managing director for many years before it was liquidated and closed in January 2014.
The island of Curacao is a financial center in the Caribbean known for strict bank secrecy that has facilitated drug related crime. The U.S. currently lists the tiny country that’s part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands as a “jurisdiction of primary concern” where “money laundering occurs through real estate purchases and international tax shelters.”
Records show that a month after ASPCOL N.V. was incorporated it paid $3.5 million for 90 acres in Aspen. The mansion was constructed in 1991. Pitkin County property records show that ASPCOL sold the property for $49 million in May 2012.
Bandar, 68, was Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. from 1983 to 2005.
He was close to President George W. Bush, earning him the nickname Bandar-Bush. A White House photo taken two days after 9/11 shows Bandar on the White House’s Truman Balcony with Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice.
Bandar interview secret
The 9/11 Commission interviewed Bandar on Oct. 7, 2003. The government continues to keep secret the interview citing national security.
In October 2014, imprisoned 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui gave a deposition to attorneys representing victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington. He talked about how his superiors in al Qaeda had tasked him with creating a digital database of the group’s donors. “Shaykh Osama wanted to keep a record [of] who give money…to the jihad,” Moussaoui said, according to a transcript.
He went on to name numerous contributors he said were on the list. They included Bandar and other members of the Saudi royal family such as Prince Turki al-Faisal, Prince al-Waleed bin Talal and Prince Mohammed al Faisal.
Questions have long been raised about Bandar’s possible ties to 9/11. More than a decade ago it was reported that his wife, Princess Haifa, had for some time sent a monthly check of $2,000 to the wife of Osama Bassnan, a suspected Saudi agent and alleged al Qaeda sympathizer who FBI records identify as a “close associate” of Omar al-Bayoumi, another apparent Saudi agent who provided financial and other support to two 9/11 hijackers in San Diego in 2000.
The 28 pages included new information about that matter, saying that FBI agents who searched Bassnan’s home found copies of 31 cashier’s checks payable to Bassnan’s wife totaling $74,000 that were “drawn on the Riggs Bank account of Prince Bandar’s wife.” The checks, from February 1999 to May 30, 2002, were supposed to be for nursing services, but “there is no evidence that Bassnan’s wife provided nursing services.”
The pages also said that Prince Bandar himself sent checks directly to Bassnan and his wife. Those checks, cashed in 1998, were for $15,000 and $10,000. FBI Executive Assistant Director Pasquale D’Amuro told Congress on Oct. 9, 2002, “What the money was for is what we don’t know.”
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