Dubai port deal is nothing compared to Ptech

Dubai port deal is nothing compared to Ptech

While Congress and the media focus on the potential dangers of a UAE-owned company running American port operations, any possible threat is dwarfed by the current insecurity of the US government’s computer infrastructure, which has been compromised by a company with alleged multiple connections to terrorist financing.

The company, once known as Ptech (now GoAgile), has been contracted to provide sophisticated computer software to several government agencies, including the Army, the Air Force, Naval Air Command, Congress, the Department of Energy, the Department of Justice, Customs, the FAA, the IRS, NATO, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the White House.

Shortly after 9/11, the company’s primary investor, Yassin al-Qadi (al-Kadi), was identified by the US government as a specially designated global terrorist. Officials describe al-Qadi as one of Osama bin Laden’s “chief money launderers,” and allege he transferred as much as $3 billion to al-Qaeda during the 1990s.

Al-Qadi is a wealthy Saudi with connections to banking, diamonds, chemicals, construction, transportation, and real estate. He once headed Muwafaq, an Islamic charity the US Treasury Department described as an “al Qaeda front that receives funding from wealthy Saudi businessmen.”

Al-Qadi also maintained an unusually close relationship with notable US politicians. While attempting to defend Ptech, the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Massachusetts (ADCMA) revealed the fact that al-Qadi “was prominent in Washington circles and even showed President Jimmy Carter and Dick Cheney around during their visits to Saudi Arabia.”

Al-Qadi told an Arab newspaper in October of 2001 that he “spoke to [Dick Cheney] at length” and they “even became friends.” Similarly, while speaking with Computer World Magazine, Ptech cofounder Oussama Ziade said that al-Qadi “talked very highly of his relationship with [former President] Jimmy Carter and [Vice President] Dick Cheney.”

Ptech, under al-Qadi’s ownership, supplied the US government with what is known as enterprise architecture. According to Glenn Watt of Backbone Security, “Enterprise architecture is really the design, the layout, the blueprint if you will for the computer networks and computer systems that are going to go into an organization.” In regard to Ptech, he said, “The software they put on your system could be collecting every key stroke that you type while you are on the computer. It could be establishing a connection to the outside terrorist organization through all of your security measures.”

John Zachman, who is considered the “father” of enterprise architecture, said, “You would know where the access points are, you’d know how to get in, you would know where the weaknesses are, you’d know how to destroy it.”

Former FBI counterterrorism analyst Matthew Levitt has said, “For someone like [al-Qadi] to be involved in a capacity in an organization, a company that has access to classified information, that has access to government open or classified computer systems would be of grave concern.”
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In February 2003, Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote:

“[In 2000] Alamoudi was one of several Muslims invited to meet with candidate [George W.] Bush in Austin, Texas. Alamoudi is certainly influential — but he is also an open backer of terrorism. In October 2000, he was cheered at a pro-Palestinian rally in Washington, DC, when he declared: “We are all supporters of Hamas. . . . I am also a supporter of Hezbollah.” Three months later he was in Beirut for a terrorist summit, along with leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda.”

Amazingly, Alamoudi — who allegedly has direct connections to the 9/11 conspirators — was invited to a prayer service with President Bush three days after the 9/11 attacks.

According to former Justice Department prosecutor John Loftus, even after 9/11 “people in the intelligence community came and said-guys like Alamoudi . . . and other terrorists weren’t being touched because they’d been ordered not to investigate the cases, not to prosecute them, because they were being funded by the Saudis and a political decision was being made at the highest levels, don’t do anything that would embarrass the Saudi government.” He went on to say:

“[W]ho was it that fixed the cases? How could these guys operate for more than a decade immune from prosecution? And, the answer is coming out in a very strange place. What Alamoudi and al-Arian have in common is a guy named Grover Norquist. He’s the super lobbyist. . .