GOVERNOR BUSH INTERVENES FOR SUSPECTED SAUDI TERRORIST: For the last several weeks, sleepy Osceola County has been struggling with, of all things, whether to do business with a company with alleged ties to terrorism. The company, Xentury City Development, has denied allegations that its Saudi-owned parent company has links to a bank the U.S. Department of State believes was used to finance the al-Qaeda terrorists.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, "researchers from the Local 362 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union submitted a report to the county suggesting Xentury's parent company may have links to banks that finance terrorists. The union claimed it found a connection between Xentury's parent company, Saudi Arabia-based Xenel International, and an overseas bank the U.S. Department of State thinks was used to finance al-Qaeda. The CEO of Xenel is Abdullah Alireza. Alireza sits on the nine-member board of supervisors of an Islamic bank called Dar Al-Maal Al-Islami Trust. A subsidiary, Faisal Bank Sudan is among the co-founders of a third bank, Al Shamal Islamic Bank, according to published reports. State Department records showed Al Shamal Islamic Bank has been used to finance global terror."
And how does John Ellis Bush fit in to all this. Dismissing the connection to terrorism as mere "politics", on Nov. 25, the governor's chief of staff, Kathleen Shanahan, asked County Commission Chairman Paul Owen to base the convention center decision on business factors. "Owen said Shanahan mentioned the importance of Saudi Arabia's relationship with the United States, and the role its air bases might play in a war with Iraq", according to the paper.
Inasmuch as the County attorney was unable to disprove the terror connection, does John Ellis Bush know something that we don't know, and that the State Department doesn't know? And, how is it that a company with alleged ties to terrorism manages to pull strings and have the Governor's office intervene on its behalf?
John Ellis Bush's plea failed. Responding to the public outcry, the Sentinel reports that "Osceola County commissioners voted Monday night to kill talks on a $100 million convention center with [the] Orlando firm because of its possible ties to Osama bin Laden."
[Orlando Sentinel article, "Osceola kills talks with firm".]
REHNQUIST IN TROUBLE, JANET REHNQUIST THAT IS: "The accounting office was investigating whether Ms. Rehnquist kept a gun in her office without authorization, violated personnel rules by ousting career employees and ordered delays in a federal audit of the Florida state employees' pension fund to avoid embarrassing Gov. Jeb Bush." As reported yesterday, you can add shredding documents to that list