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Felix Rausch
Last Updated: October 14, 2008

Thirty-eight minutes after American Flight 11 hit the World Trade Center, the FAA notified the Air Force Command (NORAD) that the plane was still airborne, headed toward Washington, D.C. The 911 Commission Report called it the “Phantom Flight 11 report,” but explored no further. In fact, there was not a single, accurate FAA report on any one of the four hijacked planes, until after they had all crashed.     

There are many glaring questions, contradictions, and later discovered lies in official reports from that day that haven’t been pursued. It is clear, however, that the FAA’s central operating structure, its recently redesigned National Airspace System (NAS), not only failed that day, but contributed to the chaos.

Felix Rausch, among the global elite of computer wizards, was a lead designer of the NAS. For at least two years before 911, former FAA official Rausch was Government Service Director of a small company named Ptech, which had been contracted to upgrade the FAA system. Rausch’s major focus was crisis communication between the FAA and the Air Force.

Three weeks after 911, Ptech’s owner, Saudi banker Yassin Al-Qadi, was declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). The charges were based on evidence officially presented to the FBI’s top brass three years earlier. The Chief of the Bureau’s terror finance unit, Robert Wright, had documented Al-Qadi’s funneling millions of dollars to Osama Bin Laden and other terror groups in 1998. Wright  requested permission to arrest Al-Qadi and shut down his operations. He was denied, and warned to “back off.”  When he refused, and filed his own civil charges against Al-Qadi, he endured years of harassment, false accusations and demotion.    

Meanwhile, during those years before Al Qadi was finally charged in late September 2001, his company, Ptech, had not only been given control of the FAA’s computer system, but that of every vital US government agency. Those included the Departments of Defense, State, Energy and Justice. There has been no official inquiry into how that could have happened, or why.

Even less known is that Felix Rausch, Ptech’s Government Projects Director, was previously the Deputy CIO for the White House, as well as Chief of Technology at INTERPOL His later business partner, Beryl Bellman, was a consultant for Ptech, and had also been a top technology advisor at the White House.
 
Starting out at Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen in the 1970s, Rausch alternated between working for major contractors and government agencies including the FCC, INS and SSA. He was among the first to master a revolutionary software system called “enterprise architecture.”

This technology was first employed in the early1980s as PROMIS, a super-powerful data management program for US Prosecutors, which merged, and also produced  new levels of information, minutely detailed “blueprints” of the organizations behind the data. An enhanced version was actually able to improve itself, becoming the precursor of Artificial Intelligence.

The enhanced PROMIS was developed by a company named Inslaw, and leased to the Justice Department in 1982. Two years later, as confirmed in Federal courts and US Senate hearings, Attorney General Ed Meese and other officials pirated the software for their personal gain. They withheld payments to Inslaw, forced it into bankruptcy, and the breakthrough “enterprise architecture” software was turned over to a White House connected (and later convicted) entrepreneur named Earl Brian.

Covert intelligence operatives then installed a hidden “back door” in the software, which could secretly transfer or alter the information being managed. In 1987, a bankruptcy judge ruled that Justice had stolen PROMIS through “trickery, fraud, and deceit.” However, after two decades of challenges and appeals, PROMIS’ rightful owners had still not been paid.

Through Earl Brian’s company, versions of PROMIS (with its hidden “back door”) were marketed internationally to financial institutions and government agencies. A freelance journalist named Danny Casolaro was about to release evidence of the murderous role played by rogue CIA operators in the PROMIS scheme, when he died suspiciously in 1991.

Around that time, Felix Rausch began working on “enterprise architecture” programs for the FAA, where he launched the National Aviation Safety Data Analysis Center, the government’s first data warehouse. In the later ‘90s he segued over to work on the NAS, and joined Ptech, a four year old company with fewer than 30 employees.

Along with being handed management of the government’s most sensitive systems, tiny Ptech was chosen by IBM to co-design the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which standardized notation techniques for all software engineering.
   
A 1999 report from Mitre Corp.—a major, quasi-government agency which, though listed as nonprofit, farms out contracts benefiting its directors’ interest in other companies—details a collaboration between Mitre, Ptech, and the FAA to adapt enterprise architecture to FAA airspace management using a Ptech “framework environment.”

Ptech’s own 1998 press release describes incorporating the “enterprise framework” developed by Rausch’s renowned colleague, John Zachman. By controlling the core of an agency’s information system, said Zachman, Ptech software would ” be able to know the access points, know its weaknesses, know how to destroy it.”

