Jihan Nassar, a homemaker in Corona, Calif., is listed as a $500 donor to the campaign of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. But she insists she never gave a dime. 
 
 ''I can't make any donations, financially,'' Nassar said Friday. "We never made any donations, sir. I have no idea what you are talking about.'' 
 
 Nassar and her husband, Waleed, are among more than three dozen California donors listed as giving to Crist's campaign on June 19, 2006 -- donations bundled by a controversial Delray Beach defense contractor now under scrutiny for contributions to GOP presidential candidate John McCain. 
 
 On Thursday, the McCain campaign said it would return $50,000 in donations tied to businessman Harry Sargeant III, finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party and a college buddy of Crist's. Sargeant has said the California donors were solicited by a business partner, Mustafa Abu Naba'a, a Jordanian with an apartment in Miami-Dade, records show. 
 
 McCain -- a champion of campaign-finance reform in the U.S. Senate -- said he would return the donations after news articles in the Washington Post and the New York Times raised questions about their legitimacy. 
 
 In a letter to the donors, the campaign warned that foreign nationals cannot donate money to U.S. campaigns and contributors cannot be reimbursed by another donor as a way to get around contribution limits. 
 
 Some donors whose contributions are being returned by McCain's campaign were also listed as contributors to Crist on June 19, 2006. 
 
 That day, Crist received more than $25,000 in contributions from California, records show, including $500 checks from two stereo stores and two Wienerschnitzel hot-dog restaurants outside Los Angeles. 
 
 Zouhair El Srouji, a 40-year-old accountant in Wildomar, Calif., initially told a reporter on Friday that he had no memory of a $500 donation to the Florida governor. 
 
 After reviewing campaign records, however, he said he recalled that a campaign contribution was requested by his employer -- though he couldn't recall who asked him to give. 
 
 ''It took a lot of convincing, but they said he was a good man and needed our help, and I guess I'm a sucker for helping good people,'' El Srouji said. 
 
 Reached briefly to talk about his just-announced Dec. 12 wedding date with fiancee Carole Rome, Crist said he wasn't familiar with the specifics and referred questions to his former campaign manager, George LeMieux. ''It's all good,'' Crist said. 
 
 Earlier in the week, he called Sargeant "a great patriot.'' 
 
 LeMieux said he would review the donations highlighted by The Miami Herald. 
 
 He said every effort was made during the campaign to verify all donations and make sure they did not exceed campaign finance limits. Crist received more than 18,000 checks in the Republican primary, he said. 
 
 ''With that volume of checks, we're not going to know everyone who gives money,'' LeMieux said. "I remember many a long weekend trying to look up information about donors on the Internet.'' 
 
 The controversy over the donations comes at an awkward time for Crist, one of several politicians auditioning to be McCain's vice-presidential candidate. 
 
 Sargeant, a fraternity brother of Crist's at Florida State University, was one of the governor's biggest supporters in the 2006 campaign, and he has emerged in recent months as a top fundraiser for McCain as well. 
 
 Sargeant is among 63 McCain fundraisers nationwide who have bundled more than $500,000 in checks each. Donations to presidential candidates are capped at $2,300, but bundlers get around the limit by collecting checks from friends, business associates and relatives. 
 
 Sargeant also donated $30,000 of his own money to a joint McCain-GOP fund in May, records show. Before turning his attention to McCain, Sargeant also raised money for presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. 
 
 On March 5 -- the same day President Bush received McCain at the White House as the GOP's presumptive nominee -- Sargeant hosted a fundraiser for McCain at his $8.3 million Delray Beach home. 
 
 Sid Dinerstein, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party, attended the affair at the waterfront home. He said McCain is ''bending over backwards'' by returning contributions. 
 
 ''By giving the money back he is raising flags that weren't even there,'' Dinerstein said. "John McCain puts the ethics bar higher than anyone in national politics.'' 
 
 Sargeant could not be reached for comment on Friday, and a lawyer for his company did not respond to a list of e-mailed questions. 
 
 Tallahassee lobbyist Brian Ballard, a top fundraiser for both Crist and McCain, said the reason Sargeant took the position as the state GOP's finance chairman was simple: Crist asked him to do it. 
 
 Sargeant was not involved in President Bush's campaigns, which took the practice of bundling to new heights by designating its biggest givers as ''Rangers'' and "Pioneers.'' 
 
 ''Harry does politics now only because his friend of 30 years asked him to take this role,'' Ballard said. "He's very much apolitical. He runs tankers and ports.'' 
 
