By 1998, Ayman al-Zawahiri's organization (Egyptian Islamic Jihad) had taken up residence in Baku, Azerbaijan. It also merged with bin-Laden's organization that year and issued a fatwa targeting American civilians. Zawahiri had spent time in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Albania, Bulgaria and Poland. All of these places are major transit lines for the heroin trade from Asia into Europe.
That fact is extremely important because Edmonds claims that she discovered evidence of the 9/11 plot in intercepts that were not part of counter-terrorism investigations, but that were part of counter-intelligence investigations related to money laundering. And that money laundering was for cleansing the proceeds from arms and drug smuggling.
Most likely, she was translating intercepts of Azerbaijani businessmen or politicians that were involved in laundering large quantities of cash raised by Afghan heroin smuggling. She has also made clear that the drug dealers and the arms dealers are mixed up together and that the divisions become blurred between these organizations.
So, what kind of people have experience in money laundering, arms smuggling, and drug smuggling, but who also are known to have been involved in Azerbaijan?
The most famous Americans with such experience are the veterans of the Laos war during Vietnam. Many of them were later implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, which, of course, involved money laundering, arms, and drug smuggling. Among these crafty spooks are such veterans as Richard Secord, Heinie Aderholt, Farhad Azima and Richard Armitage. To this list, we must also add a little known charlatan named Gary Best.
Do any of these folks have any interest in Azerbaijan? In fact, yes, they all do. They also have links to the mujahideen from the Soviet-Afghan War.
For the links between Secord, Aderholt, and Best, see Spooks in Azerbaijan
For the links between Richard Armitage, Farhad Azima and Azerbaijan see:
U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce
Please note the other political luminaries that are members of the USACC.
But do any of these folks have any relationship to the 9/11 hijackers? Good question. Yes, they do.
The owner of the Flight School where Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained is Wallace J. Hilliard. And Wally Hilliard seems to be an acquaintance of Farhad Azima, as we can see here: