PART I

Rudy Giuliani, apparently unaware of what the FBI and CIA had long known about Qatari links to , appeared on Larry King with the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, and vouched for the emir when Larry King asked the mayor: "You are a friend of his, are you not?"

"We had a very good meeting yesterday. Very good," said , adding that he was "very, very grateful" for al-Thani’s generosity referring to the $3 million donation to the families of the victims of 9/11.

What Giuliani failed to disclose was that a member of the emir’s own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the 9/11 attack—a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM.

OOPS! OK, mistakes happen, right?

But there was another reason to think twice about accepting al-Thani’s generosity that Giuliani had to have been aware of, even as he heaped praise on the emir. Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network based in Qatar (pronounced "Cutter"), had been all but created by al-Thani, who was its largest shareholder. The Bush administration was so upset with the coverage of Osama bin Laden’s pronouncements and the U.S. threats to bomb Afghanistan that Secretary of State Colin Powell met the emir just hours before Giuliani’s on-air endorsement and asked him to tone down the state-subsidized channel’s Islamist footage and rhetoric. The six-foot-eight, 350-pound al-Thani, who was pumping about $30 million a year into Al Jazeera at the time, refused Powell’s request, citing the need for "a free and credible media." The administration’s burgeoning distaste for what it would later brand "Terror TV" was already so palpable that King—hardly a newsman—asked the emir if he would help "spread the word" that the U.S. was "not targeting the average Afghan citizen." Al-Thani ignored the question—right before Giuliani rushed in to praise him again.

READ ON AS THE PLOT THICKENS!

In retrospect, Giuliani’s embrace of the emir appears peculiar, right?

 But wait, it gets much, much better. It seems that the launching of a cozy business relationship with the terrorist-tolerant Qatar is inconsistent with the core message of Giuliani’s current presidential campaign. You know, the one where he spouts how his experience and toughness uniquely equip him to protect America from what he calls "Islamic terrorists"—an enemy that he always portrays himself as ready to confront but in reality all he is concerned with his filling his pockets.

Rudy, you’re just another garden variety, two-faced hypocrite!

CASE IN POINT: Giuliani Partners, the consulting company that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the Qatar trough, doing business with the ministry run by the very member of the royal family identified in news and government reports as having concealed KSM—the terrorist mastermind who wired funds from Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who also sold the idea of a plane attack on the towers to Osama bin Laden—on his Qatar farm in the mid-1990s.

What’s most shocking is that a member of the royal family and Qatar’s minister of Islamic affairs, Abdallah al-Thani, was later installed at the interior ministry in January 2001, has been widely accused of helping to spirit KSM out of Qatar in 1996, just as the FBI was closing in on him. Robert Baer, a former CIA supervisor in the region, contends in a 2003 memoir that the emir himself actually sanctioned tipping KSM. The staff of the 9/11 Commission, meanwhile, noted that the FBI and CIA "were reluctant to seek help from the Qatari government" in the arrest of KSM, "fearing that he might be tipped off." When Qatar’s emir was finally "asked for his help" in January 1996, Qatari authorities "first reported that KSM was under surveillance," then "asked for an alternative plan that would conceal their aid to Americans," and finally "reported that KSM had disappeared."

Giuliani’s lifelong friend Louis Freeh, the FBI head who talked to Giuliani periodically about terrorist threats during Giuliani’s mayoral years and has endorsed him for president, was so outraged that he wrote a formal letter to Qatar’s foreign minister complaining that he’d received "disturbing information" that KSM "has again escaped the surveillance of your Security Services and that he appears to be aware of FBI interest in him."

Now here is where the plot really thickens…..

"According to the 9/11 Commission Report and former U.S. government officials, royal family member and current Qatari Interior Minister, Sheikh Abdullah (Abdallah) bin Khalid Al Thani, provided safe harbor and assistance to Al Qaeda leaders during the 1990s," including KSM. While numerous accounts have named Abdallah as the KSM tipster, the report simply says that "a high ranking member of the Qatari government" is believed to have "alerted" KSM "to the impending raid."

Freeh’s letter in 1996 highlighted the consequences of this government-orchestrated escape with a prophetic declaration, saying that the "failure to apprehend KSM would allow him and other associates to continue to conduct terrorist operations."

Indeed, had KSM, who was even then focused on the use of hijacked planes as weapons, been captured in 1996, 9/11 might well have never happened. DID YOU CATCH THAT?