UQ Wire: Journey of a Wall Street Whistleblower

In this special report, Michael Kane recounts the personal story of JP Morgan IT professional, Indira Singh, a heroic 9/11 whistleblower who was fired, harrassed, and physically threatened for exposing the Saudi/terrorist-linked origins of one of the government's most pervasive software systems, and thereby offering the 9/11 Commission more truth than it ever wanted to know. - 911truth.org Editor

"Ptech had all the markings," said Indira Singh. All the markings of a CIA front company.

"I think there is a CIA within the CIA," Indira told From the Wilderness (FTW). "I think there is a Shadow CIA that does the Iran-Contra type of things--they get funding from illicit methods--and that the Saudi's are in on it. They might have trained some operatives, and later it backfired - it was blowback within blowback, perhaps."

"What I do know, what the money trails do show, is that the Saudi's are complicit. In other words, the ones that are extremely fundamentalist, the ones that promote Wahabiism-I'm not saying it's all of them, but parts of them--are working hand-in-hand, lock step with elements within American intelligence whether it's official or unofficial. There's proof of that."

March 2, 2005 (911truth.org): Wall Street whistleblower Indira Singh has had her professional life ripped away from her because of keeping the promise she made to some 3,000 victim's who died at Ground Zero on 9/11. She made that promise at Ground Zero on 9/11 as a civilian EMT. Indira was supposed to be on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center that morning, but she was late.

"I made a promise," said Indira during a lengthy FTW interview, "that if anything fell into my lap, I wouldn't look the other way°ƒand I'm keeping that promise."

Something did fall into her lap . . . something big.

Indira is an IT professional who started First Boston's Information Technology Group in 1970 and had worked on Wall Street up until 2002. She has been an IT consultant for Bank Trust, the U.N., JP Morgan, and American Express. In 1988 she started TibetNet, a derivative of the Defense Advanced Research Project (DARPA) Internet, the service on which you are likely reading this report at the moment.

On 9/11/2001, Indira worked for JP Morgan in a field called Risk Management, involving computer systems and programs designed to keep JP Morgan's entire information and financial structure safe. She had also worked with a Defense Advanced Research Project - DARPA-funded technology group, with close ties to the CIA. This provided her with contacts deep within the government and corporate America. She was working on a program for JP Morgan - the next generation of risk software - whose function was to think about all the information going on throughout the enterprise as bank business was being conducted worldwide.

It would detect money laundering and other crimes in real time and then do something about it; perhaps alert an "intelligent" software agent or a person, or shutdown the transaction immediately. This capability could be accomplished by using an evolution of PROMIS software. FTW has extensively covered the PROMIS software controversy, the software stolen by the Justice Department from Inslaw which over the past two decades has evolved and merged with artificial intelligence.

"We were moving into the realm of much smarter software - next generation software - that would collect information on the fly and sort of think about it," said Indira. The CIA was interested in the technology behind Indira's risk application at one point. So was the Defense Department.

Indira's vision was to create software that could respond to "extreme event risk." 9/11 was an extreme event. Risk Management involves devising ways to stop big problems from happening throughout the enterprise. She needed a company to provide a key piece of this enterprise software.

"All the industry gurus recommended Ptech."

Indira was unsure whether Ptech was right. After all, they were a small company, and with software this expensive you couldn't afford to choose wrong. But everywhere she looked boosted her confidence in Ptech, especially when viewing their list of prominent clients.

The White House, Treasury Department (Secret Service), CIA, FBI, both houses of Congress, Air Force, Navy, Department of Energy, IRS, Booze Allen Hamilton, IBM, Enron and even NATO all used, and as of this writing, some still use Ptech software. IBM, a global strategic partner with JP Morgan, had selected Ptech for their Preferred Vendor program.

All of this convinced Indira that Ptech was the right choice. After getting the extensive site clearance JP Morgan required, Indira invited Ptech to the premises for a one-day evaluation of their software. But according to Indira, everything was wrong that day. They didn't come with anything needed to do the one-day evaluation, but Ptech's chief scientist, Dr. Hussein Ibrahim, suggested to Indira that they develop the software on his laptop.