In December 2000, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting “serious, pervasive problems” at FAA in all types of security: information systems, facilities, personnel, and even intrusion detection. Specifically, FAA had not completed “peneration tests” on “critical FAA systems.” Furthermore, background searches of “foreign nationals” had been left undone, leaving critical information systems at risk. The “extent of exposure,” the report said, “is unknown.”

Several months after 911, enterprise architecture expert Indira Singh was heading up an advanced research project at JP Morgan -- the development of a next generation Artificial Intelligence system to guide crisis management in real time. She says she was told, by “enterprise framework” guru John Zachman, about Ptech’s ongoing operation. Despite Al-Qadi being declared a fugitive global terrorist six months earlier, there’d been no mention of his Ptech company, which was still managing IT systems at the most vital US agencies.

Singh invited Ptech’s executives to her office, but was alarmed by their blatant attempt to transfer JP Morgan’s software onto the computer they’d brought with them. She notified her superiors, and after doing some checking on her own, learned about fugitive Al-Qadi’s ownership of Ptech.

She contacted the FBI, but two months later, realizing that nothing was being done, Singh took the information to Boston TV station WBZ. Reporter Joe Bergantino developed the story, including Al-Qadi’s deep involvement a Virginia-based group of Muslim charities and businesses with documented, direct connections to terror-financing fronts and terror groups directly.

Al-Qadi was also among the group of Arabian bankers operating a New Jersey finance firm named BMI, which former counterterrorism chief Richard Clark belatedly described as a “who’s who” list of terror financiers.

Among the principals of both Ptech and BMI was Abdurahman Alamoudi, a regular guest of President George W and co-founder, with White House favorite  (and former Jack Abramoff partner) Grover Norquist, of the Islamic Institute. Alamoudi’s exalted political status ended with his 2003 indictment and subsequent 23 year sentence for terror funding.

Ptech and BMI shared numerous other investors, officers and directors with White House connections going back all the way to the Carter years, who were later officially described, designated, or convicted as terror-financiers. (See Yassin Al-Qadi profile for a detailed list).

After stalling WBZ for months, on grounds of “national security.” FBI and Customs agents raided Ptech’s offices in December ‘02, carting away a dozen truckloads of documents and computers. However, just hours after the raid, a National Security Agency official was able to assure the public that Ptech’s software was “completely safe.”

In May 2003, the FBI—the same agency that had originally dismissed allegations against Ptech—absorbed all terror financing investigations from U.S. Customs and the Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

That same month, representatives of FAA and NORAD gave misleading testimony to the 9/11 Commission, saying that their reaction to the hijackings was swift and that they were ready to attack United Airlines Flight 93 if it came to Washington. In fact, for two years before the FAA/NORAD transcript was released in the 9/11 Commission report, NORAD and FAA provided false information to the public about their reaction to the attacks. One major general told the commission that NORAD started tracking United Flight 93 twelve minutes before it was even hijacked. In truth, the Pentagon didn’t even know about the flight until after it crashed.

By 2004, the Ptech story had largely disappeared from the news. That year, Ptech CEO Oussama Ziade was still bragging of White House contracts. Ptech ultimately changed its name to GoAgile and set up operations in the Middle East. In July 2004, GoAgile was named as a subcontractor on a U.S. Agency for International Development contract in Egypt. The company is teaming with Egyptian company Horizon Software to “develop a complete electronic blueprint” for the Egyptian National Postal Organization.

Felix Rausch has since founded the FEAC Institute in northern Virginia, where he is sharing his enterprise software knowledge with anyone hungry for federal dollars. FEAC claims to be “the Enterprise Architecture Training and Certification Institute offering hands-on Programs leading to Certification in the Enterprise Architecture for both the Department of Defense…and for the civilian Agencies as well as the Commercial sectors.” He and fellow Ptech (and White House) alumnus Beryl Bellman also run a companion venture called EA Werks Associates. Ptech’s credited oracle,  John “Framework” Zachman, is a frequent lecturer at Rausch and Bellman seminars.

And the FAA? In 2005, the GAO issued a follow-up report. “In December 2000,” says the report, “we reported that FAA had not fully implemented a security awareness and training program.” The new report noted some progress, but identified “significant security weaknesses” that threatened the integrity of FAA systems. Other security problems increased “the risk that unauthorized users could breach FAA's air traffic control systems, potentially disrupting aviation operations.” In one case, GAO officials were able to access “sensitive security information” on the Internet. They alerted FAA, but eight months later, that information was back up on the Internet. It was labeled “internal distribution only.”

In September 2006, the Inspector General at the Department of Transportation recommended disciplinary action against two FAA executives for their misleading testimony to the 9/11 Commission. As of two years later, no action had been taken.

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Defense | Homeland Security | Information Technology | Government Officials | International Finance

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