 Under Sargeant's leadership, the Republican Party of Florida raised $15 million in 2007, a record for a nonelection year. Chairman Jim Greer said he has no reason to review the checks Sargeant has delivered to the party. 
 
 ''He continues to have my full support and appreciation for his service,'' Greer said. "He's very dedicated and exhibited a high degree of integrity.'' 
 
 For someone at the top of the fundraising heap, Sargeant has kept a low profile. Several activists and fundraisers who have been involved in Republican politics for years said they had never met him. 
 
 But Sargeant's business has received some unwanted attention. 
 
 Sargeant is a partner with Abu Naba'a in International Oil Trading Co., a Boca Raton firm with Defense Department contracts to ship oil to the military in Iraq. Federal records show the company received $601 million in the 2007 budget year. 
 
 In June, U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., head of a congressional oversight committee, sent a letter to Sargeant seeking records in a probe of alleged overcharging of the military for fuel costs. 
 
 Sargeant and Abu Naba'a have also been accused of fraud by the brother-in-law of the king of Jordan, who filed a lawsuit in West Palm Beach in April saying the pair cut him out of the Pentagon contracts after he helped them secure the deal. 
 
 The ex-partner, Mohammad Al-Saleh, said he helped the company win the blessing of the Jordanian government to ship the oil through that country to Iraq -- a requirement of the Pentagon contracts, according to the suit. Al-Saleh said Sargeant and Abu Naba'a failed to pay him at least $13 million. 
 
 In court papers, lawyers for Sargeant and Abu Naba'a denied any wrongdoing and said the suit should be moved to Jordan. Sargeant and his family also own domestic shipping and asphalt companies, records show. ||||| You've probably never heard of Marty Martin. He spent most of his life as an anonymous CIA operative. But he very recently came out of the closet as the man Bush put in charge of finding Osama bin Laden in the aftermath of 9/11, and guess what? It turns out the man Bush put in charge of finding bin Laden is an extremely shady and allegedly corrupt war profiteer. Who would have thought? 
 
 Martin, of course, never succeeded in catching bin Laden. He ran the CIA's bin Laden unit from 2002 to 2004, a fact that we now know only because he emerged to grab some credit for bin Laden's death and celebrate the agency's discontinued torture program: "We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day," he told the Associated Press three weeks ago. Prior to that, he was just a nondescript former agency official who went into the security consulting business after retiring. The closest hint to just how key an official he was came from references to a "Marty M."—described as a sort of Jack Bauer of the bayou—in former CIA director George Tenet's memoir. 
 
 Now that we know who Martin really is, we can get a sense of what kind of guy Bush turned to for arguably the most crucial job in the war on terror. 
 
 1. The Kind of Guy Who Bilks Taxpayers for His Own Enrichment 
 
 In 2007, after leaving the CIA, Martin joined International Oil Trading Company, a Florida company that delivered fuel to U.S. forces in the Middle East. In 2008, congressional investigators accused it of ripping off the Pentagon to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. This year, the Pentagon's own audit found that the company overcharged the government by as much as $204 million on a series of massive Iraq war fuel contracts. 
 
 2. The Kind of Guy Who Bribes Foreign Officials 
 
 According to a Florida lawsuit against International Oil's owner Harry Sargeant III, Martin paid a $9 million bribe to the head of the Jordanian intelligence service back in 2007 to secure his company's exclusive rights to ship fuel across Jordan to U.S bases in Iraq. (That allegation comes from the Jordanian king's brother-in-law, Mohammad al-Saleh, who is suing Sargeant for purportedly screwing him out of a $100 million stake in the company.) 
 
 3. The Kind of Guy Who Helps Launder Illegal Political Contributions 
 
 In 2008, the Washington Post reported that Sargeant, a billionaire, raised funds for John McCain's presidential campaign with help from an unnamed "former head of the bin Laden unit" who worked for him. The men reportedly skirted campaign finance laws by funneling the money through Arab-American "straw donors." McCain quickly returned $50,000 of Sargeant's lucre. The Post never named the ex-chief of the CIA bin Laden unit involved in the fundraising, but unless two former heads of the bin Laden unit were working for Sargeant at the time, that man was Marty Martin. 
 
 4. The Kind of Guy Who Gets Totally Psyched When People Die In a War He Profits From 
 
 In a court filing last week, attorneys for al-Saleh quoted from an e-mail that Martin wrote to Sargeant in 2008 in which he appeared to gloat over the escalation of violence in Iraq: 
 
 Fyi, word of a 're-surge' is floating around amidst shit hitting the fan in Iraq today. ☺ 
 
 The "shit hitting the fan" was the Battle of Basra, the Iraqi Army's attempt in March 2008 to finally roll up militias loyal to Moqtada al Sadr. It was widely seen as a debacle and victory for al-Sadr, and many feared the conflict threatened to reignite the civil war. That month, 40 Americans died in Iraq. ☺! 
 
 In other words, he's a former CIA agent. Anyway, that's Marty Martin, the guy Bush put in charge of the bin Laden hunt. Glad it worked out for him. 
 
 Harry Sargeant's lawyers couldn't be reached for comment on this story. The CIA declined to comment. And Marty Martin's bin Laden-hunting predecessor, Michael Scheuer –- who served for two years as a special adviser to Martin's unit –- claims to have never heard of Marty Martin (which we can only presume is a CIA first-rule-of-Fight-Club omerta thing). Reached on his phone, Martin said: "No no, man. I don't want to talk to you, man," and hung up before we had a chance to ask a question. 
 
 [Image via AP] ||||| A member of Jordan’s royal family is accusing an American oilman and former GOP fundraiser of bribing the Jordanian government to facilitate his fuel shipments through the country to U.S. forces in Iraq. 
 
 The allegation emerged in a civil lawsuit pitting the billionaire American businessman, Harry Sargeant III, against an ex-business partner, Mohammad al-Saleh, the brother-in-law of Jordan’s King Abdullah II. 
 
 Al-Saleh, the plaintiff in the case first reported by NBC News in May 2008, claims that he was cut out of a lucrative one-third share in Sargeant’s firm, the International Oil Trading Co., based in Boca Raton, Fla., and replaced by an ex-CIA official with deep contacts in the Jordanian government. 
 
 The crux of the bribery allegation involves a $9 million wire transfer from Sargeant’s firm, directed to a mysterious figure in Jordan’s intelligence agency identified in court documents only as “Pasha.” 
 
 Sargeant’s lawyers acknowledge that “Pasha” was “possibly” Gen. Mohammad Dahabi, then head of the General Intelligence Directorate (GID), Jordan’s intelligence agency. A source inside the Jordanian government confirmed that. 
 
 Kickback or legitimate payment? 
 
 Al-Saleh’s lawyers argue in court documents that the money was a kickback to curry favor with the GID and secure Sargeant’s continued use of Jordanian thoroughfares to ship fuel to U.S. bases in western Iraq. 
 
 Sargeant’s lawyers insist the $9 million was payment to a “quasi-government” Jordanian company that was a subcontractor for Sargeant’s firm and deny any wrongdoing by their client. 
 
 Sargeant, a retired Marine pilot and former official of the Florida state GOP, was once among the Pentagon’s closest business partners, winning billions of dollars in fuel contracts in the Iraq war. But fallout from the contracts has eroded Sargeant’s reputation. 
 
 A congressional probe led by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., concluded in October 2008 that Sargeant had exploited his close ties with the Jordanian monarchy to win an exclusive license — a so-called letter of authorization that permitted his company to ship the fuel through Jordan to Iraq, as the contracts required. 
 
 Sargeant used his “effective monopoly” over the supply routes to grossly overcharge the Pentagon, Waxman wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Waxman called it “the worst form of war profiteering.” 
 
 Shortly after the probe, Sargeant resigned as the finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party. 
 
 Last month, a Pentagon audit requested by Waxman found that Sargeant was overpaid by as much as $204 million for the fuel contracts, which were worth nearly $2.7 billion over six years. The Defense Department accepted Sargeant’s inflated prices because no other competitor could get the letter of authorization from the Jordanian government, the audit said. 
 
 Ex-CIA agent hired 
 
 Now Al-Saleh’s lawsuit is dredging up new information about Sargeant’s dealings with the Jordanian government. 
 
 Among other things, court records indicate that Sargeant hired Marty Martin, a former member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service, to help manage his oil firm in 2007. Martin — identified in court documents as a former Middle East CIA station chief — leveraged his contacts in the Arab world to cement Sargeant’s relationship with the Jordanian government, even as the king’s brother-in-law was being forced out of the oil company and defrauded, al-Saleh’s lawyers contend. 
 
 The money transfer at the core of the bribery allegation is revealed in a November 2007 email from Martin to a representative of the Jordanian intelligence service. In it, Martin wrote that $4.5 million had been “transferred to the designated account for the Pasha’s attention.” 
 
 Three days later, Martin wrote again to confirm that a “second tranche of $4.5 million should also hit your account today.” He added, “Please advise Pasha.” 
 
 A high-placed source inside the Jordanian government confirmed that the “Pasha” alluded to in the emails was Dahabi, then head of the GID. The source, who requested anonymity, said the payments were “being made to the GID,” and added, “A simple trace on the wires will easily reveal who the beneficiaries were and the bank account details.” 
 
 The GID is the Jordanian counterpart to the CIA, and the two agencies have reportedly cooperated in the secret rendition of terrorist suspects. In a report this year, Human Rights Watch portrayed the GID as a vast shadow force in Jordan, harassing dissidents and “influenc(ing) decisions in most aspects of Jordanian public life.” 
 
 Violation of anti-bribery law alleged 
 
 Al-Saleh’s lawyers allege in court documents that Martin’s payments to the GID may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. 
 
 But Sargeant’s lawyers, Mark Tuohey and Roger Kobert, said the wires were destined for Taurus Trading Co., a Jordanian firm that provided ground services for Sargeant as a subcontractor. The lawyers characterized Taurus Trading Co. as a “quasi-government entity” and said the Jordanian government was a paid third party in Sargeant’s defense work. Taurus Trading Co. did not respond to emails requesting comment, nor did the Jordanian Embassy in Washington. 
 
 Asked why the director of the GID would be involved in the wire transfers, Kobert responded, “You’d have to ask him.” 
 
 Dahabi, who was the GID’s director in 2007, did not answer calls to his cellphone. 
 
 Martin did not reply to emails or phone calls seeking comment. 
 
 Sargeant’s lawyers accuse al-Saleh’s side of taking the wire transfers out of context. “They try to make something very mundane and boring sound sexy,” said Kobert. “It’s not sexy.” 
 
 Al-Saleh’s lawyers have cited another email that they argue shows Martin plotting to cut al-Saleh out of his one-third stake in the oil firm. ||||| WASHINGTON -- When one of Osama bin Laden's most trusted aides picked up the phone last year, he unknowingly led U.S. pursuers to the doorstep of his boss, the world's most wanted terrorist. 
 
 That phone call, recounted Monday by a U.S. official, ended a years-long search for bin Laden's personal courier, the key break in a worldwide manhunt. The courier, in turn, led U.S. intelligence to a walled compound in northeast Pakistan, where a team of Navy SEALs shot bin Laden to death. 
 
 The violent final minutes were the culmination of years of intelligence work. Inside the CIA team hunting bin Laden, it always was clear that bin Laden's vulnerability was his couriers. He was too smart to let al-Qaida foot soldiers, or even his senior commanders, know his hideout. But if he wanted to get his messages out, somebody had to carry them, someone bin Laden trusted with his life. 
 
 In a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe years ago, al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, gave authorities the nicknames of several of bin Laden's couriers, four former U.S. intelligence officials said. Those names were among thousands of leads the CIA was pursuing. 
 
 One man became a particular interest for the agency when another detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, told interrogators that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed as al-Qaida's operational leader he received the word through a courier. Only bin Laden would have given al-Libi that promotion, CIA officials believed. 
 
 If they could find that courier, they'd find bin Laden. 
 
 The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA's so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history. 
 
 "We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day," said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden. 
 
 Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic. 
 
 It took years of work for intelligence agencies to identify the courier's real name, which officials are not disclosing. When they did identify him, he was nowhere to be found. The CIA's sources didn't know where he was hiding. Bin Laden was famously insistent that no phones or computers be used near him, so the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency kept coming up cold. 
 
 Then in the middle of last year, the courier had a telephone conversation with someone who was being monitored by U.S. intelligence, according to an American official, who like others interviewed for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation. The courier was located somewhere away from bin Laden's hideout when he had the discussion, but it was enough to help intelligence officials locate and watch him. 
 
 In August 2010, the courier unknowingly led authorities to a compound in the northeast Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where al-Libi had once lived. The walls surrounding the property were as high as 18 feet and topped with barbed wire. Intelligence officials had known about the house for years, but they always suspected that bin Laden would be surrounded by heavily armed security guards. Nobody patrolled the compound in Abbottabad. 
 
 In fact, nobody came or went. And no telephone or Internet lines ran from the compound. The CIA soon believed that bin Laden was hiding in plain sight, in a hideout especially built to go unnoticed. But since bin Laden never traveled and nobody could get onto the compound without passing through two security gates, there was no way to be sure. 
 