"If you know how these things are conducted, that was a show stopper," says Indira. Ptech would have been able to walk away with the blueprint to Indira's program on their laptop, and JP Morgan would have been left with nothing. Indira decided Ibrahim's proposition was a definite deal breaker.

Risk blueprints worth millions of dollars aren't given away at an introductory meeting; the industry doesn't work that way. To this day Indira is unsure of why Ibrahim would have even suggested this. "He's not a stupid man," she said, "he knows this is not how business is conducted."

Her Investigation Begins

With Ptech's people still in the office, Indira called Roger Burlton, who runs Business Process Renewal in Vancouver. Roger told Indira, "Don't let them out of your sight and don't let them leave with anything."

This was coming from one of the men who recommended Ptech to Indira in December of 2001, and was using them himself. But a lot had transpired since then. This was now May of 2002; just two months earlier Yaqub Mirza, who was on the board of Ptech, was the target of a terror-financing raid. Indira tells this reporter that she felt Roger knew more at the time than he let on to.

Roger recommended Indira speak to Jeff Goins, a former Ptech employee. This is where Indira first heard of Saudi terror financier Yasin Al Qadi and that he had been (and may have continued to be) an investor in Ptech. Al Qadi said he met Dick Cheney in Jeddah before he became Vice President, and that they still maintain "cordial relations." Indira confirmed that Jeff had taken his concerns to the FBI. In short order, Indira was talking to the FBI agent Jeff had spoken with.

"If there is an ongoing investigation that is fine," Indira told the FBI, "but you have to give me something to hang my hat on to pass on to my superiors. Otherwise I'm just passing on propaganda and I won't be caught dead doing that." The FBI agent sent her a video produced by Joe Bergantino' for CBS in Boston, on Care International.

"The people in the video that the FBI were looking for right after 9/11 were Ptech employees." Muhammed Mubayyid and Suheil Laheir, who were both Ptech employees, formerly worked for Care International.

But this is not the Care everyone knows. This Care listed its corporate office in the same suite as Al Kifah's Boston office. Al Kifah was a Muslim organization whose Brooklyn office was named as the locus of the 1993 conspiracy to bomb the World Trade Center. Muhammed Mubayyid, who is still employed by Ptech and used to be the treasurer for Care, once made a donation to Al Kifah's Brooklyn office.

We should not forget the FBI had completely infiltrated the terrorist cell responsible for the '93 bombing with Egyptian informant Emad Salem. The FBI had dropped him from their payroll right when the informant himself was designing the bomb used in the WTC bombing.

Before it was Al Kifah, Indira says, Care was part of Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), the accounting mechanism put in place by the CIA in 1988 to pass BCCI money through to the Pakistani ISI when bin Laden was the U.S.-Intel "fair-haired boy." In late 1993, Care and Al Kifah both launched efforts to make the Islamic religious movement more high-tech. A Care document announcing the project says, "It is the duty of every Muslim, especially those with the latest technical expertise from the U.S., to contribute this knowledge that Allah has bestowed on them."

So is that why MAK was being run out of Ptech under its new co-opted name, Care International?

"Your country is not the country you think it is," says Indira.

She took Joe Bergantino's report down to Virginia and interviewed Ptech employees herself - to get it straight from the horse's mouth. Having further confirmed her worst nightmares, she demanded the FBI agent who gave her Bergantino's report re-open an investigation into Ptech. He said he couldn't. She told him to tell his supervisor. He already had, and was told there was nothing they could do.

Remember, the FBI was one of Ptech's clients - or was it the other way around? "What do you do when the FBI tells you, 'Indira, you're in a better position to investigate this than we are'"?

Sent to the Principal's Office

Indira brought all of her information to Mark Coughlan, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at JP Morgan. Instantly he called Security, the General Auditor, and the CEO of JP Morgan/Chase. The next day Mark told Indira he had nightmares. "A CIO will know the type of damage that an enterprise architecture firm with that kind of software can do," says Indira.

They contacted the FBI. Mark informed her the FBI had confirmed everything she had put on the table.

"Everything!" exclaimed Indira in shock. "Even all the bits and pieces I wasn't sure about?" Mark sent Indira to the General Auditor.

