Iran Involved in 9/11: The Links Courtcase

An Interview with Ken Timmerman

by Jerry Gordon and Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant (January 2020)

Alireza Soleimanpak and Giorgi Gakharia

Rod Reuven Bryant and Jerry Gordon interview Ken Timmerman, veteran Iran watcher, intrepid investigative journalist, and New York Times best-selling author fresh back from Tbilisi, Georgia with a tale of Iran’s Islamic regime brutality and deception facilitated by the Prime Minister of Georgia. Timmerman reveals in this interview the latest brutal attempt by Iran to cover up its role in the 9/11 attacks.

Soleimanpak left Germany in 2018, where he had lived since 2002, trying to free his brother imprisoned in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran, following the imprisonment, torture, and death after release of Soleimanpak’s sister in 2016. Soleimanpak was arrested in 2018, imprisoned and tortured by Georgian internal security personnel under trumped up charges that he was planning to murder two Iranians. The Iranian Ambassador in Georgia sent a letter describing the alleged conspiracy to the Georgian Foreign Ministry—one week before it even allegedly began. Before that, he offered Soleimanpak $5 million and a Georgian passport if he would recant his testimony in the 9/11-Iran Links case. Soleimanpak refused. Soleimanpak’s brother was subsequently murdered by Iranian security personnel.

Timmerman notes that Soleimanpak has been detained for 18 months, seven of which were in solitary confinement. Timmerman called Moscow-educated Georgian PM Gakharia, an Iranian “stooge” on Georgian media, following the Prime Minister’s admission that he had ordered Soleimanpak’s arrest.

Timmerman was the lead investigator for plaintiffs in the 2011 New York Southern District Federal Court landmark “9/11-Iran links” case: Fiona Havlish et al., v. Sheik Usamah bin-Muhammad bin-Laden et al. The lead plaintiff lost her husband on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Other 9/11 victims’ surviving families and loved ones were included as co-plaintiffs.

The New York Southern District Federal Court judge in the 9/11-Links case handed down upwards of $10 billion in two awards made to the certified class of 9/11 claimants in 2012 and 2015.

According to Timmerman, testimony from Soleimanpak and other defector witnesses in the 9/11 Links case showed that Iran gave direct material assistance to the 9/11 Saudi perpetrators. Iran provided a flight simulator for training of the 9/11 pilots on Boeing 747, 757, 767 aircraft. Timmerman noted that the 9/11 Commission only reported that the 9/11 pilots received flight training on small aircraft in the US but left vague the issue of training on jumbo jets.

Timmerman argues that Soleimanpak “was framed—not given a fair trial and no evidence presented.” He noted that the Republic of Georgia has both the strategic interest of the US and the West. It has applied for entry to the EU and NATO. Notwithstanding, as evidenced by the Soleimanpak case, the country needs to reform its legal system to conform to Western and international norms. Timmerman has reached out to both the US State Department and the US House “Georgia Caucus” co-chaired by Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA).

Timmerman noted, Germany provided dual use equipment to both Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Iran. One contemporary example is Siemens supplying equipment to the Mlad Tower in Tehran capable of intercepting wireless email and text messages by protesting Iranian dissidents.

Timmerman noted that the late Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin was a Georgian though he is not popular in Georgia, according to Timmerman. Timmerman drew attention to Russia’s Putin seizing both Abkhazia and South Ossetia amounting to 20 percent of Georgia during the 2008 war.

What follows is the Israel News Talk Radio – Beyond the Matrix interview with Ken Timmerman.

Rod: That was a brave move to confront Georgian PM Gakharia and the only way to deal with this type of corruption. For many people in English-speaking countries in our listener audience, this will connect the dots as to why this Iranian defector was there and what he did was so important and what testimony he provided. This is really a big story.

Rod: And yet they provided them the training in the simulator so that they could do this.

book Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran, which you could find that on my website. He went to the Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan in July, 2001, and said “I want to see the CIA. I want to see the CIA. I’ll wait.” They finally sent a young officer in. He told the story over two days. They brought in a Farsi linguist from out of town—I call him “CIA George.” Alireza told them there is going to be a major terrorist attack against the United States targeting the Twin Towers in New York, targeting the Pentagon, targeting the CIA headquarters and they are going to be using aircraft as missiles. There will not be a single Iranian on board these planes, it was all going to be done by Arabs and was going to happen on the 20th of Shahrivar in the Persian Calendar.

Rod: So, this is important. How many days or weeks prior to the 9/11 event did this occur?

Jerry: Ken, what you have been reporting is just stunning. That the Interior Minister, now Prime Minister of Georgia, admitted that he did a sting operation on behalf of Iran.

Ken: Right.

Jerry: So how do we free this hero from his jail in Georgia?

Rod: Yes, that is the big question.

Salome Zourabichvili of the Republic of Georgia—who has the power of pardon—explaining to her all the legal defects in this case and that Alireza did not receive a fair trial. There was no evidence presented, nothing. I mean there was not even a jury present. They had to bring in four translators because nobody could agree on the surveillance videos what they said in Farsi. It was completely incomprehensible and we explained that to the Prime Minister. We are also talking to Congress. We have had some good contacts with members of Congress. We intend to reach out to both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. We hope to get them engaged to work with Secretary of State Pompeo and the Georgian authorities. There is a Georgia Caucus in Congress led by Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger and Democrat Gerry Connolly of Virginia. I believe there are eight members or nine members of the Caucus so there are people who care about the Republic of Georgia. It is a country which does have some significance to us. It wants to become a NATO Member and join the European Union. Georgia is at the crossroads between East and West. There are gas pipelines that have been built in recent years to bypass Russia, to bring gas from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Ceyhan in Turkey through Georgia to bypass Russia. It is called the BTC Pipeline—Baku, Tbilisi, Ceyhan—in Turkey. Thus, it does have strategic interest for the United States. They want to be doing the right things, but they have deep problems when they have a KGB stooge for a Prime Minister.

Rod: They are about in the same position as Ukraine.

Ken: Yes, very similar.

Rod: With a corrupt government and it is going to bring it back to a more righteous place. How important was the affidavit you obtained from the former Iranian Intelligence Officer and how did it impact on the Federal 9/11 Iran Links Court case?

Ken: His information proved conclusively that the Iranians had direct contact with Al Qaeda in planning the 9/11 attacks and we had other defector witnesses as well. We had information from before the attacks that showed them conspiring during the attacks. It showed how they were doing it and after the attacks from three separate eyewitnesses who did not know each other and did not talk to each other. We interviewed them in separate countries and separate years so there was no collusion of their testimony. It was completely independent. 9/11 was an act of state sponsored terrorism by the Islamic regime in Tehran against the United States of America and three thousand people are dead as a result.

Rod: Our response was to put a band-aid on it by invading Afghanistan in what became a 19-year war against the Taliban in reprisal for sheltering bin Laden, al Zawahiri, and Al Qaeda.

Ken: That and the response of the Obama Administration that gave them $1.7 billion dollars in cash and released $150 billion dollars in their assets overseas frozen by international sanctions.

Jerry: That allowed them to ramp up Iran’s terrorism.

Rod: Right.

Jerry: And create the infamous land bridge to Lebanon.

Ken: Absolutely correct on both counts.

Rod: We already know that is a foregone conclusion. Russia is going to be involved in developing the ports in Syria.

Jerry: Ken, there have been other recent predatory actions by the Islamic Republic in Europe?

Ken: In terms of what terrorist operations that have been foiled? Yes, indeed. They have been caught in the Netherlands, in Denmark, even in Sweden, tracking dissidents and plotting to murder them.

Jerry: Why have countries like Germany waited so long to do things as they did recently, finally voting in the Bundestag sanctions against Hezbollah?

Rod: For the Germans it is all about the money.

Jerry: Ken, you mentioned the bipartisan Georgia Caucus in Congress. What about the Trump Administration’s National Security Council?

Rod: Could you describe the history of the Republic of Georgia and what infamous leader of the Soviet Union came from there?

Jerry: Back in 2008, there was a war between irredentists that Putin had set up in places like Abkhazia and Ossetia to steal more terrain from Georgia.

Ken: Right.