 Despite that uncertainty, intelligence officials realized this could represent the best chance ever to get to bin Laden. They decided not to share the information with anyone, including staunch counterterrorism allies such as Britain, Canada and Australia. 
 
 By mid-February, the officials were convinced a "high-value target" was hiding in the compound. President Barack Obama wanted to take action. 
 
 "They were confident and their confidence was growing: 'This is different. This intelligence case is different. What we see in this compound is different than anything we've ever seen before,'" John Brennan, the president's top counterterrorism adviser, said Monday. "I was confident that we had the basis to take action." 
 
 Options were limited. The compound was in a residential neighborhood in a sovereign country. If Obama ordered an airstrike and bin Laden was not in the compound, it would be a huge diplomatic problem. Even if Obama was right, obliterating the compound might make it nearly impossible to confirm bin Laden's death. 
 
 Said Brennan: "The president had to evaluate the strength of that information, and then made what I believe was one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory." 
 
 Obama tapped two dozen members of the Navy's elite SEAL Team Six to carry out a raid with surgical accuracy. 
 
 Before dawn Monday morning, a pair of helicopters left Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. The choppers entered Pakistani airspace using sophisticated technology intended to evade that country's radar systems, a U.S. official said. 
 
 Officially, it was a kill-or-capture mission, since the U.S. doesn't kill unarmed people trying to surrender. But it was clear from the beginning that whoever was behind those walls had no intention of surrendering, two U.S. officials said. 
 
 The helicopters lowered into the compound, dropping the SEALs behind the walls. No shots were fired, but shortly after the team hit the ground, one of the helicopters came crashing down and rolled onto its side for reasons the government has yet to explain. None of the SEALs was injured, however, and the mission continued uninterrupted. 
 
 With the CIA and White House monitoring the situation in real time – presumably by live satellite feed or video carried by the SEALs – the team stormed the compound. 
 
 Thanks to sophisticated satellite monitoring, U.S. forces knew they'd likely find bin Laden's family on the second and third floors of one of the buildings on the property, officials said. The SEALs secured the rest of the property first, then proceeded to the room where bin Laden was hiding. In the ensuing firefight, Brennan said, bin Laden used a woman as a human shield. 
 
 The SEALs killed bin Laden with a bullet to the head. Using the call sign for his visual identification, one of the soldiers communicated that "Geronimo" had been killed in action, according to a U.S. official. 
 
 Bin Laden's body was immediately identifiable, but the U.S. also conducted DNA testing that identified him with near 100 percent certainty, senior administration officials said. Photo analysis by the CIA, confirmation on site by a woman believed to be bin Laden's wife, and matching physical features such as bin Laden's height all helped confirm the identification. At the White House, there was no doubt. 
 
 "I think the accomplishment that very brave personnel from the United States government were able to realize yesterday is a defining moment in the war against al-Qaida, the war on terrorism, by decapitating the head of the snake known as al-Qaida," Brennan said. 
 
 U.S. forces searched the compound and flew away with documents, hard drives and DVDs that could provide valuable intelligence about al-Qaida, a U.S. official said. The entire operation took about 40 minutes, officials said. 
 
 Bin Laden's body was flown to the USS Carl Vinson in the North Arabian sea, a senior defense official said. There, aboard a U.S. warship, officials conducted a traditional Islamic burial ritual. Bin Laden's body was washed and placed in a white sheet. He was placed in a weighted bag that, after religious remarks by a military officer, was slipped into the sea about 2 a.m. EDT Monday. 
 
 Said the president: "I think we can all agree this is a good day for America." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier, Eileen Sullivan and Ben Feller in Washington and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, Pakistan contributed to this report.
– A CIA operative in charge of hunting down Osama bin Laden is a war profiteer who helped bilk the Pentagon out of some $200 million, reports Gawker. Marty Martin was put in charge of tracking down the terror mastermind from 2002-2004, and boasted to the AP that those early efforts "led to this great day" the day bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs. After he left the CIA, Martin joined International Oil Trading Company, a Florida operation that delivered fuel to US forces in the Middle East, a company accused by both Congress and the Pentagon of grossly overcharging the government, to the tune of $204 million. Martin was also accused in a Florida lawsuit of paying a $9 million bribe to Jordanian officials to win exclusive fuel shipping rights, and has been linked to dirty campaign contributions given to (and returned by) John McCain during his bid for the presidency. Contacted by Gawker to comment on the various charges, Martin responded: "No no, man. I don't want to talk to you, man."