Before the General Auditor would meet with her she was sent through his security people. "They treated me like I was crazy, like I was a terrorist." She finally met with Bill Moran, General Auditor of JP Morgan/Chase who, in no uncertain terms, threatened her. He asked where she had gotten her information. As she named her individual sources Moran said, "That person should be killed," to each name she mentioned.

According to Indira, the Chase mentality was, "Shut up and stay in your place." Indira told this reporter that JP Morgan was a great corporation which encouraged individuality and creativity until it merged with Chase. However, Senate Investigations headed by Carl Levin revealed JP Morgan was one of the main banks involved in laundering drug money, as was Chase. Corruption was no stranger to JP Morgan, nor to Chase. Bill Moran told Indira if she shut up about Ptech, she would have a long and prosperous career at JP Morgan/Chase.

Indira no longer works there.

"But Indira, everyone knew what Ptech was about!"

The same industry gurus who told Indira to use Ptech were now telling her, "But Indira, everyone knew what Ptech was about."

"Well I didn't!" yelled Indira during her testimony to the first 9/11 Citizens Commission on September 9, 2003, in NYC, "and neither did the 3,000 that were murdered on 9/11."

What exactly does that mean? Everyone knew what?

When Ptech first popped up on the scene in 1994 they were a very small company but incredibly well funded. They put up huge hospitality booths at industry trade shows and at the time they had only one client - RJ Reynolds. They started to get very prestigious clients that other, more experienced and reputable American software firms were going after.

So who's playing who here? That was the question Cynthia McKinney had for Indira at the 9/11 Citizens Commission hearings. Are we really to believe every major government and military agency in America has been duped into opening their informational barn doors to Saudi terrorists?

"It had all the markings," said Indira. All the markings of a CIA front company.

"I think there is a CIA within the CIA," Indira told FTW. "I think there is a Shadow CIA that does the Iran-Contra type of things--they get funding from illicit methods--and that the Saudi's are in on it. They might have trained some operatives, and later it backfired-it was blowback within blowback perhaps."

"What I do know, what the money trails do show, is that the Saudi's are complicit. In other words, the ones that are extremely fundamentalist, the ones that promote Wahabiism-I'm not saying it's all of them--but parts of them are working hand-in-hand, lock step with elements within intelligence, whether it's official or unofficial. There's proof of that."

Ptech is the information architecture extension of that hand-in-hand relationship.

The CEO of Ptech is Oussama Ziade. Al Qadi visited Ptech in 1994 and provided $5 million to start up the company, a quarter of the $20 million Ptech raised from about 50 "angel" investors, according to CNN. Al Qadi was introduced to Ziade through BMI, Inc. of New Jersey, a critical component of this nexus that will be discussed later in this report.

"What we tried to do is keep (Al Qadi) interested, because he's connected to a lot of VCs (venture capitalists) in Saudi Arabia," Ziade said. "He's known as an international businessman that has connections." CNN says according to "all accounts," Al Qadi showed little interest in the company and never invested in Ptech again.

But according to Indira, Al Qadi funded Ptech well into 1999, and beyond that funded the 2001 Horizons Software venture, the Arabic version of the Ptech software. Hussein Ibrahim spent most of 2001 setting up Horizons in Cairo, Egypt.

Additionally, Al Qadi's lawyer said he had "sold his stake" in Ptech by 1999, but if this is true, how can CNN say he "showed little interest" and "never invested in Ptech" after 1994? While CNN may technically not be lying, their reporting is askew.

Beyond this, Al Qadi is linked to the Saudi royal family.

Al Qadi's wife is part of the Jamjoom family, and her father,Qadi's father-in-law,is a former high-ranking Saudi finance minister. This is the same Royal family with whom the Bush family and Dick Cheney are certainly no strangers. This comes from a Department of Treasury report produced on July 14, 2003. Indira was able to get her hands on a copy of the report, which this reporter reviewed on January 21, 2005.

The BMI Octopus

At the same time Indira had stumbled onto Yasin Al Qadi, Robert Wright was on the stairs of the Capitol in tears apologizing to the 9/11 victim's' family members for a fouled up investigation into Yasin Al Qadi, and much more. Indira didn't know of Agent Wright until seeing him on television.

"When Agent Wright said he was investigating a company with 26 subsidiaries, it was BMI, and Ptech was their crown jewel." Though Ptech wasn't a direct subsidiary of the New Jersey Islamic banking firm BMI, Dr. Hussein Ibrahim, Ptech's chief scientist who inexplicably asked Indira to develop JP Morgan's software on his laptop, was vice president of BMI from 1989 to 1995. BMI had also leased computer equipment to Ptech, and as mentioned earlier, it was BMI that introduced Ptech to Yasin Al Qadi.

Al Qadi was an investor in BMI. The FBI says other BMI investors include Mousa Abu Marzouk, who operates openly as a top Hamas leader based in Damascus, Syria, and is designated by the Treasury as a terrorism sponsor. In 1999, a BMI employee told the FBI that the company might have financed the bombings of U.S. embassy in East Africa in 1998, according to a sworn FBI statement.

Agent Wright had been investigating the president of BMI, Inc., an Egyptian citizen named Soliman Bihieri, who was later convicted of lying about his ties to terrorist leaders. Wright was working with Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, an FBI Agent born in Egypt. The code name of the operation was "Vulgar Betrayal."

Agent Abdel-Hafiz, by what may be more than just coincidence, was a friend of one of BMI's accountants. Because of this, he was asked by Agent Wright to have a meeting with Bihieri and wear a wire, but Hafiz refused.

"It's hard to emphasize how odd it was for an FBI agent to refuse to cooperate with an investigation when he had been approached by a grand jury subject," said Mark Flessner, the former prosecutor involved in the Vulgar Betrayal investigation. "It was surreal. I've never heard it happening in the history of the FBI."

When this hit the news, FBI Agent Carmody from Tampa, Florida alleged Abdel-Hafiz had also refused to record a phone conversation with Sami Al-Arian in 1998, a claim Hafiz denies.

Agent Abdel-Hafiz claims he feared for his life and felt the FBI could not protect him if he wore a wire on Soliman Bihieri. He referenced threats made to him when he first started working for the FBI as a translator in 1995, saying he felt the FBI didn't take adequate steps to ensure the safety of his ex-wife. But that was before Hafiz became a full-fledged FBI agent in 1996.

Astonishingly, after this occurred Agent Abdel-Hafiz was promoted to one of the FBI's most important anti-terrorism posts, the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia. The day he arrived, the USS Cole was bombed in Yemen. He quickly became involved in that investigation, and was later promoted to Assistant Legal Attach? in Riyadh with a GS 14 ranking-the second highest level an agent can obtain. He was at that post on September 11, 2001.

Sound Fishy?

We can add FBI Agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz to our list of those inexplicably promoted for so called "failures" around terrorism investigations and 9/11. This list includes General Richard B. Myers, General Ralph "Ed" Eberhart, and FBI Special Agent Dave Frasca.

Ultimately, the Vulgar Betrayal investigation was discontinued. Agent Wright spoke out about how his investigation was blocked and thwarted, writing a manuscript titled, "Vulgar Betrayal." Attorney Larry Klayman of the conservative legal watchdog group Judicial Watch has said the "Vulgar Betrayal" manuscript hits Bush and Cheney "hard," and former Attorney General John Ashcroft is not spared, either. This leaves little doubt as to the origins of the obstruction of Wright's investigation. Wright was eventually barred from speaking to the media.

But it gets murkier.

According to Indira Singh, Governor Kean, who headed the 9/11 Commission, sold a piece of property in New Jersey through BMI, Inc. This was revealed in the same Treasury Department report referenced earlier, from July 14, 2003. Regardless of whether Kean knew the extent of BMI's ties to funding terrorism, this is a direct and unacceptable conflict of interest. Imagine how embarrassed Governor Kean would have been if his own Commission revealed he had sold land through a terror-linked organization. He should have immediately recused himself from the Commission or publicly promised to get to the bottom of what BMI really was. It's not surprising that neither BMI nor Ptech are mentioned in the final 9/11 Commission report.

Michael Kane is a New York-based author, musician and investigative journalist currently working on real world national security issues with the From the Wilderness team.

See also Michael's earlier groundbreaking expose: PTECH, 9/11, and USA-SAUDI TERROR - Part II: PROMIS Connections to Cheney Control of 9/11 Attacks Confirmed.

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