Jerry: What was that all about?

Ken: I was twenty kilometers away from those borders in Southern Ossetia. The Russians are still there, they still occupy these rump states that they have set up with these irredentists who pretend to be locals and not Russians. It is all supported by the Russian government. This remains an ongoing problem. Twenty percent of the Republic of Georgia is occupied by the Russians today.

Jerry: Yet, the plucky Georgians are willing to opt for entry into the EU and NATO.

Ken: Yes, and rightly so. However, they need to reform their government, they need to deal with the corruption, they need to reform their court system. The EU is aware of this. They know that and they are working with them. This is their future. Their future is with the West not with the Russians.

Rod: We must remind our illustrious President in the United States not to call the Georgian President and ask him anything at this time, right? So, we will just leave it up to the EU and NATO to figure that all out.

Jerry: Ken, how much support has the US given the Republic of Georgia to keep it western oriented?

FrontPage Magazine piece by somebody I’ve interviewed, Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy in Washington, DC. He said, “the list of Iranians active in Georgia is a Who’s Who of the Iranian sanctions evasion cottage industry.”

Ken: That’s right. The US Treasury in 2014 sanctioned three Iranians in the Republic of Georgia, for money laundering. They did not mention their Georgian partners because that would have gone right up to the top of the country to very prominent people who are giving them, what they call “the tent.” That term in Russian is where you say, who is my tent, the one protecting me. There are top people in the Republic of Georgia, who are protecting the Iranian money launderers. Look at the case that I went there for of this Iranian witness defector from Iranian intelligence thrown in jail.

It is the Prime Minister of the country who is working with Iran as well as with the Russians. This is a really serious problem. Money laundering continues in Georgia today. I have been collecting evidence on that while I am doing these trips. These are ongoing. I expect that the Treasury is following this very closely as well.

Rod: Yes, the question is what are they doing with that aid? Has several million dollars gone into the pockets of government leaders and oligarchs over the past decade?

Jerry: Does Georgia have a relationship with a US ally, called Israel?

Jerry: Given your current writing projects, one of which is your fabled memoirs, does this Georgian episode have a role in this?

Ken: Oh, eventually that may be something for volume four. I am still negotiating the deal on volume one of my memoirs. However, I do have a fiction book called The Election Heist coming out in a couple of months talking about how a certain party in the United States is planning to steal the 2020 election. All the background on the hacking techniques I had vetted by consulting with some sophisticated people who do this for a living, including some who worked for agencies in the US Government.

Rod: Fact or Fiction? So where can our listeners find the book when it does come out?

Ken: You can go to my website, kentimmerman.com, you can find it on Amazon, and we will see if we get into the bookstores. The bookstores have been bad with conservative books unless they are number one best sellers. Hopefully your audience will talk about it and pass it along.

Rod: You obviously have not authored just one book. Can you give us an idea of some of the material you have put out and why?

book of mine that came out in 2007 called Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender. People didn’t pay as much attention to that one as I would have liked them to do, but it was about an episode by the deep state against an earlier President George W. Bush.

Rod: Interesting,

Jerry: Is it likely that The House Foreign Relations Committee, might hold a hearing on this rather dramatic episode in the Republic of Georgia?

Israel News Talk Radio- Beyond the Matrix. Until next time, Shalom.

Listen to the Israel News Talk Radio – Beyond the Matrix interview with Ken Timmerman

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Jerome B Gordon is a Senior Vice President of the New English Review, author of The West Speaks, NER Press 2012, and co-author of Genocide in Sudan: Caliphate Threatens Africa and the World, JAD Publishing, 2017. Mr. Gordon is a former US Army intelligence officer who served during the Viet Nam era. He is producer and co-host of Israel News Talk Radio – Beyond the Matrix. He was the co-host and co-producer of weekly The Lisa Benson Show for National Security that aired out of KKNT960 in Phoenix Arizona from 2013 to 2016 and co-host and co-producer of the Middle East Round Table periodic series on 1330amWEBY, Northwest Florida Talk Radio, Pensacola, Florida from 2007 to 2017.

Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant is creator and host of Israel News Talk Radio-Beyond the Matrix.

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast