Thursday, July 21, 2005
TCS: Tech Central Station - The Logic of Pacifism
TCS: Tech Central Station - The Logic of Pacifism
BG: Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, When will the noise stop. Mr. Totten does his best to make sense, and he would make sense if it weren't for
Garbage In = Garbage Out
BG: Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, When will the noise stop. Mr. Totten does his best to make sense, and he would make sense if it weren't for
Garbage In = Garbage Out
Something Fishy about Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Another Day in the Empire: "Something Fishy about Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr"
Sept 2000 Project for a New American Century PDF
Project Members:
PROJECT PARTICIPANTS
Roger Barnett
U.S. Naval War College
Alvin Bernstein
National Defense University
Stephen Cambone
National Defense University
Eliot Cohen
Nitze School of Advanced International
Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Devon Gaffney Cross
Donors' Forum for International Affairs
Thomas Donnelly
Project for the New American Century
David Epstein
Office of Secretary of Defense,
Net Assessment
David Fautua
Lt. Col., U.S. Army
Dan Goure
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Donald Kagan
Yale University
Fred Kagan
U. S. Military Academy at West Point
Robert Kagan
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Robert Killebrew
Col., USA (Ret.)
William Kristol
The Weekly Standard
Mark Lagon
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
James Lasswell
GAMA Corporation
I. Lewis Libby (Now Cheney's Cheif of Staff)
Dechert Price & Rhoads
Robert Martinage
Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessment
Phil Meilinger
U.S. Naval War College
Mackubin Owens
U.S. Naval War College
Steve Rosen
Harvard University
Gary Schmitt
Project for the New American Century
Abram Shulsky
The RAND Corporation
Michael Vickers
Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessment
Barry Watts
Northrop Grumman Corporation
Paul Wolfowitz (with Admin during 2001)
Nitze School of Advanced International
Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Dov Zakheim (with Pentagon during 2001)
System Planning Corporation
Page 62-63:
Any serious effort at transformation must occur within the larger framework of U.S. national security strategy, military missions and defense budgets. The United States cannot simply declare a “strategic pause” while experimenting with new technologies and operationalconcepts. Nor can it choose to pursue a transformation strategy that would decouple American and allied interests. A transformation strategy that solely pursued capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example, and sacrificed forward asing and presence, would be at odds with larger American Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
51
policy goals and would trouble American allies. Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions. A decision to suspend or terminate aircraft carrier production, as recommended by this report and as justified by the clear direction of military technology, will cause great upheaval.
PROJECT PARTICIPANTS
Roger Barnett
U.S. Naval War College
Alvin Bernstein
National Defense University
Stephen Cambone
National Defense University
Eliot Cohen
Nitze School of Advanced International
Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Devon Gaffney Cross
Donors' Forum for International Affairs
Thomas Donnelly
Project for the New American Century
David Epstein
Office of Secretary of Defense,
Net Assessment
David Fautua
Lt. Col., U.S. Army
Dan Goure
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Donald Kagan
Yale University
Fred Kagan
U. S. Military Academy at West Point
Robert Kagan
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Robert Killebrew
Col., USA (Ret.)
William Kristol
The Weekly Standard
Mark Lagon
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
James Lasswell
GAMA Corporation
I. Lewis Libby (Now Cheney's Cheif of Staff)
Dechert Price & Rhoads
Robert Martinage
Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessment
Phil Meilinger
U.S. Naval War College
Mackubin Owens
U.S. Naval War College
Steve Rosen
Harvard University
Gary Schmitt
Project for the New American Century
Abram Shulsky
The RAND Corporation
Michael Vickers
Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessment
Barry Watts
Northrop Grumman Corporation
Paul Wolfowitz (with Admin during 2001)
Nitze School of Advanced International
Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Dov Zakheim (with Pentagon during 2001)
System Planning Corporation
Page 62-63:
Any serious effort at transformation must occur within the larger framework of U.S. national security strategy, military missions and defense budgets. The United States cannot simply declare a “strategic pause” while experimenting with new technologies and operationalconcepts. Nor can it choose to pursue a transformation strategy that would decouple American and allied interests. A transformation strategy that solely pursued capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example, and sacrificed forward asing and presence, would be at odds with larger American Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
51
policy goals and would trouble American allies. Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions. A decision to suspend or terminate aircraft carrier production, as recommended by this report and as justified by the clear direction of military technology, will cause great upheaval.
UK blasts: Pak says plotter of Indian origin - Deccan Herald - Internet Edition
UK blasts: Pak says plotter of Indian origin - Deccan Herald - Internet Edition: "British experts believe Awat was in face to face contact with Osama Bin Laden and played the role of facilitator to brief the London bombers and help them plan their attack. "
BG: Of Course, what took you so long....
BG: Of Course, what took you so long....
Blogging because it has my comments: Daly Thoughts » When Does A Problem Become Too Big To Ignore
Daly Thoughts » When Does A Problem Become Too Big To Ignore
When Does A Problem Become Too Big To Ignore
Posted on Friday 17 June 2005
Dana Milbank:
The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration “neocons” so “the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world.” He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
“Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation,” McGovern said. “The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic.”
Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq’s threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his “candid answer.”
Lest it be dismissed as just a bizarre exchange between a known kook and an unknown kook,
At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations — that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an “insider trading scam” on 9/11 — that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.
Eventually, one of two things is going to happen. Either Democrat voters will eventually tire of pretending this faction of their party does not exist and will either try to cast them out or will leave the party themselves, or the rest of the country will completely turn away from them.
Faster, please. To any of these outcomes.
Addendum: By the way, it is not only about Iraq that McGovern has some curious views, and it is not just some activists at the Democratic headquarters who were pushing some bizarre 9/11 theories. McGovern has long been a staple of “911Truth.org”, including being part of a panel entitled “Reframing 9/11″. I also love this press release:
The events have been linked up at www.911truth.org
Cynthia McKinney was the first to raise historic questions about 9/11 from the floor of U.S. Congress, asking what the Bush administration may have known in advance about the attacks and when, and calling for investigation. She was misquoted, misrepresented and finally driven out of Congress, yet vindicated by a number of revelations that the administration had advance knowledge. She will be speaking in the heart of Berlin, Germany on September 5th & 7th.
She will be accompanied by Mike Ruppert - the man who started the original 9/11 timeline and who has made a career of exposing official corruption. This is their first public appearance together. On the 7th, they will be joined at the Tempodrom arena by writers from Britain, Italy and Germany, including Nafeez Ahmed, author of the groundbreaking 9/11 research work The War on Freedom and Daniel Hopsicker, who has broken a number of key stories about the alleged 9/11 hijackers.
McKinney and Ruppert will join former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Dr. Faiz Kahn, John Judge and others for a forum about 9/11 at the Riverside Church in New York City on Thursday, September 11th. That event will screen the Guerrilla News Network documentary “AfterMath - Unanswered Questions from 9/11″ and other short documentaries, including Barry Zwicker’s “The Great Deception.” The event is sponsored by Pacifica radio’s WBAI in New York.
This is who House Democrats want to bring forward? And do rank and file Democratic voters really want to tolerate this from their party?
Update 2: Should I be surprised that the New York Times reporting on this does not mention anything about the background of this “witness”?
Update 3: Oh, lucky day! I was able to find a fawning review of that forum with McGovern and McKinney and others:
The main event was a panel of experts including McKinney, retired veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern, veteran activist and researcher John Judge, Schechter, and me. It was not important that each of us agreed totally with the analyses and work of the others. No one was asked, nor expected, to compromise their positions and the event made no attempt to forge a perfect consensus. To have done that would have been to destroy the perfection of the consensus that already existed. What had brought us there together was a shared belief and commitment that the government of the United States was totally out of control and that it had, in just three years, brought the nation and the planet itself to the brink of disintegration and chaos…
McGovern went further than ever when he spoke about the administration’s exploitation of 9/11. While not saying outright that the administration knew about the attacks and allowed them to happen, even facilitating them, he implied it. The administration has a lot to hide, he said. He went on to say that Dick Cheney had a lot of chutzpah to show up at the Riverside Church calling him a “Meister of cover up and pointing out that he had turned the FBI loose to intimidate and silence the congressional committees charged with FBI oversight. He labeled the explanation that incompetence within the government had allowed the attacks to succeed as “charitable.”
Update 4: Courtesy of the same people who helped bring you the McKinney/McGovern 9/11 forum, we have audio of the hearings.
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15 Comments for 'When Does A Problem Become Too Big To Ignore'
1.
TSB
[TSB– Gerry here. Please limit your comments to the thread at hand. If you have something unrelated that you wish to comment on, then make those comments to the “Thread o’ the Day”. That is what it is for. I have moved your comment which was completely unrelated to this topic over to it. Thanks]
6/17/2005 | 12:57 pm
2.
Paul Brewer
Gerry: I’m guessing that you’ll agree with me that I took a step up when I went from being represented by Moran to being represented by Gwen Moore (who also has the virtue of not having been in an altercation with a child).
6/17/2005 | 3:23 pm
3.
Gerry
Paul,
You definitely took a step up!
6/17/2005 | 3:37 pm
4.
The Lizard King
With all these great people appearing I have to ask:
Where’s Tito?
I thought that everyone knew that nobody actually died on 9/11…they’re all being held in the underground buildings surrounding the new Denver Int’l Airport…whose runways approximate a swastika. Rumor has it that the facility is going to become a “central processing center” when the New World Order takes over.
Seriously, that’s a theory that some of these crackpots have come up with….
6/17/2005 | 3:44 pm
5.
phil
Alleged 9/11 hijackers my ass!
6/17/2005 | 3:47 pm
6.
Chris
Did you see the interview that Linda Vester had with Sheila Jackson Lee on “Day Side” today? It was amazing. They were talking about Senator Durbin’s comments about Guantanamo Bay and whether they were unwise. Jackson Lee started talking on a different subject and wouldn’t stop even when Linda tried to get her back on topic. Linda correctly quipped that it appeared to be a filibuster. And then later, Jackson Lee said she would appreciate it if Linda wouldn’t interupt her anymore. Dear Lord that was hilarious and typical.
6/17/2005 | 5:54 pm
7.
dsm
Ah, that takes me back a couple of years… back to this quote from Moran: “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.” He apologized for saying that, so now, it seems, he’s getting people to play act that sentiment for him. Unbelievable.
6/18/2005 | 1:28 am
8.
BG
Let me comment on the “kooky” 911 theories:
1) Odigo Paging, an Israeli Owned Company, had several employees to tath received paging messages on their pagers warming them not to go in on 09/11/2001.
“September 11, 2001: In Israel, two employees of Odigo, Inc., an Israeli paging company, receive warnings of an imminent attack on the WTC around two hours before the first plane hits the WTC. Odigo has its headquarters two blocks from the WTC. Israeli security and the FBI are notified immediately after the 9/11 attacks begin. The two employees claim not to know who sent the warnings. The company suggests the warning may have been sent to a larger audience.”
2) Whether the money trail leads to Israel, there was in fact clear patterns of trading before 09/11/2001 that show foreknowledge of the events. The 911 “coverup” commission chose not to investigate, and not other agency of US Govt’ have publicly release any documentation of follow on the trail.
“September 10, 2001: Amr Elgindy, a notorious inside trader on the financial markets, orders his broker to liquidate his children’s $300,000 trust account fearing a sudden crash in the market the next day. He tells his stock broker that the Dow Jones average, then at 9,600, will fall to below 3,000. Elgindy is later arrested along with two FBI agents. Government prosecutors claim the FBI agents were using their FBI positions to feed him inside information on various corporations. They also claim Elgindy had foreknowledge about the 9/11 attacks.”
“August 6, 2001-September 11, 2001: Inside trading based on advanced knowledge of the 9/11 attacks between August 6, if not earlier, and the day of the attack later lead to investigations around the world. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) later announces that they are investigating the trading of shares of 38 companies in the days just before 9/11. Both the SEC and the Secret Service announce probes into an unusually high volume trade of five-year US Treasury note purchases (considered good investments in a world crisis) around this time. These transactions included a single $5 billion trade. German central bank president Ernst Welteke later says his researchers have found “almost irrefutable proof of insider trading,” not only in shares of heavily affected industries such as airlines and insurance companies, but also in gold and oil. Unusual stock transactions of Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, is also noted by German investigators. US investigators reports that salvaged computers from within the WTC show that over $100 million was rushed through computers even as the disaster unfolded. Investigators say, “There is a suspicion that some people had advance knowledge of the approximate time of the plane crashes… [and] thought that the records of their transactions could not be traced after the main frames were destroyed.” There are ongoing investigations in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monte Carlo, Cyprus, Japan, Italy, Britain and other countries. Apparently all of these investigations are still continuing, except one in Britain which found no evidence of inside trading.”
Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIA’s Highest Ranks
CIA Executive Director “Buzzy” Krongard managed firm that handled “PUT” options on United Airline Stock
by Michael C. Ruppert
FTW - October 9, 2001 – Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the case of at least one of these trades — which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed — the firm used to place the “put options” on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Until 1997 A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker’s Trust in 1997. Krongard then became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker’s Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected to money laundering. Krongard’s last position at Banker’s Trust (BT) was to oversee “private client relations.” In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being closely connected to the laundering of drug money.
Krongard joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush in March of this year. BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999. The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe. And, as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.
THE SCOPE OF KNOWN INSIDER TRADING
Before looking further into these relationships it is necessary to look at the insider trading information that is being ignored by Reuters, The New York Times and other mass media. It is well documented that the CIA has long monitored such trades – in real time – as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves contrary to U.S. interests. Previous stories in FTW have specifically highlighted the use of Promis software to monitor such trades.
It is necessary to understand only two key financial terms to understand the significance of these trades, “selling short” and “put options”.
“Selling Short” is the borrowing of stock, selling it at current market prices, but not being required to actually produce the stock for some time. If the stock falls precipitously after the short contract is entered, the seller can then fulfill the contract by buying the stock after the price has fallen and complete the contract at the pre-crash price. These contracts often have a window of as long as four months.
“Put Options,” are contracts giving the buyer the option to sell stocks at a later date. Purchased at nominal prices of, for example, $1.00 per share, they are sold in blocks of 100 shares. If exercised, they give the holder the option of selling selected stocks at a future date at a price set when the contract is issued. Thus, for an investment of $10,000 it might be possible to tie up 10,000 shares of United or American Airlines at $100 per share, and the seller of the option is then obligated to buy them if the option is executed. If the stock has fallen to $50 when the contract matures, the holder of the option can purchase the shares for $50 and immediately sell them for $100 – regardless of where the market then stands. A call option is the reverse of a put option, which is, in effect, a derivatives bet that the stock price will go up.
A September 21 story by the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, entitled “Black Tuesday: The World’s Largest Insider Trading Scam?” documented the following trades connected to the September 11 attacks:
- Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options… Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these “insiders” would have profited by almost $5 million.
- On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was no news at that point to justify this imbalance;… Again, assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent “insiders,” they would represent a gain of about $4 million.
- [The levels of put options purchased above were more than six times higher than normal.]
- No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.
- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanley’s share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at least $1.2 million. Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw 12,215 October $45 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares had been 252 contracts per day [a 1200% increase!]. When trading resumed, Merrill’s shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50; assuming that 11,000 option contracts were bought by “insiders,” their profit would have been about $5.5 million.
- European regulators are examining trades in Germany’s Munich Re, Switzerland’s Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster. [FTW Note: AXA also owns more than 25% of American Airlines stock making the attacks a “double whammy” for them.]
On September 29, 2001 – in a vital story that has gone unnoticed by the major media – the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades and market data.
“The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors – whose identities and nationalities have not been made public – had advance knowledge of the strikes.” They don’t dare show up now. The suspension of trading for four days after the attacks made it impossible to cash-out quickly and claim the prize before investigators started looking.
“… October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each. [This represents 230,000 shares]. Those options are now selling at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called “put” options outstanding [valued at $2.77 million and representing 231,300 shares] according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp.”
“…The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of these options…” This was the operation managed by Krongard until as recently as 1998.
As reported in other news stories, Deutsche Bank was also the hub of insider trading activity connected to Munich Re. just before the attacks.
CIA, THE BANKS AND THE BROKERS
Understanding the interrelationships between CIA and the banking and brokerage world is critical to grasping the already frightening implications of the above revelations. Let’s look at the history of CIA, Wall Street and the big banks by looking at some of the key players in CIA’s history.
Clark Clifford – The National Security Act of 1947 was written by Clark Clifford, a Democratic Party powerhouse, former Secretary of Defense, and one-time advisor to President Harry Truman. In the 1980s, as Chairman of First American Bancshares, Clifford was instrumental in getting the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI a license to operate on American shores. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and banker.
John Foster and Allen Dulles – These two brothers “designed” the CIA for Clifford. Both were active in intelligence operations during WW II. Allen Dulles was the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland where he met frequently with Nazi leaders and looked after U.S. investments in Germany. John Foster went on to become Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower and Allen went on to serve as CIA Director under Eisenhower and was later fired by JFK. Their professions: partners in the most powerful - to this day - Wall Street law firm of Sullivan, Cromwell.
Bill Casey – Ronald Reagan’s CIA Director and OSS veteran who served as chief wrangler during the Iran-Contra years was, under President Richard Nixon, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and stockbroker.
David Doherty - The current Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange for enforcement is the retired General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency.
George Herbert Walker Bush – President from 1989 to January 1993, also served as CIA Director for 13 months from 1976-7. He is now a paid consultant to the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the nation, which also shares joint investments with the bin Laden family.
A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard – The current Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is the former Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown and former Vice Chairman of Banker’s Trust.
John Deutch - This retired CIA Director from the Clinton Administration currently sits on the board at Citigroup, the nation’s second largest bank, which has been repeatedly and overtly involved in the documented laundering of drug money. This includes Citigroup’s 2001 purchase of a Mexican bank known to launder drug money, Banamex.
Nora Slatkin – This retired CIA Executive Director also sits on Citibank’s board.
Maurice “Hank” Greenburg – The CEO of AIG insurance, manager of the third largest capital investment pool in the world, was floated as a possible CIA Director in 1995. FTW exposed Greenberg’s and AIG’s long connection to CIA drug trafficking and covert operations in a two-part series that was interrupted just prior to the attacks of September 11. AIG’s stock has bounced back remarkably well since the attacks. To read that story, please go to http://www.copvcia.com/stories/part_2.html.
One wonders how much damning evidence is necessary to respond to what is now irrefutable proof that CIA knew about the attacks and did not stop them. Whatever our government is doing, whatever the CIA is doing, it is clearly NOT in the interests of the American people, especially those who died on September 11.
[© COPYRIGHT, 2001, Michael C. Ruppert and FTW Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. – May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.
Massive pre-attack ‘insider trading’ offer authorities hottest trail to accomplices
by Kyle F. Hence
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca , 21 April 2002
CRG’s Global Outlook, premiere issue on “Stop the War” provides detailed documentation on the war and September 11 Order/subscribe. Consult Table of Contents
Part II — Billions in Pre-911 Insider Trading Profits Leaves a Hot Trail: How Bush Administration Naysayers May Have Let it go Cold
Part I of Making a Killing provided a glimpse of a shadowy, legitimized global financial network that is employed by criminals of all kinds to carry out or manage the profits from all manner of nefarious activity. It documented how the Bush Administration in 2001 undermined, stalled and withdrew from a global effort to clamp down on money laundering. We learned the indirect connection Enron had to intense lobbying efforts which ultimately swayed the Administration. And how following the attacks of 9-11, Bush changed his tune and working with allies in the war on terrorism, seized over $100 million linked to Al Qeada and other terrorist groups. Unfortunately, this is likely the tip of the iceberg of drug and terror money that is managed by the highest echelons of double-breasted gucci suited criminals.
In Part II, we will examine closely what is likely the largest, most globalized and heinous case of insider trading in economic history and how it offered authorities a hot money trail to follow. If successful in tracking the perpetrators, authorities would not only be successful in implicating obvious accomplices in the 9-11 attacks, but also would be able to strike deeply into the infrastructure of a shadow financial network and hundreds of billions of dollars that flow through it.
As of mid-March, authorities say they have frozen over $100 million in terrorist assets. But how to strike deeper to prevent future attacks? Some believe the answer lies at the end of the paper trail that investigators are following from huge insider trading placed on carefully selected stocks in the days leading up to 9-11.
According to Phil Erlanger, a former Senior Technical Analyst with Fidelity , and founder of a Florida firm that tracks short selling and options trading, insiders made off with billions (not mere millions) in profits by betting on the fall of stocks they knew would tumble in the aftermath of the WTC and Pentagon attacks. [http://www.erlangersqueezeplay.com ] Andreas von Bulow, a former member of the German Parliament, once responsible for the oversight of the German secret services, estimated that profits by insider traders were $15 billion. CBS offered a far more conservative figure when it reported (Sept 26) that “at least seven countries are dissecting suspicious trades that may have netted more than $100 million in profits.”
Regardless of estimates, to Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News, the evidence was compelling; “This is the worst case of insider trading ever.” [Good Morning Texas, Sept. 20, 2001] The sheer scope, size and the uncanny timing of 9-11 insider trading demanded an aggressive investigation. But the stakes involved, with nearly 3000 dead, have never been higher for financial crimes investigators.
Suspicious trading was first identified by Japanese authorities. But soon concerns were raised and a pattern could be discerned in countries around the world including Singapore, Hong Kong, Italy, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Germany and Canada. Jonathan Winer, an ABC News Consultant said “it’s absolutely unprecedented to see cases of insider trading covering the entire world from Japan to the US to North America to Europe.” [World News Tonight, Sept. 20, 2001] Investigators were soon hot on the trail on a matter of obvious national security to many nations.
Bloomberg News reported that Former chief of Enforcement at the SEC; William McLucas said regulators will “certainly be able to track down every trade, where the trade cleared, where the trade was directed from.” However, Treasury Secretary O’Neill downplayed hopes for a successful investigation by pointing out the challenge of penetrating veils of secrecy before a name can be attached to a suspicious trade; “You’ve got to go through ten veils before you get to the real source.” [AP; September 20, testimony before Senate Banking Committee] . Talk about lowering the bar of expectations; very unsettling coming from someone who could help bring to justice those guilty of the worst terrorist attack history–the massacre of thousands.
In the months since these comments, tightlipped authorities have revealed few details. Any questions put to those prosecuting the war on terrorist funding cannot be answered. The familiar refrain is heard; “our investigation is ongoing.” Though widely reported in September and October of last year, months have elapsed since the insider trading received attention. The unresolved crime of 9-11 insider trading is a dark cloud that hangs over this administration and its prosecution of the ‘war on terrorism.’ What is worse is that those who profited remain free to use those profits of death to finance their next attack.
For those who dismiss the whole phenomena, here’s what we do know thus far from reports from major newspapers and television news outlets around the globe. Taken separately any of the following details or comments is notable, but taken together and placed in context, the evidence of unprecedented profiteering by terrorists and/or those with prior knowledge is clearly undeniable.
Massive Put Options spikes and ‘Naked’ calls Bloomberg News reported that put options in UAL Corp (parent for United Airlines) surged 285 times the average volume and 75 times the total number of put options traded up until that time. This was the largest reported spike. In another observation of the same phenomena reported in the September 22nd Herald Sun, UAL put options contracts soared 90 times in one day over total from the previous three weeks. That’s 90x not 90%. On September 10, put option contracts on AMR (parent for American Airlines) spiked 60 times the daily average and five times the total of all $30 put options traded before September 10. [”Pre-attack trading probed: Regulators in U.S., Europe and Asia check put options”; Judy Mathewson and Michael Nol, September 19]
“I saw put-call numbers higher than I’ve ever seen in 10 years of following the markets, particularly the options markets,” said John Kinnucan, principal of Broadband Research quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle.
Bloomberg.com and Erlangersqeezeplay.com published reports identifying a clear pattern of highly unusual, and in some cases, massive spikes in put options in stocks that would have been deemed by those with detailed prior knowledge most likely hardest hit in the market aftermath of a WTC attack. These were primarily airline (UAL and AMR, notably not Delta), insurance, brokerage and hotel stocks. Phil Erlanger also noted a pattern of significant spikes in ‘naked calls’ in the same stocks. Naked calls are a high-risk form of short selling not backed up by stock position in the company at issue.
Thirty-eight companies were placed on a SEC list and circulated amongst brokerages that placed the put options on behalf of clients. These included among many others, TD Waterhouse, NFS (subsidiary of Fidelity of Boston), Alex Brown/Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers. [The San Francisco Chronicle; AP]. In the January 2002 Congressional record, an informal survey conducted by Levin-Grassley staffs, revealed that 10 of 22 responding securities and brokerage firms, managed accounts for 45,000 offshore clients.
Below are a few standouts on the SEC list [’ *’ indicates a WTC tenant; (-x) represents the multiple over average volume]: Airlines: UAL (285x), AMR (60x) Insurance sector: Marsh & McLennan (93x)*, Citigroup (45x), Swiss Re, XL Capital Brokers: Bear Stearns (60x), Morgan Stanley (27x)*, Merrill Lynch (12x)
Not included on the SEC list, but featured on the Erlangersqeezeplay.com report, were hotel chains Marriott, Hilton and Starwood Hotels. Most anomalous were the huge put option trading spikes placed in only two of the three major US airlines. Almost always, if investors believe the airline industry is due to drop, they will short all three major carriers. This was not the case here because Delta did not see spikes similar to UAL and AMR.
Analysts also noted that though the insurance sector was one of the strongest in a depressed stock market, there were huge spikes in put options in Marsh & McLennan and in Citigroup. Marsh & McLennan, the biggest insurance broker, was a World Trade Center tenant with 1,700 employees. It also saw, next to UAL, the highest spike in put options; thus you have a confluence of facts that, in the minds of many experienced traders and experts, amounts to unequivocal evidence of foul play. Clearly traders placed bets based on sure-fire insider prior knowledge. The odds against this happening randomly or coincidentally are astronomical; probably incalculable.
The put options, though they received the bulk of news coverage, were reportedly only one of several instruments used by the insiders. Suspicious trading in 5-year bonds and in oil and gold futures was also noted, and presumably investigated.
Oil and gold futures The Associated Press reported on September 22nd that a German Central Bank study strongly points to “terrorism insider trading” not only in airline and insurance companies but also in gold and oil futures. These he said, “could not be chalked up to coincidence.” Bundesbank President, Ernst Welteke, said that though it would be “extremely difficult to really verify” but he believed “in one or the other case it will be possible to pinpoint the source.”
Unusual high volume in pre-attack 5 year bond trading The Wall Street Journal reported on October 2 that the Secret Service had begun a probe into an unusually high volume of five-year US Treasury note purchases made prior to the attacks. The Treasury note transactions included a single $5 billion trade. The Journal noted that “Five-year Treasury notes are among the best investments in the event of a world crisis, especially one that hits the US. The notes are prized for their safety and their backing by the US government, and usually rally when investors flee riskier investments, such as stocks.” The value of these notes, the Journal pointed out, has risen sharply after the events of September 11.
‘Last hours’ surge of financial activity at WTC According to a Reuters report of December 16, German data retrieval experts, hired by WTC tenant firms, were mining data off damaged hard disks recovered from the ground zero. The goal is to discover who was responsible for the movement of unusually large sums of money through the computers of the WTC in the hours before the attack. Peter Henschel, director of Convar, the firm responsible, said, “not only the volume, but the size of the transactions was far higher than usual for a day like that.” Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert estimated that more than $100 million in illegal transactions appeared to have rushed through the WTC computers before and during the disaster.
The evidence and comments offered by traders, analysts, bankers and others in the immediate aftermath indicates there was, in fact, a carefully planned and sophisticated effort of massive profiteering from the precipitous fall of stocks that occurred when trading opened following the attack. This is expert documentation and observations based on years of experience. The implications are absolutely frightening. And all the more reason for authorities to pull out all the stops to identify and prosecute those responsible and shut down the global financial network facilitated the most heinous of crimes. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what’s happened.
‘Naysayers’ raise suspicions; Enron diverts attention from dire National security issue Months have passed since the launch of investigations by the SEC, NYSE, CBOE (Chicago Board of Options Exchange), Department of Justice, FBI, Secret Service, CIA, Department of Treasury, and the NSA. And yet there is no news, no suspects, no prosecutions, nothing. There are fears now that early ‘naysayers’ may have let a hot trail to go cold and allowed the terrorist insiders to cover their tracks. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the FBI’s Dennis Lormel said on October 3, 2001 before Congress that there were “no flags or indicators” referring to mere “rumors” about the pre-attack insider trading.
The Enron scandal, beginning in October, followed on the heels of the 9-11 attack and subsequent investigations into Enron began to divide and stretch the limited resources of the agencies and regulators involved. The media focus began to shift as well with six or eight Congressional committees holding hearings and providing all sorts of media drama. Congress began to look toward remedies to stave off a total crisis of confidence in our economic system, and justifiably so. Obviously, the largest bankruptcy in US history, affecting thousands of employees with 401k plans and millions of pensioners, merits serious attention. Ironically, it may lead them to crack down on the same infrastructure; employed by Enron’s Andrew Fastow and terrorist alike.
However, a case could be made that the focus on Enron has diverted attention away from a matter of far greater national security. The insiders, possibly the masterminds behind the suicide attacks, have walked away with huge profits for their sophisticated pre-attack trading; estimated by some to be in the billions of dollars. More to the point, they are now planning and financing their next attack with these 9-11 takings, as yet unmolested by a genuinely aggressive U.S. effort to shut them down.
In light of the weighty and compelling evidence, Lormel’s insistence there were “no flags or indicators” of possible terrorist insider trading, is blatantly wrong or worse, suspect. Most of the information above, including Bloomberg trading charts documenting massive put options spikes, was in the public domain prior to his testimony. Yet, Lormel claimed there was no indication of suspicious trading. Why then were investigations launched by over a dozen nations and 8 or 9 U.S. government agencies, exchanges and commissions? How does one account for supporting comments of the traders and analysts with years of hands-on experience in the markets?
Lormel’s testimony, coming from an official charged with tracking down, and starving terrorists of funding to protect Americans does little to inspire confidence; especially in the wake of the worst intelligence failure in US history. On the contrary, such remarks only raise very uncomfortable suspicions and legitimate concern that the forces behind walls of financial secrecy are so powerful as to thwart or intimidate the highest echelon of those responsible for executing our nation’s war on terrorism. Or on drug trafficking. Or on Enronomic tax evasion and corporate fraud for that matter.
The obvious challenge for authorities is to put these suspicions to rest and follow the money trail to those complicit in the attacks. To do so, requires investigators to break through the veils of bank secrecy in offshore tax havens that may protect terrorists and Enron profiteers alike. Unfortunately, thanks to the Bush Administrations withdrawal from last year’s FATF efforts, investigators may be having difficulty in doing so. And once again, the trail may have gone cold. And yet it is not unreasonable to expect that given such a matter of national security, Congress and the authorities would pull out ALL the stops. They would act quickly to force financial entities to divulge the names of those who placed the trades in question.
Surely, ‘the most powerful nation in the world’ can apply enough pressure on non-cooperating financial jurisdictions to force them to reveal the identities of terrorists who could attack again at any moment. The reality of the threat of more attacks precludes the use of past excuses and inaction. The Cayman Islands, Nauru, indeed most offshore havens lack standing armies. While it may be perhaps ‘the hardest of nuts to crack,’ the urgency and justification demands we do whatever is necessary to do so, at little risk to our nation’s armed forces.
A real war on terrorism would lead to seizures of billions not millions. Nothing close to this level has yet occurred and the investigation has yielded little in five months. According to a statement by Representative LaFalce on the Congressional Record, the Treasury Department, as of late January had failed to exercise, even once, their new powers to pressure non-cooperating overseas and offshore financial facilities. Investigators into pre-attack trading have not implicated a single insider, terrorist or otherwise. UN efforts are creeping along ineffectively with many nations failing to fully cooperate or not cooperate at all, as divulged to the press by American UN Ambassador Negroponte at a February event aired on C-SPAN. There is a distressing and suspicious pattern here. The administration’s will to pursue this matter is sorely lacking.
Another case in point: In December of 2000, the U.S. and Russia co-sponsored a UN Security Council resolution to freeze monies linked to designated terrorists. The list included five alleged close associates of Bin Laden–Amin al-Haq, Saqar al-Jadawi, Ahmad Sa’id Al-Kadr, Sa’d A-Sharif and Bilal bin Marwan. Inexplicably the U.S. Treasury did not officially place these five on the U.S. blacklist until October 12, 2001. Why the delay of ten months and who is responsible for it? Naturally, this case raises further suspicion, as it rightly should, regarding the intent and integrity of those charged with protecting our national interests and security.
Part III of the Making a Killing series will examine evidence of how NSA bungling, DoD accounting and Bush Administration stonewalling could be compromising our national security, the investigation into 9-11 and our very Constitutional foundation.
Copyright © K. Hence 2002. Reprinted for fair use only
UQ Wire: Investment Espionage And The White House
Tuesday, 16 July 2002, 11:19 pm
Article: www.UnansweredQuestions.org
Unanswered Questions: Thinking For Ourselves
Presented by… http://www.unansweredquestions.org/
Investment Espionage And The White House
Bush Administration Links To Pre-9/11 Insider Trading
by Tom Flocco *
Tuesday, July 16, 2002
There is growing evidence that the FBI and other government intelligence entities are more closely linked to the documented accumulation of pre-9/11 insider trading profits than was originally thought. But thus far the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee has not publicly referred to prior knowledge of the attacks as it relates to stock transaction profits, while also failing after nine months to publicize the critical Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “control list” report tracing what in effect were stock trading profits of death.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spokesman Tom Crispell denied that the CIA was monitoring “real-time,” pre-September 11 stock trading activity within U.S. borders using such software as the Prosecutor’s Management Information System (PROMIS) or the Echelon satellite monitoring system. However, when asked whether the CIA had been scrutinizing world financial markets for national security purposes, Crispell replied, “I have no way of knowing what operations are [being affected by our assets] outside the country.” Given 3,000 deaths, victim family lawyers may want to know.
CIA AND 9/11 INVESTMENT ESPIONAGE?
A January 23, 2002 Houston Chronicle report revealed that Enron Corporation’s top security team, including four former CIA officers and an ex-FBI agent left the company to form a private firm, Secure Solutions International (SSI), while continuing with Enron via a consulting contract. John W. Presley, the FBI agent now heading SSI could not be reached for comment. But the team probed a “variety of allegations of fraud and other kinds of rule-breaking by Enron workers,” according to the Chronicle.
Team member and former CIA agent David M. Cromley’s business biography at Enron listed him as Enron’s director of business analysis, the Chronicle reported, adding that Cromley gave Enron executives “detailed and unique information” allowing them to make “investments, sales of assets, joint ventures and [financial] products.”
But no public information has been forthcoming as to whether such “detailed and unique information” or sensitive CIA software was used in conjunction with Enron’s controversial off-shore investment products, or whether their missing assets may have been employed in what former German Minister of Technology, Andreas von Bulow, estimated at $15 billion in insider trading profits. (Tagesspiegel, Berlin, 1-13-2002) Von Bulow then buttressed his astounding charges: “26 intelligence services in the U.S. with a budget of $30 billion….For 60 decisive minutes, the military and intelligence let fighter jets stay on the ground….48 hours later, however, the FBI presented a list of suicide hijackers. But within ten days, it emerged that seven of them were still alive.”
An examination of SSI’s website reveals that its corporate members have “managed cutting-edge counterterrorism and counterproliferation operations for the CIA, implemented advanced technical information and security programs for the CIA, and conducted a wide range of investigations for the FBI,” while also “overseeing all security arrangements for several large gas pipeline companies.”
It is yet to be determined if Congress will publicly question CIA Director George Tenent as to whether CIA and FBI employees were “loaned” to Enron’s corporate espionage program, involved in personal pre-9/11 insider trading, or merely relaying sensitive insider political information to others involved in prior knowledge of the attacks. However, victim family lawyers will likely be forced to subpoena government documents and officials to effectively prosecute any negligence claims against government entities.
The fraud-racked Enron Corporation has had at least 20 CIA agents on the payroll in the last eight years. But while the Houston Chronicle reported the operatives as “former” CIA, a February 26, 2002 National Enquirer story quoted a top Washington insider familiar with several secret investigations into Enron, as reporting that they were given “leaves of absence without pay and put on the Enron payroll.”
The source added that Enron’s CIA members used “info gleaned from a satellite project called ‘Echelon,’ which intercepted emails, phone calls and faxes with detailed business information,” adding that “pure and simple, [taxpayer-funded] U.S. intelligence agents were involved in corporate espionage.” Another Enquirer source with ties to the CIA revealed that “the cozy deal between Enron and the CIA allowed the ‘on-loan’ undercover operatives to return to the Agency’s payroll before Enron’s collapse.”
Known CIA links traverse a curious variety of unexamined threads in the U.S. financial community. Online Journal’s Larry Chin (2-1-2002), reminded that [mega-money conglomerate] “Citigroup has repeatedly been charged with money laundering. This, as it’s Board of Directors includes John Deutch, former CIA Director, Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary and intimate friend of Enron’s Ken Lay, but also former CIA Executive Director Nora Slatkin.”
Even Congress has a close CIA link. Senate Joint Intelligence Co-Chairman Bob Graham and his House Intelligence Co-Chairman and former CIA operative Porter Goss were meeting with the Chief of the Pakistani Intelligence Service on the morning of the Sept.11 attacks, according to published reports. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in that room.
SENATE AND HOUSE LINKS TO TERRORISTS
Worrisome reports link two intelligence leaders in the Senate and House directly to the leader of Pakistan’s intelligence arm, The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and indirectly to the leader of the 9/11 Hijackers.
A Times of India (10-12-2001) story by Manoj Joshi revealed that Pakistani ISA Director-General Lt. General Mahmud Ahmad sought retirement after the U.S. attacks — confirmed by top sources in India, because of evidence produced by India showing his links to Mohammed Atta, the terrorist hijacking leader.
The Times said that “U.S. authorities sought his [Ahmad’s] removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 was wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh on the instructions of ISI Lt. General Ahmad.” Senior [U.S.] government sources “have confirmed that India contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed ISI chief.”
The Times added that “while they did not provide details, they said that Indian inputs, including Sheikh’s mobile phone number, helped the FBI in tracing and establishing the link.”
Serious questions remain, however, as Senate Joint Intelligence Co-Chairman Bob Graham (D-FL) and his House Intelligence Co-Chairman and former CIA operative Porter Goss (R-FL) were meeting with ISI Chief, Lt. General Mahmud Ahmad, on the very morning of the September 11 attacks, according to published reports. (New York Times, 2-17-2002 & MSNBC-TV, 10-7-2001).
Since Graham and Goss are Co-Chairmen of the Joint-Intelligence Committee investigating the 9/11 attacks, difficulties could arise when the Congressional Open Intelligence Hearings commence in mid-September, and whether other Members will have the courage to seek testimony from the Chairmen of their own Committee, regarding their questionable links to the U.S. terrorism.
Thus far, Graham and Goss will have been able to postpone open hearings for over one year, as they are currently scheduled to start near the end of September. Moreover, devastated and grieving 9/11 victim families have been unable to hold Congress accountable to seek justice, while hearings have continued behind closed doors in a sound-proof room at the Capitol.
Other members of the Joint Intelligence Committee could be placed in the uncomfortable position of having to call Graham and Goss to testify as to why they were meeting — on the morning of the attacks — with the Pakistani ISI Chief, who was having money wired into the United States to support the efforts of the leader of the terrorist hijackers while the attacks were in progress!
Other Committee Members would likely be interested in what was said at the meeting with Lt. Gen. Ahmad, and more about his relationship with Graham and Goss, given Ahmad’s links to Mohammed Atta.
These and other growing connections indicating prior knowledge of the attacks also make a case for how the profits of death were accumulated by insider trading via the United States Stock Market. This, while the SEC will not release its “Control List” of suspicious stock trades involving companies and airlines directly related to the attacks.
FBI AGENTS INDICTED IN 9/11-LINKED STOCK SCHEME
On the heels of alleged CIA involvement in public stock trading and use of sensitive prior knowledge of last fall’s attacks, 13 days ago on May 22, FBI agents Jeffrey A. Royer and Lynn Wingate were charged with racketeering conspiracy, securities fraud, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. Royer was also charged with extortion, according to an examination of an unsealed federal indictment: United States vs. Elgindy, Royer, Wingate, Cleveland, and Peters, filed in New York District Court by Alan Vinegard, United States Attorney — all of which clouds either open or secret congressional probes of pre-attack insider trading profits.
Vinegard’s news release said “the allegations reveal a shocking partnership between an experienced stock manipulator and law enforcement agents, undertaken for their illicit personal financial gain.” Moreover, Royer and Wingate allegedly used the FBI’s Automated Case Support database to actually monitor the investigation, passing confidential information about the investigations of companies to participants in a stock manipulation scheme, according to the Washington Post. (5-23-2002)
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Breen said stock advisor Amr Ibrahim Elgindy, charged in the indictment, called his Salomon Smith Barney broker, trying to sell $300,000 in stock from his children’s trust funds on the afternoon of Sept.10. During the conversation, Elgindy “predicted that the Dow Jones industrial average, which at the time stood at about 9,600, would soon crash to below 3,000,” according to the New York Times, (5-25-2002), thus begging the question whether Congress will publicly disclose other indications of alleged CIA or FBI complicity in prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
NSA DESTROYING 9/11 DATA ON AMERICANS AND U.S. COMPANIES
Two individuals with close intelligence ties told the Boston Globe (10-27-2001) that since September 11, the super secret National Security Agency (NSA), acting on the advice of their lawyers, have been destroying data collected on American citizens and corporations,
angering other intelligence agencies seeking leads in the anti-terrorist probe. Two calls by American Free Press to Joint-Congressional Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, Senator Richard Shelby, to confirm details revealed by the sources were unreturned.
Since the October Globe report, no other media outlet has examined the heated discussions with the CIA and intelligence committee staff members, as NSA lawyers turned down requests to preserve the intelligence because regulations prohibit data collecting on Americans, inviting lawsuits, according to the two former senior U.S. officials. However, Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA Director of Counter-terrorism, told Scoop Media that “the law allows [intelligence officials] exceptions in certain circumstances.” Both the CIA and FBI had declined comment.
Cannistraro added that “If American citizens are believed to be involved in some way in a foreign intelligence operation that could lead to terrorism against this country, I believe the NSA is required to save or maintain the information.” When asked about the NSA and the 9/11 attacks, the former CIA official told Scoop. “In this case, I believe they should have saved the surveillance data.” Congress has been tight-lipped, and government investigators are extremely frustrated that many possible leads stemming from the Sept.11 attack were not being followed because of the NSA position.
RELEASING THE SEC “CONTROL” LIST
According to the San Francisco Chronicle (10-19-01), the SEC privately asked North American securities firms to participate in an information-sharing system to trace “large numbers of trades in securities of companies [directly] affected by the attacks. Curiously, however, the SEC asked companies “to designate senior personnel who appreciate ‘the sensitive nature’ of the case [pre-attack insider trading], and can be relied upon to ‘exercise appropriate discretion,’ as ‘point’ people linking government investigators and the [securities] industry.” Then the SEC asked for the names, titles, phone numbers and e-mail of the designated senior personnel, according to reporter Scott Winokur.
On October 2, 2001, Canadian securities officials confirmed that the SEC had asked firms to review records for 38 companies, suggesting that some buyers and sellers might have had advance knowledge of the attacks, according to Winokur. A Scoop examination of the Center for Public Integrity’s financial records of the top 100 Bush Administration officials reveals ownership of millions of dollars in these 38 stocks which would not be different from any other wealthy American.
However, Congress has thus far refused to make public what the Chronicle reported as an SEC “control list” containing confidential information about transactions, individuals, relationships, and entities identified by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in the probe. The existence of the SEC list would still be a secret if not for an accidental leak via the Canadian securities officials.
There is as yet no reporting regarding whether the “entities” were SPE’s linked to Enron. The SEC added, “Because the control list contains confidential information, we ask that you disseminate it within your institution only on a need-to-know basis.” But Congress or the Courts may ultimately decide whether the families of Sept.11 also need to know the identities of individuals with prior knowledge — allegedly involved in the profits of death.
The Wall Street Journal (10-2-2002) reported that the Secret Service was also probing an unusually high volume of five-year U.S. Treasury note purchases made prior to the attacks — one purchase included a single $5 billion trade. The Journal called Treasury notes among the best investments in the event of a world crisis, with their value having risen substantially since September 11. Moreover, the Associated Press reported that a German Central Bank study strongly pointed to “terrorism insider trading” not only in airline and insurance companies but also in gold and oil futures. Will Congress chalk it up to coincidence?
DEUTSCHEBANK & MAYER, BROWN & PLATT
The evidence linking Deutschebank to the terrorists and insider trading is clearly quite extraordinary: 1) The lead hijacker pilot and two accomplices had bank accounts at its Hamburg branch, 2) One of its unnamed private investors never claimed $2.5 million in United Airlines put option contract profits following the attacks, 3) Its global “private banking” chief Mayo Shattuck III, resigned the day following the attacks in the middle of a three-year $40 million contract, 4) It hired away SEC enforcement and investigation chief Richard Walker just 20 days after the attacks, 5) Its recent senior investment banker Kevin Ingram pled guilty to money laundering involving Stinger missiles and multiple varieties of arms sales to Pakistani and Egyptian citizens just 14 days prior to Sept.11, and 6) Deutschebank was heavily involved in the 9/11 insider trading but Congress has not questioned former Alex (A.B.) Brown division head A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard — appointed by George Bush as Executive Director (number three) of the CIA — regarding intelligence and “real-time” stock trade monitoring.
[note: all evidence in the above paragraph is sourced in the “Profits of Death” series on pre-9/11 criminal insider trading, Parts I, II, III, at www.copvcia.com — Sept. 11 Section]
European reporters found that most of the suspicious pre-attack trades passed through Deutschebank and especially via CIA Executive Director A.B. Krongard’s former Alex Brown investment division by means of a procedure called portage, which assures the anonymity of individuals making the transactions. But Congress has not publicly revealed whether they will call Krongard and other Alex Brown traders to testify in open hearings, or whether they will subpoena the pre-attack documents in question.
CFO.com, an online site for corporate executives, revealed on 1-28-2002 that Deutschebank was a limited partner in either the controversial Enron special purpose entities (SPEs), LJM or Chewco — those off balance sheets and off-shore products heavily involved in Enron’s demise, and run by Enron CFO Andrew Fastow. This begs the question as to whether Congress or the Courts will determine whether missing funds from Enron were possibly part of a scheme to develop funds to profit from the air attacks — given the many interwoven ties between Enron and Deutschebank.
CFO.com also revealed that a former Enron employee prepared an SEC filing, having deleted Deutschebank’s name from LJM version sent to the SEC. But curiously, “that deletion was made at the behest of William McLucas, former SEC enforcement director, hired by Enron after the attacks on October 31. The former employee also claims to have received instructions to destroy the draft of the SEC filing. But not a public word from Congress.
IS JOHN P. SCHMITZ A KEY PLAYER?
John P. Schmitz, George H.W. Bush’s former Deputy Counsel during the Elder’s Vice-Presidency and Presidency, will likely be a key player if Americans force Congress to become serious about its 9/11 probe. Some may remember Schmitz from the Iran/contra investigation, when the Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC) reported that each witness interviewed regarding document production complied except for Schmitz, who asserted that his documents were privileged work product.
Schmitz, fluent in German and a Partner in global-law firm Mayer, Brown & Platt, has clients that include Bayer AG (German maker of the antibiotic Cipro which fights Anthrax, about which Larry Klayman and Judicial Watch (JW) will have keen interest. Recently, JW filed suit seeking the Administration’s anthrax documents to ascertain why the White House starting taking heavy doses of Cipro the day of the attacks — nearly a month before anthrax was even discovered on Capitol Hill, and while postal workers continued to sort mail in contaminated offices — some dying in the process.
But John Schmitz’s Mayer-Brown profile also reveals that he represents Enron, adding that “we were active in Germany [with Enron] until the end….It [bankruptcy] surprised me as well as anyone else,” according to Reuters (1-4-2002). Moreover, Mayer-Brown also represents Deutschebank on a regular basis regarding its electronic commerce activities; and curiously, Schmitz’s law firm maintains an office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan along with Enron — if only to make sure oil is well in the Caspian Sea basin.
Even many 9/11 victim families will even come to recognize Mayer-Brown; for conveniently, the firm also happens to represent United Airlines against 9/11 family lawyers Mary Schiavo and Donald Nolan. And given partner John P. Schmitz’s close former relationships with the Bush family, Mayer-Brown’s many water coolers may become intriguing conduits when Miss Schiavo and Mr. Nolan begin their respective legal discovery initiatives regarding who will be subpoenaed or deposed and what evidence is or is not revealed.
SOFT OR AGGRESSIVE INVESTIGATION?
In an interview with Scoop Media, former Washington, DC United States Attorney Joseph de Genova took a hard line, saying “If the Congress does not want to get answers to these critical questions regarding who profited [from prior knowledge of the attacks], then it needs to be litigated.” And asked whether Americans have a right to know who sold large blocks of stock shares in companies and airlines directly affected by the attacks or purchased billions in ultra-safe Treasury notes directly prior to 9/11, de Genova added, “I believe someone will litigate the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) issue related to the Ashcroft memo, if government agencies keep obstructing the media — the sooner, the better.”
While thousands of American families, victimized by terrorism, still remain numb with grief, information is being advanced daily regarding what could be described by some as casual, if not negligent, long-term slipshod governmental responsiveness to fundamental internal national security and safety questions — or worse. But even if they come out of their secret, sound-proof Capitol bunker into the light of open hearings, questions still remain as to whether they have the courage to forcefully seek answers to the real unanswered questions.
Yes, we’ve come a long way from those pre-attack United and American Airline put and call ratio arguments about “lucky bets”– for the evidence regarding profits of death is intriguing. This is real serious stuff. But curiously, both the President and Vice-President have lobbied mightily for only one joint investigative committee instead of multiple and bicameral, Enron-style hearings. Maybe we’ll get a stacked-deck, wink-and-a-nod, “blue ribbon” panel. Only time will tell. But as the First Lady always reminds us: “Don’t worry. Just tell your children they’re safe.”
© Copyright by Thomas Flocco.
6/18/2005 | 7:16 pm
9.
Richard M
BG, in the future, would you please use links to the reference material? I completely lost interest in your comment when I found out how long it was.
6/18/2005 | 8:22 pm
10.
Gerry
bg-
I highly recommend the Democratic Party put you front and center in their coming election campaigns.
And if the Dems won’t put you in front of them, I suggest the Republicans put you in front of the Dems.
Someone please give him a bigger megaphone, please? And a big ol’ DNC nametag?
6/18/2005 | 8:35 pm
11.
Indy Voter
Funny, there’s only a 4-word response over on BG’s site…
6/18/2005 | 8:52 pm
12.
Gerry
I just popped his cherry, becoming the first person (as far as I can tell) to post a comment on his blog.
One of the reasons I started this blog was to make new friends…
6/18/2005 | 8:56 pm
13.
Indy Voter
The guy makes a huge number of posts. Of course, only a few of them contain any original content or direct commentary.
6/18/2005 | 9:04 pm
14.
Justin
what does origional content have to do with anything? you guys should pull your head out of your ass and read his post. It looks like direct commentary to me. The fact of the matter is none of you are capable of attacking its content so instead you attack the person, its a pattern developing on this site. Pathetic.
6/22/2005 | 10:14 am
15.
Richard M
Justin, what exactly are you talking about? Are you talking about the theories being floated that 9/11 was known by several people, who “just happened” to not be present when the planes hit? If those theories appeal to you, I have an uncle who gave me some information showing that the buildings didn’t collapse from being struck by the planes, but by the nuclear bombs planted in the basement that were detonated. IIRC, he pointed out that the jet fuel burns at a temperature much lower than the melting point of the steel supports, so the fuel burning couldn’t generate enough heat to weaken the supports.
6/22/2005 | 10:24 am
When Does A Problem Become Too Big To Ignore
Posted on Friday 17 June 2005
Dana Milbank:
The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration “neocons” so “the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world.” He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
“Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation,” McGovern said. “The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic.”
Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq’s threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his “candid answer.”
Lest it be dismissed as just a bizarre exchange between a known kook and an unknown kook,
At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations — that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an “insider trading scam” on 9/11 — that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.
Eventually, one of two things is going to happen. Either Democrat voters will eventually tire of pretending this faction of their party does not exist and will either try to cast them out or will leave the party themselves, or the rest of the country will completely turn away from them.
Faster, please. To any of these outcomes.
Addendum: By the way, it is not only about Iraq that McGovern has some curious views, and it is not just some activists at the Democratic headquarters who were pushing some bizarre 9/11 theories. McGovern has long been a staple of “911Truth.org”, including being part of a panel entitled “Reframing 9/11″. I also love this press release:
The events have been linked up at www.911truth.org
Cynthia McKinney was the first to raise historic questions about 9/11 from the floor of U.S. Congress, asking what the Bush administration may have known in advance about the attacks and when, and calling for investigation. She was misquoted, misrepresented and finally driven out of Congress, yet vindicated by a number of revelations that the administration had advance knowledge. She will be speaking in the heart of Berlin, Germany on September 5th & 7th.
She will be accompanied by Mike Ruppert - the man who started the original 9/11 timeline and who has made a career of exposing official corruption. This is their first public appearance together. On the 7th, they will be joined at the Tempodrom arena by writers from Britain, Italy and Germany, including Nafeez Ahmed, author of the groundbreaking 9/11 research work The War on Freedom and Daniel Hopsicker, who has broken a number of key stories about the alleged 9/11 hijackers.
McKinney and Ruppert will join former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Dr. Faiz Kahn, John Judge and others for a forum about 9/11 at the Riverside Church in New York City on Thursday, September 11th. That event will screen the Guerrilla News Network documentary “AfterMath - Unanswered Questions from 9/11″ and other short documentaries, including Barry Zwicker’s “The Great Deception.” The event is sponsored by Pacifica radio’s WBAI in New York.
This is who House Democrats want to bring forward? And do rank and file Democratic voters really want to tolerate this from their party?
Update 2: Should I be surprised that the New York Times reporting on this does not mention anything about the background of this “witness”?
Update 3: Oh, lucky day! I was able to find a fawning review of that forum with McGovern and McKinney and others:
The main event was a panel of experts including McKinney, retired veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern, veteran activist and researcher John Judge, Schechter, and me. It was not important that each of us agreed totally with the analyses and work of the others. No one was asked, nor expected, to compromise their positions and the event made no attempt to forge a perfect consensus. To have done that would have been to destroy the perfection of the consensus that already existed. What had brought us there together was a shared belief and commitment that the government of the United States was totally out of control and that it had, in just three years, brought the nation and the planet itself to the brink of disintegration and chaos…
McGovern went further than ever when he spoke about the administration’s exploitation of 9/11. While not saying outright that the administration knew about the attacks and allowed them to happen, even facilitating them, he implied it. The administration has a lot to hide, he said. He went on to say that Dick Cheney had a lot of chutzpah to show up at the Riverside Church calling him a “Meister of cover up and pointing out that he had turned the FBI loose to intimidate and silence the congressional committees charged with FBI oversight. He labeled the explanation that incompetence within the government had allowed the attacks to succeed as “charitable.”
Update 4: Courtesy of the same people who helped bring you the McKinney/McGovern 9/11 forum, we have audio of the hearings.
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15 Comments for 'When Does A Problem Become Too Big To Ignore'
1.
TSB
[TSB– Gerry here. Please limit your comments to the thread at hand. If you have something unrelated that you wish to comment on, then make those comments to the “Thread o’ the Day”. That is what it is for. I have moved your comment which was completely unrelated to this topic over to it. Thanks]
6/17/2005 | 12:57 pm
2.
Paul Brewer
Gerry: I’m guessing that you’ll agree with me that I took a step up when I went from being represented by Moran to being represented by Gwen Moore (who also has the virtue of not having been in an altercation with a child).
6/17/2005 | 3:23 pm
3.
Gerry
Paul,
You definitely took a step up!
6/17/2005 | 3:37 pm
4.
The Lizard King
With all these great people appearing I have to ask:
Where’s Tito?
I thought that everyone knew that nobody actually died on 9/11…they’re all being held in the underground buildings surrounding the new Denver Int’l Airport…whose runways approximate a swastika. Rumor has it that the facility is going to become a “central processing center” when the New World Order takes over.
Seriously, that’s a theory that some of these crackpots have come up with….
6/17/2005 | 3:44 pm
5.
phil
Alleged 9/11 hijackers my ass!
6/17/2005 | 3:47 pm
6.
Chris
Did you see the interview that Linda Vester had with Sheila Jackson Lee on “Day Side” today? It was amazing. They were talking about Senator Durbin’s comments about Guantanamo Bay and whether they were unwise. Jackson Lee started talking on a different subject and wouldn’t stop even when Linda tried to get her back on topic. Linda correctly quipped that it appeared to be a filibuster. And then later, Jackson Lee said she would appreciate it if Linda wouldn’t interupt her anymore. Dear Lord that was hilarious and typical.
6/17/2005 | 5:54 pm
7.
dsm
Ah, that takes me back a couple of years… back to this quote from Moran: “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.” He apologized for saying that, so now, it seems, he’s getting people to play act that sentiment for him. Unbelievable.
6/18/2005 | 1:28 am
8.
BG
Let me comment on the “kooky” 911 theories:
1) Odigo Paging, an Israeli Owned Company, had several employees to tath received paging messages on their pagers warming them not to go in on 09/11/2001.
“September 11, 2001: In Israel, two employees of Odigo, Inc., an Israeli paging company, receive warnings of an imminent attack on the WTC around two hours before the first plane hits the WTC. Odigo has its headquarters two blocks from the WTC. Israeli security and the FBI are notified immediately after the 9/11 attacks begin. The two employees claim not to know who sent the warnings. The company suggests the warning may have been sent to a larger audience.”
2) Whether the money trail leads to Israel, there was in fact clear patterns of trading before 09/11/2001 that show foreknowledge of the events. The 911 “coverup” commission chose not to investigate, and not other agency of US Govt’ have publicly release any documentation of follow on the trail.
“September 10, 2001: Amr Elgindy, a notorious inside trader on the financial markets, orders his broker to liquidate his children’s $300,000 trust account fearing a sudden crash in the market the next day. He tells his stock broker that the Dow Jones average, then at 9,600, will fall to below 3,000. Elgindy is later arrested along with two FBI agents. Government prosecutors claim the FBI agents were using their FBI positions to feed him inside information on various corporations. They also claim Elgindy had foreknowledge about the 9/11 attacks.”
“August 6, 2001-September 11, 2001: Inside trading based on advanced knowledge of the 9/11 attacks between August 6, if not earlier, and the day of the attack later lead to investigations around the world. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) later announces that they are investigating the trading of shares of 38 companies in the days just before 9/11. Both the SEC and the Secret Service announce probes into an unusually high volume trade of five-year US Treasury note purchases (considered good investments in a world crisis) around this time. These transactions included a single $5 billion trade. German central bank president Ernst Welteke later says his researchers have found “almost irrefutable proof of insider trading,” not only in shares of heavily affected industries such as airlines and insurance companies, but also in gold and oil. Unusual stock transactions of Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, is also noted by German investigators. US investigators reports that salvaged computers from within the WTC show that over $100 million was rushed through computers even as the disaster unfolded. Investigators say, “There is a suspicion that some people had advance knowledge of the approximate time of the plane crashes… [and] thought that the records of their transactions could not be traced after the main frames were destroyed.” There are ongoing investigations in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monte Carlo, Cyprus, Japan, Italy, Britain and other countries. Apparently all of these investigations are still continuing, except one in Britain which found no evidence of inside trading.”
Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIA’s Highest Ranks
CIA Executive Director “Buzzy” Krongard managed firm that handled “PUT” options on United Airline Stock
by Michael C. Ruppert
FTW - October 9, 2001 – Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the case of at least one of these trades — which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed — the firm used to place the “put options” on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Until 1997 A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker’s Trust in 1997. Krongard then became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker’s Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected to money laundering. Krongard’s last position at Banker’s Trust (BT) was to oversee “private client relations.” In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being closely connected to the laundering of drug money.
Krongard joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush in March of this year. BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999. The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe. And, as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.
THE SCOPE OF KNOWN INSIDER TRADING
Before looking further into these relationships it is necessary to look at the insider trading information that is being ignored by Reuters, The New York Times and other mass media. It is well documented that the CIA has long monitored such trades – in real time – as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves contrary to U.S. interests. Previous stories in FTW have specifically highlighted the use of Promis software to monitor such trades.
It is necessary to understand only two key financial terms to understand the significance of these trades, “selling short” and “put options”.
“Selling Short” is the borrowing of stock, selling it at current market prices, but not being required to actually produce the stock for some time. If the stock falls precipitously after the short contract is entered, the seller can then fulfill the contract by buying the stock after the price has fallen and complete the contract at the pre-crash price. These contracts often have a window of as long as four months.
“Put Options,” are contracts giving the buyer the option to sell stocks at a later date. Purchased at nominal prices of, for example, $1.00 per share, they are sold in blocks of 100 shares. If exercised, they give the holder the option of selling selected stocks at a future date at a price set when the contract is issued. Thus, for an investment of $10,000 it might be possible to tie up 10,000 shares of United or American Airlines at $100 per share, and the seller of the option is then obligated to buy them if the option is executed. If the stock has fallen to $50 when the contract matures, the holder of the option can purchase the shares for $50 and immediately sell them for $100 – regardless of where the market then stands. A call option is the reverse of a put option, which is, in effect, a derivatives bet that the stock price will go up.
A September 21 story by the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, entitled “Black Tuesday: The World’s Largest Insider Trading Scam?” documented the following trades connected to the September 11 attacks:
- Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options… Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these “insiders” would have profited by almost $5 million.
- On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was no news at that point to justify this imbalance;… Again, assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent “insiders,” they would represent a gain of about $4 million.
- [The levels of put options purchased above were more than six times higher than normal.]
- No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.
- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanley’s share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at least $1.2 million. Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw 12,215 October $45 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares had been 252 contracts per day [a 1200% increase!]. When trading resumed, Merrill’s shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50; assuming that 11,000 option contracts were bought by “insiders,” their profit would have been about $5.5 million.
- European regulators are examining trades in Germany’s Munich Re, Switzerland’s Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster. [FTW Note: AXA also owns more than 25% of American Airlines stock making the attacks a “double whammy” for them.]
On September 29, 2001 – in a vital story that has gone unnoticed by the major media – the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades and market data.
“The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors – whose identities and nationalities have not been made public – had advance knowledge of the strikes.” They don’t dare show up now. The suspension of trading for four days after the attacks made it impossible to cash-out quickly and claim the prize before investigators started looking.
“… October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each. [This represents 230,000 shares]. Those options are now selling at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called “put” options outstanding [valued at $2.77 million and representing 231,300 shares] according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp.”
“…The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of these options…” This was the operation managed by Krongard until as recently as 1998.
As reported in other news stories, Deutsche Bank was also the hub of insider trading activity connected to Munich Re. just before the attacks.
CIA, THE BANKS AND THE BROKERS
Understanding the interrelationships between CIA and the banking and brokerage world is critical to grasping the already frightening implications of the above revelations. Let’s look at the history of CIA, Wall Street and the big banks by looking at some of the key players in CIA’s history.
Clark Clifford – The National Security Act of 1947 was written by Clark Clifford, a Democratic Party powerhouse, former Secretary of Defense, and one-time advisor to President Harry Truman. In the 1980s, as Chairman of First American Bancshares, Clifford was instrumental in getting the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI a license to operate on American shores. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and banker.
John Foster and Allen Dulles – These two brothers “designed” the CIA for Clifford. Both were active in intelligence operations during WW II. Allen Dulles was the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland where he met frequently with Nazi leaders and looked after U.S. investments in Germany. John Foster went on to become Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower and Allen went on to serve as CIA Director under Eisenhower and was later fired by JFK. Their professions: partners in the most powerful - to this day - Wall Street law firm of Sullivan, Cromwell.
Bill Casey – Ronald Reagan’s CIA Director and OSS veteran who served as chief wrangler during the Iran-Contra years was, under President Richard Nixon, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and stockbroker.
David Doherty - The current Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange for enforcement is the retired General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency.
George Herbert Walker Bush – President from 1989 to January 1993, also served as CIA Director for 13 months from 1976-7. He is now a paid consultant to the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the nation, which also shares joint investments with the bin Laden family.
A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard – The current Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is the former Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown and former Vice Chairman of Banker’s Trust.
John Deutch - This retired CIA Director from the Clinton Administration currently sits on the board at Citigroup, the nation’s second largest bank, which has been repeatedly and overtly involved in the documented laundering of drug money. This includes Citigroup’s 2001 purchase of a Mexican bank known to launder drug money, Banamex.
Nora Slatkin – This retired CIA Executive Director also sits on Citibank’s board.
Maurice “Hank” Greenburg – The CEO of AIG insurance, manager of the third largest capital investment pool in the world, was floated as a possible CIA Director in 1995. FTW exposed Greenberg’s and AIG’s long connection to CIA drug trafficking and covert operations in a two-part series that was interrupted just prior to the attacks of September 11. AIG’s stock has bounced back remarkably well since the attacks. To read that story, please go to http://www.copvcia.com/stories/part_2.html.
One wonders how much damning evidence is necessary to respond to what is now irrefutable proof that CIA knew about the attacks and did not stop them. Whatever our government is doing, whatever the CIA is doing, it is clearly NOT in the interests of the American people, especially those who died on September 11.
[© COPYRIGHT, 2001, Michael C. Ruppert and FTW Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. – May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.
Massive pre-attack ‘insider trading’ offer authorities hottest trail to accomplices
by Kyle F. Hence
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca , 21 April 2002
CRG’s Global Outlook, premiere issue on “Stop the War” provides detailed documentation on the war and September 11 Order/subscribe. Consult Table of Contents
Part II — Billions in Pre-911 Insider Trading Profits Leaves a Hot Trail: How Bush Administration Naysayers May Have Let it go Cold
Part I of Making a Killing provided a glimpse of a shadowy, legitimized global financial network that is employed by criminals of all kinds to carry out or manage the profits from all manner of nefarious activity. It documented how the Bush Administration in 2001 undermined, stalled and withdrew from a global effort to clamp down on money laundering. We learned the indirect connection Enron had to intense lobbying efforts which ultimately swayed the Administration. And how following the attacks of 9-11, Bush changed his tune and working with allies in the war on terrorism, seized over $100 million linked to Al Qeada and other terrorist groups. Unfortunately, this is likely the tip of the iceberg of drug and terror money that is managed by the highest echelons of double-breasted gucci suited criminals.
In Part II, we will examine closely what is likely the largest, most globalized and heinous case of insider trading in economic history and how it offered authorities a hot money trail to follow. If successful in tracking the perpetrators, authorities would not only be successful in implicating obvious accomplices in the 9-11 attacks, but also would be able to strike deeply into the infrastructure of a shadow financial network and hundreds of billions of dollars that flow through it.
As of mid-March, authorities say they have frozen over $100 million in terrorist assets. But how to strike deeper to prevent future attacks? Some believe the answer lies at the end of the paper trail that investigators are following from huge insider trading placed on carefully selected stocks in the days leading up to 9-11.
According to Phil Erlanger, a former Senior Technical Analyst with Fidelity , and founder of a Florida firm that tracks short selling and options trading, insiders made off with billions (not mere millions) in profits by betting on the fall of stocks they knew would tumble in the aftermath of the WTC and Pentagon attacks. [http://www.erlangersqueezeplay.com ] Andreas von Bulow, a former member of the German Parliament, once responsible for the oversight of the German secret services, estimated that profits by insider traders were $15 billion. CBS offered a far more conservative figure when it reported (Sept 26) that “at least seven countries are dissecting suspicious trades that may have netted more than $100 million in profits.”
Regardless of estimates, to Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News, the evidence was compelling; “This is the worst case of insider trading ever.” [Good Morning Texas, Sept. 20, 2001] The sheer scope, size and the uncanny timing of 9-11 insider trading demanded an aggressive investigation. But the stakes involved, with nearly 3000 dead, have never been higher for financial crimes investigators.
Suspicious trading was first identified by Japanese authorities. But soon concerns were raised and a pattern could be discerned in countries around the world including Singapore, Hong Kong, Italy, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Germany and Canada. Jonathan Winer, an ABC News Consultant said “it’s absolutely unprecedented to see cases of insider trading covering the entire world from Japan to the US to North America to Europe.” [World News Tonight, Sept. 20, 2001] Investigators were soon hot on the trail on a matter of obvious national security to many nations.
Bloomberg News reported that Former chief of Enforcement at the SEC; William McLucas said regulators will “certainly be able to track down every trade, where the trade cleared, where the trade was directed from.” However, Treasury Secretary O’Neill downplayed hopes for a successful investigation by pointing out the challenge of penetrating veils of secrecy before a name can be attached to a suspicious trade; “You’ve got to go through ten veils before you get to the real source.” [AP; September 20, testimony before Senate Banking Committee] . Talk about lowering the bar of expectations; very unsettling coming from someone who could help bring to justice those guilty of the worst terrorist attack history–the massacre of thousands.
In the months since these comments, tightlipped authorities have revealed few details. Any questions put to those prosecuting the war on terrorist funding cannot be answered. The familiar refrain is heard; “our investigation is ongoing.” Though widely reported in September and October of last year, months have elapsed since the insider trading received attention. The unresolved crime of 9-11 insider trading is a dark cloud that hangs over this administration and its prosecution of the ‘war on terrorism.’ What is worse is that those who profited remain free to use those profits of death to finance their next attack.
For those who dismiss the whole phenomena, here’s what we do know thus far from reports from major newspapers and television news outlets around the globe. Taken separately any of the following details or comments is notable, but taken together and placed in context, the evidence of unprecedented profiteering by terrorists and/or those with prior knowledge is clearly undeniable.
Massive Put Options spikes and ‘Naked’ calls Bloomberg News reported that put options in UAL Corp (parent for United Airlines) surged 285 times the average volume and 75 times the total number of put options traded up until that time. This was the largest reported spike. In another observation of the same phenomena reported in the September 22nd Herald Sun, UAL put options contracts soared 90 times in one day over total from the previous three weeks. That’s 90x not 90%. On September 10, put option contracts on AMR (parent for American Airlines) spiked 60 times the daily average and five times the total of all $30 put options traded before September 10. [”Pre-attack trading probed: Regulators in U.S., Europe and Asia check put options”; Judy Mathewson and Michael Nol, September 19]
“I saw put-call numbers higher than I’ve ever seen in 10 years of following the markets, particularly the options markets,” said John Kinnucan, principal of Broadband Research quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle.
Bloomberg.com and Erlangersqeezeplay.com published reports identifying a clear pattern of highly unusual, and in some cases, massive spikes in put options in stocks that would have been deemed by those with detailed prior knowledge most likely hardest hit in the market aftermath of a WTC attack. These were primarily airline (UAL and AMR, notably not Delta), insurance, brokerage and hotel stocks. Phil Erlanger also noted a pattern of significant spikes in ‘naked calls’ in the same stocks. Naked calls are a high-risk form of short selling not backed up by stock position in the company at issue.
Thirty-eight companies were placed on a SEC list and circulated amongst brokerages that placed the put options on behalf of clients. These included among many others, TD Waterhouse, NFS (subsidiary of Fidelity of Boston), Alex Brown/Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers. [The San Francisco Chronicle; AP]. In the January 2002 Congressional record, an informal survey conducted by Levin-Grassley staffs, revealed that 10 of 22 responding securities and brokerage firms, managed accounts for 45,000 offshore clients.
Below are a few standouts on the SEC list [’ *’ indicates a WTC tenant; (-x) represents the multiple over average volume]: Airlines: UAL (285x), AMR (60x) Insurance sector: Marsh & McLennan (93x)*, Citigroup (45x), Swiss Re, XL Capital Brokers: Bear Stearns (60x), Morgan Stanley (27x)*, Merrill Lynch (12x)
Not included on the SEC list, but featured on the Erlangersqeezeplay.com report, were hotel chains Marriott, Hilton and Starwood Hotels. Most anomalous were the huge put option trading spikes placed in only two of the three major US airlines. Almost always, if investors believe the airline industry is due to drop, they will short all three major carriers. This was not the case here because Delta did not see spikes similar to UAL and AMR.
Analysts also noted that though the insurance sector was one of the strongest in a depressed stock market, there were huge spikes in put options in Marsh & McLennan and in Citigroup. Marsh & McLennan, the biggest insurance broker, was a World Trade Center tenant with 1,700 employees. It also saw, next to UAL, the highest spike in put options; thus you have a confluence of facts that, in the minds of many experienced traders and experts, amounts to unequivocal evidence of foul play. Clearly traders placed bets based on sure-fire insider prior knowledge. The odds against this happening randomly or coincidentally are astronomical; probably incalculable.
The put options, though they received the bulk of news coverage, were reportedly only one of several instruments used by the insiders. Suspicious trading in 5-year bonds and in oil and gold futures was also noted, and presumably investigated.
Oil and gold futures The Associated Press reported on September 22nd that a German Central Bank study strongly points to “terrorism insider trading” not only in airline and insurance companies but also in gold and oil futures. These he said, “could not be chalked up to coincidence.” Bundesbank President, Ernst Welteke, said that though it would be “extremely difficult to really verify” but he believed “in one or the other case it will be possible to pinpoint the source.”
Unusual high volume in pre-attack 5 year bond trading The Wall Street Journal reported on October 2 that the Secret Service had begun a probe into an unusually high volume of five-year US Treasury note purchases made prior to the attacks. The Treasury note transactions included a single $5 billion trade. The Journal noted that “Five-year Treasury notes are among the best investments in the event of a world crisis, especially one that hits the US. The notes are prized for their safety and their backing by the US government, and usually rally when investors flee riskier investments, such as stocks.” The value of these notes, the Journal pointed out, has risen sharply after the events of September 11.
‘Last hours’ surge of financial activity at WTC According to a Reuters report of December 16, German data retrieval experts, hired by WTC tenant firms, were mining data off damaged hard disks recovered from the ground zero. The goal is to discover who was responsible for the movement of unusually large sums of money through the computers of the WTC in the hours before the attack. Peter Henschel, director of Convar, the firm responsible, said, “not only the volume, but the size of the transactions was far higher than usual for a day like that.” Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert estimated that more than $100 million in illegal transactions appeared to have rushed through the WTC computers before and during the disaster.
The evidence and comments offered by traders, analysts, bankers and others in the immediate aftermath indicates there was, in fact, a carefully planned and sophisticated effort of massive profiteering from the precipitous fall of stocks that occurred when trading opened following the attack. This is expert documentation and observations based on years of experience. The implications are absolutely frightening. And all the more reason for authorities to pull out all the stops to identify and prosecute those responsible and shut down the global financial network facilitated the most heinous of crimes. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what’s happened.
‘Naysayers’ raise suspicions; Enron diverts attention from dire National security issue Months have passed since the launch of investigations by the SEC, NYSE, CBOE (Chicago Board of Options Exchange), Department of Justice, FBI, Secret Service, CIA, Department of Treasury, and the NSA. And yet there is no news, no suspects, no prosecutions, nothing. There are fears now that early ‘naysayers’ may have let a hot trail to go cold and allowed the terrorist insiders to cover their tracks. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the FBI’s Dennis Lormel said on October 3, 2001 before Congress that there were “no flags or indicators” referring to mere “rumors” about the pre-attack insider trading.
The Enron scandal, beginning in October, followed on the heels of the 9-11 attack and subsequent investigations into Enron began to divide and stretch the limited resources of the agencies and regulators involved. The media focus began to shift as well with six or eight Congressional committees holding hearings and providing all sorts of media drama. Congress began to look toward remedies to stave off a total crisis of confidence in our economic system, and justifiably so. Obviously, the largest bankruptcy in US history, affecting thousands of employees with 401k plans and millions of pensioners, merits serious attention. Ironically, it may lead them to crack down on the same infrastructure; employed by Enron’s Andrew Fastow and terrorist alike.
However, a case could be made that the focus on Enron has diverted attention away from a matter of far greater national security. The insiders, possibly the masterminds behind the suicide attacks, have walked away with huge profits for their sophisticated pre-attack trading; estimated by some to be in the billions of dollars. More to the point, they are now planning and financing their next attack with these 9-11 takings, as yet unmolested by a genuinely aggressive U.S. effort to shut them down.
In light of the weighty and compelling evidence, Lormel’s insistence there were “no flags or indicators” of possible terrorist insider trading, is blatantly wrong or worse, suspect. Most of the information above, including Bloomberg trading charts documenting massive put options spikes, was in the public domain prior to his testimony. Yet, Lormel claimed there was no indication of suspicious trading. Why then were investigations launched by over a dozen nations and 8 or 9 U.S. government agencies, exchanges and commissions? How does one account for supporting comments of the traders and analysts with years of hands-on experience in the markets?
Lormel’s testimony, coming from an official charged with tracking down, and starving terrorists of funding to protect Americans does little to inspire confidence; especially in the wake of the worst intelligence failure in US history. On the contrary, such remarks only raise very uncomfortable suspicions and legitimate concern that the forces behind walls of financial secrecy are so powerful as to thwart or intimidate the highest echelon of those responsible for executing our nation’s war on terrorism. Or on drug trafficking. Or on Enronomic tax evasion and corporate fraud for that matter.
The obvious challenge for authorities is to put these suspicions to rest and follow the money trail to those complicit in the attacks. To do so, requires investigators to break through the veils of bank secrecy in offshore tax havens that may protect terrorists and Enron profiteers alike. Unfortunately, thanks to the Bush Administrations withdrawal from last year’s FATF efforts, investigators may be having difficulty in doing so. And once again, the trail may have gone cold. And yet it is not unreasonable to expect that given such a matter of national security, Congress and the authorities would pull out ALL the stops. They would act quickly to force financial entities to divulge the names of those who placed the trades in question.
Surely, ‘the most powerful nation in the world’ can apply enough pressure on non-cooperating financial jurisdictions to force them to reveal the identities of terrorists who could attack again at any moment. The reality of the threat of more attacks precludes the use of past excuses and inaction. The Cayman Islands, Nauru, indeed most offshore havens lack standing armies. While it may be perhaps ‘the hardest of nuts to crack,’ the urgency and justification demands we do whatever is necessary to do so, at little risk to our nation’s armed forces.
A real war on terrorism would lead to seizures of billions not millions. Nothing close to this level has yet occurred and the investigation has yielded little in five months. According to a statement by Representative LaFalce on the Congressional Record, the Treasury Department, as of late January had failed to exercise, even once, their new powers to pressure non-cooperating overseas and offshore financial facilities. Investigators into pre-attack trading have not implicated a single insider, terrorist or otherwise. UN efforts are creeping along ineffectively with many nations failing to fully cooperate or not cooperate at all, as divulged to the press by American UN Ambassador Negroponte at a February event aired on C-SPAN. There is a distressing and suspicious pattern here. The administration’s will to pursue this matter is sorely lacking.
Another case in point: In December of 2000, the U.S. and Russia co-sponsored a UN Security Council resolution to freeze monies linked to designated terrorists. The list included five alleged close associates of Bin Laden–Amin al-Haq, Saqar al-Jadawi, Ahmad Sa’id Al-Kadr, Sa’d A-Sharif and Bilal bin Marwan. Inexplicably the U.S. Treasury did not officially place these five on the U.S. blacklist until October 12, 2001. Why the delay of ten months and who is responsible for it? Naturally, this case raises further suspicion, as it rightly should, regarding the intent and integrity of those charged with protecting our national interests and security.
Part III of the Making a Killing series will examine evidence of how NSA bungling, DoD accounting and Bush Administration stonewalling could be compromising our national security, the investigation into 9-11 and our very Constitutional foundation.
Copyright © K. Hence 2002. Reprinted for fair use only
UQ Wire: Investment Espionage And The White House
Tuesday, 16 July 2002, 11:19 pm
Article: www.UnansweredQuestions.org
Unanswered Questions: Thinking For Ourselves
Presented by… http://www.unansweredquestions.org/
Investment Espionage And The White House
Bush Administration Links To Pre-9/11 Insider Trading
by Tom Flocco *
Tuesday, July 16, 2002
There is growing evidence that the FBI and other government intelligence entities are more closely linked to the documented accumulation of pre-9/11 insider trading profits than was originally thought. But thus far the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee has not publicly referred to prior knowledge of the attacks as it relates to stock transaction profits, while also failing after nine months to publicize the critical Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “control list” report tracing what in effect were stock trading profits of death.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spokesman Tom Crispell denied that the CIA was monitoring “real-time,” pre-September 11 stock trading activity within U.S. borders using such software as the Prosecutor’s Management Information System (PROMIS) or the Echelon satellite monitoring system. However, when asked whether the CIA had been scrutinizing world financial markets for national security purposes, Crispell replied, “I have no way of knowing what operations are [being affected by our assets] outside the country.” Given 3,000 deaths, victim family lawyers may want to know.
CIA AND 9/11 INVESTMENT ESPIONAGE?
A January 23, 2002 Houston Chronicle report revealed that Enron Corporation’s top security team, including four former CIA officers and an ex-FBI agent left the company to form a private firm, Secure Solutions International (SSI), while continuing with Enron via a consulting contract. John W. Presley, the FBI agent now heading SSI could not be reached for comment. But the team probed a “variety of allegations of fraud and other kinds of rule-breaking by Enron workers,” according to the Chronicle.
Team member and former CIA agent David M. Cromley’s business biography at Enron listed him as Enron’s director of business analysis, the Chronicle reported, adding that Cromley gave Enron executives “detailed and unique information” allowing them to make “investments, sales of assets, joint ventures and [financial] products.”
But no public information has been forthcoming as to whether such “detailed and unique information” or sensitive CIA software was used in conjunction with Enron’s controversial off-shore investment products, or whether their missing assets may have been employed in what former German Minister of Technology, Andreas von Bulow, estimated at $15 billion in insider trading profits. (Tagesspiegel, Berlin, 1-13-2002) Von Bulow then buttressed his astounding charges: “26 intelligence services in the U.S. with a budget of $30 billion….For 60 decisive minutes, the military and intelligence let fighter jets stay on the ground….48 hours later, however, the FBI presented a list of suicide hijackers. But within ten days, it emerged that seven of them were still alive.”
An examination of SSI’s website reveals that its corporate members have “managed cutting-edge counterterrorism and counterproliferation operations for the CIA, implemented advanced technical information and security programs for the CIA, and conducted a wide range of investigations for the FBI,” while also “overseeing all security arrangements for several large gas pipeline companies.”
It is yet to be determined if Congress will publicly question CIA Director George Tenent as to whether CIA and FBI employees were “loaned” to Enron’s corporate espionage program, involved in personal pre-9/11 insider trading, or merely relaying sensitive insider political information to others involved in prior knowledge of the attacks. However, victim family lawyers will likely be forced to subpoena government documents and officials to effectively prosecute any negligence claims against government entities.
The fraud-racked Enron Corporation has had at least 20 CIA agents on the payroll in the last eight years. But while the Houston Chronicle reported the operatives as “former” CIA, a February 26, 2002 National Enquirer story quoted a top Washington insider familiar with several secret investigations into Enron, as reporting that they were given “leaves of absence without pay and put on the Enron payroll.”
The source added that Enron’s CIA members used “info gleaned from a satellite project called ‘Echelon,’ which intercepted emails, phone calls and faxes with detailed business information,” adding that “pure and simple, [taxpayer-funded] U.S. intelligence agents were involved in corporate espionage.” Another Enquirer source with ties to the CIA revealed that “the cozy deal between Enron and the CIA allowed the ‘on-loan’ undercover operatives to return to the Agency’s payroll before Enron’s collapse.”
Known CIA links traverse a curious variety of unexamined threads in the U.S. financial community. Online Journal’s Larry Chin (2-1-2002), reminded that [mega-money conglomerate] “Citigroup has repeatedly been charged with money laundering. This, as it’s Board of Directors includes John Deutch, former CIA Director, Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary and intimate friend of Enron’s Ken Lay, but also former CIA Executive Director Nora Slatkin.”
Even Congress has a close CIA link. Senate Joint Intelligence Co-Chairman Bob Graham and his House Intelligence Co-Chairman and former CIA operative Porter Goss were meeting with the Chief of the Pakistani Intelligence Service on the morning of the Sept.11 attacks, according to published reports. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in that room.
SENATE AND HOUSE LINKS TO TERRORISTS
Worrisome reports link two intelligence leaders in the Senate and House directly to the leader of Pakistan’s intelligence arm, The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and indirectly to the leader of the 9/11 Hijackers.
A Times of India (10-12-2001) story by Manoj Joshi revealed that Pakistani ISA Director-General Lt. General Mahmud Ahmad sought retirement after the U.S. attacks — confirmed by top sources in India, because of evidence produced by India showing his links to Mohammed Atta, the terrorist hijacking leader.
The Times said that “U.S. authorities sought his [Ahmad’s] removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 was wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh on the instructions of ISI Lt. General Ahmad.” Senior [U.S.] government sources “have confirmed that India contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed ISI chief.”
The Times added that “while they did not provide details, they said that Indian inputs, including Sheikh’s mobile phone number, helped the FBI in tracing and establishing the link.”
Serious questions remain, however, as Senate Joint Intelligence Co-Chairman Bob Graham (D-FL) and his House Intelligence Co-Chairman and former CIA operative Porter Goss (R-FL) were meeting with ISI Chief, Lt. General Mahmud Ahmad, on the very morning of the September 11 attacks, according to published reports. (New York Times, 2-17-2002 & MSNBC-TV, 10-7-2001).
Since Graham and Goss are Co-Chairmen of the Joint-Intelligence Committee investigating the 9/11 attacks, difficulties could arise when the Congressional Open Intelligence Hearings commence in mid-September, and whether other Members will have the courage to seek testimony from the Chairmen of their own Committee, regarding their questionable links to the U.S. terrorism.
Thus far, Graham and Goss will have been able to postpone open hearings for over one year, as they are currently scheduled to start near the end of September. Moreover, devastated and grieving 9/11 victim families have been unable to hold Congress accountable to seek justice, while hearings have continued behind closed doors in a sound-proof room at the Capitol.
Other members of the Joint Intelligence Committee could be placed in the uncomfortable position of having to call Graham and Goss to testify as to why they were meeting — on the morning of the attacks — with the Pakistani ISI Chief, who was having money wired into the United States to support the efforts of the leader of the terrorist hijackers while the attacks were in progress!
Other Committee Members would likely be interested in what was said at the meeting with Lt. Gen. Ahmad, and more about his relationship with Graham and Goss, given Ahmad’s links to Mohammed Atta.
These and other growing connections indicating prior knowledge of the attacks also make a case for how the profits of death were accumulated by insider trading via the United States Stock Market. This, while the SEC will not release its “Control List” of suspicious stock trades involving companies and airlines directly related to the attacks.
FBI AGENTS INDICTED IN 9/11-LINKED STOCK SCHEME
On the heels of alleged CIA involvement in public stock trading and use of sensitive prior knowledge of last fall’s attacks, 13 days ago on May 22, FBI agents Jeffrey A. Royer and Lynn Wingate were charged with racketeering conspiracy, securities fraud, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. Royer was also charged with extortion, according to an examination of an unsealed federal indictment: United States vs. Elgindy, Royer, Wingate, Cleveland, and Peters, filed in New York District Court by Alan Vinegard, United States Attorney — all of which clouds either open or secret congressional probes of pre-attack insider trading profits.
Vinegard’s news release said “the allegations reveal a shocking partnership between an experienced stock manipulator and law enforcement agents, undertaken for their illicit personal financial gain.” Moreover, Royer and Wingate allegedly used the FBI’s Automated Case Support database to actually monitor the investigation, passing confidential information about the investigations of companies to participants in a stock manipulation scheme, according to the Washington Post. (5-23-2002)
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Breen said stock advisor Amr Ibrahim Elgindy, charged in the indictment, called his Salomon Smith Barney broker, trying to sell $300,000 in stock from his children’s trust funds on the afternoon of Sept.10. During the conversation, Elgindy “predicted that the Dow Jones industrial average, which at the time stood at about 9,600, would soon crash to below 3,000,” according to the New York Times, (5-25-2002), thus begging the question whether Congress will publicly disclose other indications of alleged CIA or FBI complicity in prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
NSA DESTROYING 9/11 DATA ON AMERICANS AND U.S. COMPANIES
Two individuals with close intelligence ties told the Boston Globe (10-27-2001) that since September 11, the super secret National Security Agency (NSA), acting on the advice of their lawyers, have been destroying data collected on American citizens and corporations,
angering other intelligence agencies seeking leads in the anti-terrorist probe. Two calls by American Free Press to Joint-Congressional Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, Senator Richard Shelby, to confirm details revealed by the sources were unreturned.
Since the October Globe report, no other media outlet has examined the heated discussions with the CIA and intelligence committee staff members, as NSA lawyers turned down requests to preserve the intelligence because regulations prohibit data collecting on Americans, inviting lawsuits, according to the two former senior U.S. officials. However, Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA Director of Counter-terrorism, told Scoop Media that “the law allows [intelligence officials] exceptions in certain circumstances.” Both the CIA and FBI had declined comment.
Cannistraro added that “If American citizens are believed to be involved in some way in a foreign intelligence operation that could lead to terrorism against this country, I believe the NSA is required to save or maintain the information.” When asked about the NSA and the 9/11 attacks, the former CIA official told Scoop. “In this case, I believe they should have saved the surveillance data.” Congress has been tight-lipped, and government investigators are extremely frustrated that many possible leads stemming from the Sept.11 attack were not being followed because of the NSA position.
RELEASING THE SEC “CONTROL” LIST
According to the San Francisco Chronicle (10-19-01), the SEC privately asked North American securities firms to participate in an information-sharing system to trace “large numbers of trades in securities of companies [directly] affected by the attacks. Curiously, however, the SEC asked companies “to designate senior personnel who appreciate ‘the sensitive nature’ of the case [pre-attack insider trading], and can be relied upon to ‘exercise appropriate discretion,’ as ‘point’ people linking government investigators and the [securities] industry.” Then the SEC asked for the names, titles, phone numbers and e-mail of the designated senior personnel, according to reporter Scott Winokur.
On October 2, 2001, Canadian securities officials confirmed that the SEC had asked firms to review records for 38 companies, suggesting that some buyers and sellers might have had advance knowledge of the attacks, according to Winokur. A Scoop examination of the Center for Public Integrity’s financial records of the top 100 Bush Administration officials reveals ownership of millions of dollars in these 38 stocks which would not be different from any other wealthy American.
However, Congress has thus far refused to make public what the Chronicle reported as an SEC “control list” containing confidential information about transactions, individuals, relationships, and entities identified by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in the probe. The existence of the SEC list would still be a secret if not for an accidental leak via the Canadian securities officials.
There is as yet no reporting regarding whether the “entities” were SPE’s linked to Enron. The SEC added, “Because the control list contains confidential information, we ask that you disseminate it within your institution only on a need-to-know basis.” But Congress or the Courts may ultimately decide whether the families of Sept.11 also need to know the identities of individuals with prior knowledge — allegedly involved in the profits of death.
The Wall Street Journal (10-2-2002) reported that the Secret Service was also probing an unusually high volume of five-year U.S. Treasury note purchases made prior to the attacks — one purchase included a single $5 billion trade. The Journal called Treasury notes among the best investments in the event of a world crisis, with their value having risen substantially since September 11. Moreover, the Associated Press reported that a German Central Bank study strongly pointed to “terrorism insider trading” not only in airline and insurance companies but also in gold and oil futures. Will Congress chalk it up to coincidence?
DEUTSCHEBANK & MAYER, BROWN & PLATT
The evidence linking Deutschebank to the terrorists and insider trading is clearly quite extraordinary: 1) The lead hijacker pilot and two accomplices had bank accounts at its Hamburg branch, 2) One of its unnamed private investors never claimed $2.5 million in United Airlines put option contract profits following the attacks, 3) Its global “private banking” chief Mayo Shattuck III, resigned the day following the attacks in the middle of a three-year $40 million contract, 4) It hired away SEC enforcement and investigation chief Richard Walker just 20 days after the attacks, 5) Its recent senior investment banker Kevin Ingram pled guilty to money laundering involving Stinger missiles and multiple varieties of arms sales to Pakistani and Egyptian citizens just 14 days prior to Sept.11, and 6) Deutschebank was heavily involved in the 9/11 insider trading but Congress has not questioned former Alex (A.B.) Brown division head A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard — appointed by George Bush as Executive Director (number three) of the CIA — regarding intelligence and “real-time” stock trade monitoring.
[note: all evidence in the above paragraph is sourced in the “Profits of Death” series on pre-9/11 criminal insider trading, Parts I, II, III, at www.copvcia.com — Sept. 11 Section]
European reporters found that most of the suspicious pre-attack trades passed through Deutschebank and especially via CIA Executive Director A.B. Krongard’s former Alex Brown investment division by means of a procedure called portage, which assures the anonymity of individuals making the transactions. But Congress has not publicly revealed whether they will call Krongard and other Alex Brown traders to testify in open hearings, or whether they will subpoena the pre-attack documents in question.
CFO.com, an online site for corporate executives, revealed on 1-28-2002 that Deutschebank was a limited partner in either the controversial Enron special purpose entities (SPEs), LJM or Chewco — those off balance sheets and off-shore products heavily involved in Enron’s demise, and run by Enron CFO Andrew Fastow. This begs the question as to whether Congress or the Courts will determine whether missing funds from Enron were possibly part of a scheme to develop funds to profit from the air attacks — given the many interwoven ties between Enron and Deutschebank.
CFO.com also revealed that a former Enron employee prepared an SEC filing, having deleted Deutschebank’s name from LJM version sent to the SEC. But curiously, “that deletion was made at the behest of William McLucas, former SEC enforcement director, hired by Enron after the attacks on October 31. The former employee also claims to have received instructions to destroy the draft of the SEC filing. But not a public word from Congress.
IS JOHN P. SCHMITZ A KEY PLAYER?
John P. Schmitz, George H.W. Bush’s former Deputy Counsel during the Elder’s Vice-Presidency and Presidency, will likely be a key player if Americans force Congress to become serious about its 9/11 probe. Some may remember Schmitz from the Iran/contra investigation, when the Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC) reported that each witness interviewed regarding document production complied except for Schmitz, who asserted that his documents were privileged work product.
Schmitz, fluent in German and a Partner in global-law firm Mayer, Brown & Platt, has clients that include Bayer AG (German maker of the antibiotic Cipro which fights Anthrax, about which Larry Klayman and Judicial Watch (JW) will have keen interest. Recently, JW filed suit seeking the Administration’s anthrax documents to ascertain why the White House starting taking heavy doses of Cipro the day of the attacks — nearly a month before anthrax was even discovered on Capitol Hill, and while postal workers continued to sort mail in contaminated offices — some dying in the process.
But John Schmitz’s Mayer-Brown profile also reveals that he represents Enron, adding that “we were active in Germany [with Enron] until the end….It [bankruptcy] surprised me as well as anyone else,” according to Reuters (1-4-2002). Moreover, Mayer-Brown also represents Deutschebank on a regular basis regarding its electronic commerce activities; and curiously, Schmitz’s law firm maintains an office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan along with Enron — if only to make sure oil is well in the Caspian Sea basin.
Even many 9/11 victim families will even come to recognize Mayer-Brown; for conveniently, the firm also happens to represent United Airlines against 9/11 family lawyers Mary Schiavo and Donald Nolan. And given partner John P. Schmitz’s close former relationships with the Bush family, Mayer-Brown’s many water coolers may become intriguing conduits when Miss Schiavo and Mr. Nolan begin their respective legal discovery initiatives regarding who will be subpoenaed or deposed and what evidence is or is not revealed.
SOFT OR AGGRESSIVE INVESTIGATION?
In an interview with Scoop Media, former Washington, DC United States Attorney Joseph de Genova took a hard line, saying “If the Congress does not want to get answers to these critical questions regarding who profited [from prior knowledge of the attacks], then it needs to be litigated.” And asked whether Americans have a right to know who sold large blocks of stock shares in companies and airlines directly affected by the attacks or purchased billions in ultra-safe Treasury notes directly prior to 9/11, de Genova added, “I believe someone will litigate the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) issue related to the Ashcroft memo, if government agencies keep obstructing the media — the sooner, the better.”
While thousands of American families, victimized by terrorism, still remain numb with grief, information is being advanced daily regarding what could be described by some as casual, if not negligent, long-term slipshod governmental responsiveness to fundamental internal national security and safety questions — or worse. But even if they come out of their secret, sound-proof Capitol bunker into the light of open hearings, questions still remain as to whether they have the courage to forcefully seek answers to the real unanswered questions.
Yes, we’ve come a long way from those pre-attack United and American Airline put and call ratio arguments about “lucky bets”– for the evidence regarding profits of death is intriguing. This is real serious stuff. But curiously, both the President and Vice-President have lobbied mightily for only one joint investigative committee instead of multiple and bicameral, Enron-style hearings. Maybe we’ll get a stacked-deck, wink-and-a-nod, “blue ribbon” panel. Only time will tell. But as the First Lady always reminds us: “Don’t worry. Just tell your children they’re safe.”
© Copyright by Thomas Flocco.
6/18/2005 | 7:16 pm
9.
Richard M
BG, in the future, would you please use links to the reference material? I completely lost interest in your comment when I found out how long it was.
6/18/2005 | 8:22 pm
10.
Gerry
bg-
I highly recommend the Democratic Party put you front and center in their coming election campaigns.
And if the Dems won’t put you in front of them, I suggest the Republicans put you in front of the Dems.
Someone please give him a bigger megaphone, please? And a big ol’ DNC nametag?
6/18/2005 | 8:35 pm
11.
Indy Voter
Funny, there’s only a 4-word response over on BG’s site…
6/18/2005 | 8:52 pm
12.
Gerry
I just popped his cherry, becoming the first person (as far as I can tell) to post a comment on his blog.
One of the reasons I started this blog was to make new friends…
6/18/2005 | 8:56 pm
13.
Indy Voter
The guy makes a huge number of posts. Of course, only a few of them contain any original content or direct commentary.
6/18/2005 | 9:04 pm
14.
Justin
what does origional content have to do with anything? you guys should pull your head out of your ass and read his post. It looks like direct commentary to me. The fact of the matter is none of you are capable of attacking its content so instead you attack the person, its a pattern developing on this site. Pathetic.
6/22/2005 | 10:14 am
15.
Richard M
Justin, what exactly are you talking about? Are you talking about the theories being floated that 9/11 was known by several people, who “just happened” to not be present when the planes hit? If those theories appeal to you, I have an uncle who gave me some information showing that the buildings didn’t collapse from being struck by the planes, but by the nuclear bombs planted in the basement that were detonated. IIRC, he pointed out that the jet fuel burns at a temperature much lower than the melting point of the steel supports, so the fuel burning couldn’t generate enough heat to weaken the supports.
6/22/2005 | 10:24 am
The Smirking Chimp, Bush calls out an old 9/11 Friend?
The Smirking Chimp
"I want to thank the President and the CEO of Constellation Energy, Mayo Shattuck"
"I want to thank the President and the CEO of Constellation Energy, Mayo Shattuck"
Worldwide Conspiracy? - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com (London Bombing)
Worldwide Conspiracy? - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com
MSNBC.com
Worldwide Conspiracy?
Investigators probing the London bombings are searching for a British suspect who may have ties to other terror plots in the U.K. and America.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 6:13 p.m. ET July 20, 2005
July 20 - Investigators probing the London terror bombings are focusing on an elusive British Muslim suspect who may have connections to previous plots to blow up landmarks in the United Kingdom and to set up a terrorist training camp in rural Oregon, according to Western law-enforcement and counterterrorism officials.
A U.S. law-enforcement official confirmed to NEWSWEEK on Wednesday that the FBI is also seeking a man believed to be the same suspect, Haroon Rashid Aswad, as part of a New York-based terror investigation. That individual has been widely cited in press reports this week as the subject of an intense manhunt by security forces in Pakistan.
Some news agencies earlier this week reported that Aswad had been arrested during a roundup of 150 militants in the eastern city of Lahore. But Pakistan’s information minister denied those reports Wednesday and some U.S. law-enforcement officials say they are uncertain whether Aswad is currently in custody or still at large.
If Aswad is captured, British investigators believe it could allow them to piece together who recruited, trained and directed the suicide bombers who struck the London subway and bus systems on July 7. More importantly, Aswad’s suspected links to the London plot may provide the strongest evidence yet that the attacks were part of a broader terror conspiracy with clear connections to Al Qaeda suspects who have been on the radar screen of Western intelligence officials for years.
A Western counterterrorism official described Aswad as being a British citizen of Pakistani extraction in his early 30s whose family is said to live in Leeds in northern England, where three of the four suspected suicide bombers resided. He is believed to have been a committed follower of Abu Hamza al-Masri, the fiery one-eyed Islamic cleric who preached at London’s notorious Finsbury Park Mosque before being arrested last year by British authorities on a U.S. extradition warrant.
Aswad’s suspected connections to the London bombings remain unclear. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that his name was passed to Pakistani and U.S. authorities by British investigators who traced it from the cell phone of one of the suspected bombers. A Western counterterrorism official said some investigators believe he may have played a crucial support role—or even been a planner of the attacks. Aswad was certainly a “step up” from the “foot soldiers” who blew themselves up, said the official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.
A man believed to be Aswad has surfaced at least twice before in counterterror investigations. One involves Operation Crevice, Scotland Yard’s code name for a case that last year led to the arrest of eight British-born ethnic Pakistanis and the seizure of 1,300 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer—material that authorities suspected was to be used to make bombs to blow up major British landmarks. Aswad is believed to have had connections to some of the suspects in the fertilizer plot, as did Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the suspects who authorities say blew themselves up in this month’s London attacks.
Aswad is also believed to have been the same suspect who surfaced three years ago in the FBI investigation of James Ujaama, a Seattle-based Muslim convert who pled guilty in April 2003 to providing material support to the Taliban. As part of that case, prosecutors unsealed documents alleging that a “Haroon Rashid Aswat” was one of two deputies dispatched by Abu Hamza, the London imam, to assist Ujaama in scouting land for and setting up a training camp in Bly, Ore. The camp was to be modeled after those previously run by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, authorities said at the time. (A U.S. law-enforcement official told NEWSWEEK that the Aswad being sought in Pakistan "appears to be the same guy" as the “Aswat” identified in the Ujaama case.) The indictment against Ujaama charged that the training camps were to be used to train attendees in “violent jihad” as well as the commission of armed robberies, the building of underground bunkers to hide ammunition and weapons, as well as the “creation of poisonous materials for public consumption and the firebombing of vehicles.” Aswat was an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the Ujaama case, a law-enforcement official said.
Aswad’s alleged associate, who accompanied him to Oregon, Oussama Kassir, was said in the indictment to have identified himself as a “hit man” for bin Laden. Kassir, who was arrested in October 2003 in Sweden, was quoted by The Seattle Times as denying he ever described himself as a bin Laden hit man. But he did tell the newspaper in 2002: “I love Al Qaeda. I love Osama bin Laden.”
The FBI’s current interest in Aswad is an outgrowth of its case against Abu Hamza, the London cleric who was indicted last year in New York on multiple terror-related charges, including hostage-taking and conspiracy in connection with a 1998 attack on tourists in Yemen, a U.S. law-enforcement official said. Four of the eleven counts in the Abu Hamza indictment in New York related to his efforts to assist in setting up the Bly, Ore., training camp.
If substantiated, a link between the London subway-bombing conspiracy and Abu Hamza could spark new criticism of how the British intelligence and security services and the government of Tony Blair handled Islamic extremists in the past. For years both before and after the 9/11 attacks in America, Jewish groups and antiterrorism experts complained that the British government had done nothing to curb the fiery, pro-jihad preachings of Abu Hamza, an Egyptian-born former nightclub bouncer who became a British citizen after marrying a British woman. Abu Hamza, who was badly injured while supposedly clearing land mines for the Afghan mujahedin and now has hooks for hands, later became the prayer leader at the Finsbury Park Mosque in London. Before 9/11, Abu Hamza's mosque was believed to be a regular hangout for disaffected European Muslims seeking jihad action; among now-notorious suspects who allegedly visited the mosque when Abu Hamza led prayers there were failed airline shoe-bomber Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the only suspect arrested and charged by U.S. authorities with complicity in the 9/11 plot.
In January 2003, British police raided the Finsbury Park Mosque as part of an investigation into an alleged London terror cell that was planning attacks with the homemade poison ricin. The British government ultimately responded to pressure from Washington and elsewhere to take Abu Hamza off the streets by launching legal and legislative steps against him, among them a bill in Parliament to strip him of his U.K. citizenship and a prosecution on terror-related charges which led to Abu Hamza's current jailing. Some counterterror analysts have speculated that this month’s attacks may have been in retaliation for the legal moves against Abu Hamza.
If Aswad is established as a one-time associate of Abu Hamza who was known well before the subway bombings to both British and U.S. law-enforcement agencies, then he would be the third suspected participant in the plot regarding whom the U.S. and, allegedly, U.K. authorities had at least some intelligence information before the subway attacks.
U.S. and U.K. government officials have already acknowledged that Siddique Khan, the eldest of the subway suicide squad officially identified by Scotland Yard, had turned up in last year’s Operation Crevice case. Counterterrorism sources have also confirmed that Mohammed Junaid Babar, a former jihadi recruit from Queens, N.Y., who turned U.S. government witness after being arrested while attempting to visit New York last year from Pakistan, has identified Khan from a photograph. Officials say Babar indicates he saw Khan in a jihadi training camp in Pakistan before Babar's arrest in early 2004. In addition, two U.S. officials say that the name of a another presumed subway suicide attacker, Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay, also turned up in U.S. government antiterror databases. According to these officials, who could not be named because of the sensitive nature of the investigation, Lindsay's name came up tangentially during the U.K. investigation of the Operation Crevice plot.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8647589/site/newsweek/
MSNBC.com
Worldwide Conspiracy?
Investigators probing the London bombings are searching for a British suspect who may have ties to other terror plots in the U.K. and America.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 6:13 p.m. ET July 20, 2005
July 20 - Investigators probing the London terror bombings are focusing on an elusive British Muslim suspect who may have connections to previous plots to blow up landmarks in the United Kingdom and to set up a terrorist training camp in rural Oregon, according to Western law-enforcement and counterterrorism officials.
A U.S. law-enforcement official confirmed to NEWSWEEK on Wednesday that the FBI is also seeking a man believed to be the same suspect, Haroon Rashid Aswad, as part of a New York-based terror investigation. That individual has been widely cited in press reports this week as the subject of an intense manhunt by security forces in Pakistan.
Some news agencies earlier this week reported that Aswad had been arrested during a roundup of 150 militants in the eastern city of Lahore. But Pakistan’s information minister denied those reports Wednesday and some U.S. law-enforcement officials say they are uncertain whether Aswad is currently in custody or still at large.
If Aswad is captured, British investigators believe it could allow them to piece together who recruited, trained and directed the suicide bombers who struck the London subway and bus systems on July 7. More importantly, Aswad’s suspected links to the London plot may provide the strongest evidence yet that the attacks were part of a broader terror conspiracy with clear connections to Al Qaeda suspects who have been on the radar screen of Western intelligence officials for years.
A Western counterterrorism official described Aswad as being a British citizen of Pakistani extraction in his early 30s whose family is said to live in Leeds in northern England, where three of the four suspected suicide bombers resided. He is believed to have been a committed follower of Abu Hamza al-Masri, the fiery one-eyed Islamic cleric who preached at London’s notorious Finsbury Park Mosque before being arrested last year by British authorities on a U.S. extradition warrant.
Aswad’s suspected connections to the London bombings remain unclear. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that his name was passed to Pakistani and U.S. authorities by British investigators who traced it from the cell phone of one of the suspected bombers. A Western counterterrorism official said some investigators believe he may have played a crucial support role—or even been a planner of the attacks. Aswad was certainly a “step up” from the “foot soldiers” who blew themselves up, said the official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.
A man believed to be Aswad has surfaced at least twice before in counterterror investigations. One involves Operation Crevice, Scotland Yard’s code name for a case that last year led to the arrest of eight British-born ethnic Pakistanis and the seizure of 1,300 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer—material that authorities suspected was to be used to make bombs to blow up major British landmarks. Aswad is believed to have had connections to some of the suspects in the fertilizer plot, as did Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the suspects who authorities say blew themselves up in this month’s London attacks.
Aswad is also believed to have been the same suspect who surfaced three years ago in the FBI investigation of James Ujaama, a Seattle-based Muslim convert who pled guilty in April 2003 to providing material support to the Taliban. As part of that case, prosecutors unsealed documents alleging that a “Haroon Rashid Aswat” was one of two deputies dispatched by Abu Hamza, the London imam, to assist Ujaama in scouting land for and setting up a training camp in Bly, Ore. The camp was to be modeled after those previously run by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, authorities said at the time. (A U.S. law-enforcement official told NEWSWEEK that the Aswad being sought in Pakistan "appears to be the same guy" as the “Aswat” identified in the Ujaama case.) The indictment against Ujaama charged that the training camps were to be used to train attendees in “violent jihad” as well as the commission of armed robberies, the building of underground bunkers to hide ammunition and weapons, as well as the “creation of poisonous materials for public consumption and the firebombing of vehicles.” Aswat was an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the Ujaama case, a law-enforcement official said.
Aswad’s alleged associate, who accompanied him to Oregon, Oussama Kassir, was said in the indictment to have identified himself as a “hit man” for bin Laden. Kassir, who was arrested in October 2003 in Sweden, was quoted by The Seattle Times as denying he ever described himself as a bin Laden hit man. But he did tell the newspaper in 2002: “I love Al Qaeda. I love Osama bin Laden.”
The FBI’s current interest in Aswad is an outgrowth of its case against Abu Hamza, the London cleric who was indicted last year in New York on multiple terror-related charges, including hostage-taking and conspiracy in connection with a 1998 attack on tourists in Yemen, a U.S. law-enforcement official said. Four of the eleven counts in the Abu Hamza indictment in New York related to his efforts to assist in setting up the Bly, Ore., training camp.
If substantiated, a link between the London subway-bombing conspiracy and Abu Hamza could spark new criticism of how the British intelligence and security services and the government of Tony Blair handled Islamic extremists in the past. For years both before and after the 9/11 attacks in America, Jewish groups and antiterrorism experts complained that the British government had done nothing to curb the fiery, pro-jihad preachings of Abu Hamza, an Egyptian-born former nightclub bouncer who became a British citizen after marrying a British woman. Abu Hamza, who was badly injured while supposedly clearing land mines for the Afghan mujahedin and now has hooks for hands, later became the prayer leader at the Finsbury Park Mosque in London. Before 9/11, Abu Hamza's mosque was believed to be a regular hangout for disaffected European Muslims seeking jihad action; among now-notorious suspects who allegedly visited the mosque when Abu Hamza led prayers there were failed airline shoe-bomber Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the only suspect arrested and charged by U.S. authorities with complicity in the 9/11 plot.
In January 2003, British police raided the Finsbury Park Mosque as part of an investigation into an alleged London terror cell that was planning attacks with the homemade poison ricin. The British government ultimately responded to pressure from Washington and elsewhere to take Abu Hamza off the streets by launching legal and legislative steps against him, among them a bill in Parliament to strip him of his U.K. citizenship and a prosecution on terror-related charges which led to Abu Hamza's current jailing. Some counterterror analysts have speculated that this month’s attacks may have been in retaliation for the legal moves against Abu Hamza.
If Aswad is established as a one-time associate of Abu Hamza who was known well before the subway bombings to both British and U.S. law-enforcement agencies, then he would be the third suspected participant in the plot regarding whom the U.S. and, allegedly, U.K. authorities had at least some intelligence information before the subway attacks.
U.S. and U.K. government officials have already acknowledged that Siddique Khan, the eldest of the subway suicide squad officially identified by Scotland Yard, had turned up in last year’s Operation Crevice case. Counterterrorism sources have also confirmed that Mohammed Junaid Babar, a former jihadi recruit from Queens, N.Y., who turned U.S. government witness after being arrested while attempting to visit New York last year from Pakistan, has identified Khan from a photograph. Officials say Babar indicates he saw Khan in a jihadi training camp in Pakistan before Babar's arrest in early 2004. In addition, two U.S. officials say that the name of a another presumed subway suicide attacker, Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay, also turned up in U.S. government antiterror databases. According to these officials, who could not be named because of the sensitive nature of the investigation, Lindsay's name came up tangentially during the U.K. investigation of the Operation Crevice plot.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8647589/site/newsweek/
Black Tuesday: (9/11/2001) The World's Largest Insider Trading Scam?
Black Tuesday:: "September 19, 2001
Black Tuesday:
The World's Largest Insider Trading Scam?
Don Radlauer
ICT Consultant
In the wake of the terrorist attacks which caused the destruction of the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, and destroyed four large airliners with all aboard, securities-exchange investigators on three continents are poring over trading records to determine whether one or more parties profited by their advance knowledge of the disaster.
Investigations are focusing on the many different ways and places in which profits could be made following the Black Tuesday outrage. A brief introduction to 'left-handed trading' will help to clarify what may have happened.
Short Selling
Most investors buy stocks much the way they buy houses: They try to buy cheap and sell dear. Some traders, however, try to accomplish the same thing in reverse order -- when they think a stock will decrease in value, they sell the stock first, in the belief that they will be able to buy it back at a lower price later. This is known as short-selling. In order to sell a stock short, a trader must work with a stockbroker who will lend him/her the stock to sell; this is a normal service provided by stockbrokers. At least in theory, an investor can wait a long time before buying back the stock that s/he has sold ('covering the short').
Short-selling can be a highly successful trading strategy for an investor who knows how to time the market and can recognize overpriced stocks before the general public does. On the other hand, it can be highly risky: Since there is no upper limit to how high the stock being shorted can rise in price, the potential loss to the short-seller is infinite. On the other hand, the investor who shorts a stock with advance knowledge of news that will cause its price to drop precipitously can make a killing.
Derivatives - Options and Futures
'Derivatives' are investments that do not invol"
Black Tuesday:
The World's Largest Insider Trading Scam?
Don Radlauer
ICT Consultant
In the wake of the terrorist attacks which caused the destruction of the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, and destroyed four large airliners with all aboard, securities-exchange investigators on three continents are poring over trading records to determine whether one or more parties profited by their advance knowledge of the disaster.
Investigations are focusing on the many different ways and places in which profits could be made following the Black Tuesday outrage. A brief introduction to 'left-handed trading' will help to clarify what may have happened.
Short Selling
Most investors buy stocks much the way they buy houses: They try to buy cheap and sell dear. Some traders, however, try to accomplish the same thing in reverse order -- when they think a stock will decrease in value, they sell the stock first, in the belief that they will be able to buy it back at a lower price later. This is known as short-selling. In order to sell a stock short, a trader must work with a stockbroker who will lend him/her the stock to sell; this is a normal service provided by stockbrokers. At least in theory, an investor can wait a long time before buying back the stock that s/he has sold ('covering the short').
Short-selling can be a highly successful trading strategy for an investor who knows how to time the market and can recognize overpriced stocks before the general public does. On the other hand, it can be highly risky: Since there is no upper limit to how high the stock being shorted can rise in price, the potential loss to the short-seller is infinite. On the other hand, the investor who shorts a stock with advance knowledge of news that will cause its price to drop precipitously can make a killing.
Derivatives - Options and Futures
'Derivatives' are investments that do not invol"
Global Eye
CONTEXT - This Week in Arts and Ideas from The Moscow Times
Some of the loot will be skimmed by Bushist-favored bagmen in the new Baghdad regime/
Love Me Tender
By Chris Floyd
Published: July 15, 2005
They were still scraping body parts out of the blasted carriages in the London Underground last week when the terrorists brazenly announced a harvest of blood fruits from their murderous campaign. The declaration -- bone-chilling in its moral nullity, its brutal cynicism -- was made in the fearsome name of Jihad.
That would be Asim Jihad, of course, spokesman for the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Yes, just one day after London's agony, the state terrorists who perpetrated the ongoing mass atrocity of aggressive war in Iraq celebrated an important victory in their campaign of violence and fear: 11 juicy oil fields are being put up for tender to international investors, AdnKronos International reports.
The corporate cornucopia of these fertile fields in oil-laden southern Iraq -- 3 million barrels per day, said Jihad -- will surpass the nation's entire current output of 2.2 million bpd: rich pickings for the oil barons whose branch office in the White House has done such outstanding advance work for them. With oil prices soaring past $60 per barrel -- on their way to the $100 mark in the near future, some experts say -- the $25 billion ante that the Iraqis are seeking will be a small price to pay for a seat at this game.
But goodness gracious me -- as Pentagon pump-jockey Don Rumsfeld would say, in that prim spinster patois he likes to affect when wiping blood off his hands -- nobody in their right mind believes all that money will actually go to the Oil Ministry, which will maintain ostensible control of the sold-off fields for the alleged benefit of the Iraqi people. Heavens to Betsy, no!
Some of the loot will be skimmed by Bushist-favored bagmen in the new Baghdad regime. Some will be siphoned off to fund the death-dealing, torture-happy goon squads now operating on behalf of various factions in the government. Some will be kicked back to the oil barons. And some will be smuggled into slush funds for covert ops, mercenaries, campaign hijinks in the Homeland and "retirement packages" for good and faithful servants of the Bush war machine.
How do we know this will happen? Because it has already happened to Iraqi oil money that fell into the hands of the profiteer-in-chief, President George W. Bush. According to detailed audits and investigations by Congress, the Pentagon, the General Accountability Office, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board, and the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, more than $8.8 billion in Iraqi money under Bush's control simply went walking between October 2003 and July 2004, the London Review of Books reports. These were revenues supposedly earmarked for the Iraqi government -- but no one knows where they actually went, except for a few dollops that investigators found were bankrolling many of the worthy endeavors outlined above.
And this epic rapine -- looting on a scale not seen since the days of the Mongol Horde -- is just a single rivulet in the vast delta of corruption draining the conquered land. Christian Aid estimates that an additional $4 billion in unmetered oil export revenue was sold off under the counter, Saddam-style, to coalition cronies. Then there were the planeloads of cold cash spread around by Bush's "Provisional Authority" -- off the books, natch -- to "couriers," brokers, Western contractors, tribal leaders, "intelligence assets" and anyone else who had the moxie to put their hands out at the right time.
All of this money was stolen from the Iraqi people. In fact, every bit of Iraq's oil money was seized by Bush and transferred to New York's Federal Reserve Bank in May 2003. Perhaps this was the operation Bush was referring to in his ballyhooed "Mission Accomplished" declaration that same month. (He certainly couldn't have been talking about the military mission -- not with "major combat operations" still being launched even as we speak.) And oil revenues kept flowing to Bush's bank account after the conquest. All told, by the time Bush's personal viceroy, Jerry Bremer, did his "last days of Saigon" bug-out from Baghdad last year, the Crawford Caligula had run through $20 billion of Iraq's oil money.
No one has been brought to justice for this monstrous -- indeed murderous -- thievery. And the oil barons preparing to feast on the new tenders needn't worry about such "quaint" notions as legality either. That's because Bush -- hugger-mugger as usual -- recently renewed his infamous Executive Order 13303, the blanket immunity for all U.S. corporate interests involved in any way with Iraq's oil, the Deep Blade web log reports. The original edict was issued in that fateful, fruitful month of May 2003.
Bush's ukase applies to all traffickers in Iraqi oil -- as long as their loot finds its way, by hook or crook, into the coffers of "United States persons or entities." Bush declares flatly that any "judicial process" launched against these protected entities -- not excluding criminal proceedings for, say, fraud, corruption, extortion, even murder -- "shall be deemed null and void." But what if some rogue nation still clinging to the outmoded principle of law and order tries to take Bush's cronies to court? Not to worry: one of the many agencies authorized to "employ all powers" to "carry out the purposes of this order" is none other than Spinster Rumsfeld's own little parlor -- the Pentagon.
Money and power, grabbed through violence and deceit: that's the real point -- the only point -- of Bush's "war on terror." It is in fact a war of terror, where both sides use senseless murder and mass slaughter to advance their degraded ambitions. No doubt the innocent victims of the London bombing are happy to have died in the service of such a noble cause.
Some of the loot will be skimmed by Bushist-favored bagmen in the new Baghdad regime/
Love Me Tender
By Chris Floyd
Published: July 15, 2005
They were still scraping body parts out of the blasted carriages in the London Underground last week when the terrorists brazenly announced a harvest of blood fruits from their murderous campaign. The declaration -- bone-chilling in its moral nullity, its brutal cynicism -- was made in the fearsome name of Jihad.
That would be Asim Jihad, of course, spokesman for the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Yes, just one day after London's agony, the state terrorists who perpetrated the ongoing mass atrocity of aggressive war in Iraq celebrated an important victory in their campaign of violence and fear: 11 juicy oil fields are being put up for tender to international investors, AdnKronos International reports.
The corporate cornucopia of these fertile fields in oil-laden southern Iraq -- 3 million barrels per day, said Jihad -- will surpass the nation's entire current output of 2.2 million bpd: rich pickings for the oil barons whose branch office in the White House has done such outstanding advance work for them. With oil prices soaring past $60 per barrel -- on their way to the $100 mark in the near future, some experts say -- the $25 billion ante that the Iraqis are seeking will be a small price to pay for a seat at this game.
But goodness gracious me -- as Pentagon pump-jockey Don Rumsfeld would say, in that prim spinster patois he likes to affect when wiping blood off his hands -- nobody in their right mind believes all that money will actually go to the Oil Ministry, which will maintain ostensible control of the sold-off fields for the alleged benefit of the Iraqi people. Heavens to Betsy, no!
Some of the loot will be skimmed by Bushist-favored bagmen in the new Baghdad regime. Some will be siphoned off to fund the death-dealing, torture-happy goon squads now operating on behalf of various factions in the government. Some will be kicked back to the oil barons. And some will be smuggled into slush funds for covert ops, mercenaries, campaign hijinks in the Homeland and "retirement packages" for good and faithful servants of the Bush war machine.
How do we know this will happen? Because it has already happened to Iraqi oil money that fell into the hands of the profiteer-in-chief, President George W. Bush. According to detailed audits and investigations by Congress, the Pentagon, the General Accountability Office, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board, and the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, more than $8.8 billion in Iraqi money under Bush's control simply went walking between October 2003 and July 2004, the London Review of Books reports. These were revenues supposedly earmarked for the Iraqi government -- but no one knows where they actually went, except for a few dollops that investigators found were bankrolling many of the worthy endeavors outlined above.
And this epic rapine -- looting on a scale not seen since the days of the Mongol Horde -- is just a single rivulet in the vast delta of corruption draining the conquered land. Christian Aid estimates that an additional $4 billion in unmetered oil export revenue was sold off under the counter, Saddam-style, to coalition cronies. Then there were the planeloads of cold cash spread around by Bush's "Provisional Authority" -- off the books, natch -- to "couriers," brokers, Western contractors, tribal leaders, "intelligence assets" and anyone else who had the moxie to put their hands out at the right time.
All of this money was stolen from the Iraqi people. In fact, every bit of Iraq's oil money was seized by Bush and transferred to New York's Federal Reserve Bank in May 2003. Perhaps this was the operation Bush was referring to in his ballyhooed "Mission Accomplished" declaration that same month. (He certainly couldn't have been talking about the military mission -- not with "major combat operations" still being launched even as we speak.) And oil revenues kept flowing to Bush's bank account after the conquest. All told, by the time Bush's personal viceroy, Jerry Bremer, did his "last days of Saigon" bug-out from Baghdad last year, the Crawford Caligula had run through $20 billion of Iraq's oil money.
No one has been brought to justice for this monstrous -- indeed murderous -- thievery. And the oil barons preparing to feast on the new tenders needn't worry about such "quaint" notions as legality either. That's because Bush -- hugger-mugger as usual -- recently renewed his infamous Executive Order 13303, the blanket immunity for all U.S. corporate interests involved in any way with Iraq's oil, the Deep Blade web log reports. The original edict was issued in that fateful, fruitful month of May 2003.
Bush's ukase applies to all traffickers in Iraqi oil -- as long as their loot finds its way, by hook or crook, into the coffers of "United States persons or entities." Bush declares flatly that any "judicial process" launched against these protected entities -- not excluding criminal proceedings for, say, fraud, corruption, extortion, even murder -- "shall be deemed null and void." But what if some rogue nation still clinging to the outmoded principle of law and order tries to take Bush's cronies to court? Not to worry: one of the many agencies authorized to "employ all powers" to "carry out the purposes of this order" is none other than Spinster Rumsfeld's own little parlor -- the Pentagon.
Money and power, grabbed through violence and deceit: that's the real point -- the only point -- of Bush's "war on terror." It is in fact a war of terror, where both sides use senseless murder and mass slaughter to advance their degraded ambitions. No doubt the innocent victims of the London bombing are happy to have died in the service of such a noble cause.
A Reversal Over Beslan Only Fuels Speculation
A Reversal Over Beslan Only Fuels Speculation: "A senior prosecutor has acknowledged that commandos fired flamethrowers into the packed Beslan school gym, fueling speculation about what set off the blaze that engulfed the building and contributed to the deaths of scores of hostages."
A Reversal Over Beslan Only Fuels Speculation
By Anatoly Medetsky and Yana Voitova
Special to The Moscow Times
S. Dal / Reuters
A view of the gutted Beslan gym. Aza Gumesova, whose child died in the gym, said the fire was so hot that the metal crowns on her child's teeth melted.
VLADIKAVKAZ -- A senior prosecutor has acknowledged that commandos fired flamethrowers into the packed Beslan school gym, fueling speculation about what set off the blaze that engulfed the building and contributed to the deaths of scores of hostages.
Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel, who reversed his earlier statements by making the admission last week, adamantly insisted, however, that the Shmel flamethrowers could not have sparked the inferno during a special forces operation to free the 1,200 hostages on Sept. 3. More than 330 people died in the Sept. 1-3 attack, about half of them children.
If prosecutors find that the commandos intentionally ignited the gym, as some Beslan residents and a regional lawmaker believe, it would mean that Russia violated an international convention banning the use of incendiary weapons that might injure or kill civilians, said Alexander Cherkasov, a senior member of the Memorial human rights group. Prosecutors also would then face the potentially unpleasant prospect of having to open an investigation into the military and security officials who organized the rescue operation, he said.
Although classified as a flamethrower, the Shmel in fact launches rocket-propelled projectiles, according to Jane's Information Group, an international center for defense information. The Shmel has three modifications: the RPO-A, whose shells explode; the RPO-Z, whose shells are incendiary; and the RPO-D, whose shells create smoke.
The commandos used the RPO-A type, Shepel told reporters on July 12. Its shells contain fuel-air explosives that on detonation form a ball of fire, creating a powerful blast effect.
Shepel said the fire lasts only a split second, while exposure of three to five seconds is required to inflict burns on a person or set fire to a building. "I am saying it once again: They don't have an incendiary effect," he said.
Military experts fired an RPO-A shell at dry, wooden building in a reconstruction of what happened in Beslan, he said. The force of the impact destroyed the building but the building did not catch fire, he said.
However, Alexander Pashin, an independent arms analyst, said that any type of explosive could create a fire.
Shepel initially said in November that it was the hostage-takers who had used flamethrowers, Novaya Gazeta reported Monday.
Prosecutors began investigating whether commandos had fired flamethrowers only after Beslan residents handed them used flamethrower barrels that they found around the school. Coding on the barrels was sufficient evidence to trace the barrels to their users.
Despite Shepel's denial last week, speculation persists that troops used the incendiary PRO-Z shells. Those shells contain napalm and leave traces of luminescent phosphorus on the site of detonation, Novaya Gazeta said.
Stanislav Kesayev, the head of a commission that is investigating the school seizure for the North Ossetia regional administration, said that preliminary results of a medical study found traces of phosphorus on the bodies.
Moreover, Beslan residents said the ruins of the gym glowed at night for weeks after the end of the hostage standoff, Novaya Gazeta said.
Beslan residents attending the ongoing trial of the only suspected surviving hostage-taker in the North Ossetian Supreme Court in Vladikavkaz said they had not noticed any glowing but were convinced that the commandos had caused the fire. Aza Gumesova, whose child died in the gym, said the fire was so hot that the metal crowns on her child's teeth melted.
A federal parliamentary commission headed by Federation Council Deputy Speaker Alexander Torshin is investigating what happened at Beslan. State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said in early July that the commission would present its findings in September, but Torshin is still not ready to set a date. He said the commission needed to study the ongoing trial of the suspected hostage-taker, Nurpasha Kulayev. Torshin did not have any comment about Shepel's remarks, his spokeswoman, Valeria Shatunova, said Tuesday.
The blaze might have led to the collapse of the roof over the school's gym, burying many hostages, said Cherkasov, the Memorial activist. "It was difficult for the seriously injured people to get out. The ones who were trapped under the roof couldn't get out, and they continued to burn," he said. "If it hadn't been for the fire, many people could have gotten out and been saved."
www.vk.mesi.ru
The Shmel, classified as a flamethrower, fires rocket-propelled projectiles.
Even if RPO-A shells were used and did not ignite the fire, they could have caused the roof to collapse just as RPO-A shots destroyed a wooden house in the test by military experts, he said. Likewise, the roof could have collapsed due to explosions from bombs planted by the hostage-takers in the gym, he said.
Areas of the school where the terrorists holed up also suffered great destruction, suggesting that commandos might have aimed the flamethrowers only there, Cherkasov said.
But if the blame falls on the commandos, rights activists will demand that they act more discriminately in possible future hostage crises, Cherkasov said.
Pashin, the arms analyst, said the commandos were professionals who would have carefully chosen their weapons and refrained from firing indiscriminately if there had been a risk of civilian casualties.
Shepel also said the military experts' test "sweeps away all talk that the weapons that were used are banned ... by international agreements and conventions."
The 1980 Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, of which Russia is a signatory, bans or restricts the use of certain weapons that are deemed particularly cruel. Protocol 3 of the convention bans the targeting of civilians with incendiary weapons and restricts the use of air-delivered incendiary weapons against military targets that are close to groups of civilians.
The convention lacks verification and enforcement mechanisms, and it does not spell out any formal process for resolving compliance concerns. Initially, the convention covered only international armed conflicts, but signatories extended it to apply to internal conflicts in 2001.
Staff Writer Anatoly Medetsky reported from Moscow.
A Reversal Over Beslan Only Fuels Speculation
By Anatoly Medetsky and Yana Voitova
Special to The Moscow Times
S. Dal / Reuters
A view of the gutted Beslan gym. Aza Gumesova, whose child died in the gym, said the fire was so hot that the metal crowns on her child's teeth melted.
VLADIKAVKAZ -- A senior prosecutor has acknowledged that commandos fired flamethrowers into the packed Beslan school gym, fueling speculation about what set off the blaze that engulfed the building and contributed to the deaths of scores of hostages.
Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel, who reversed his earlier statements by making the admission last week, adamantly insisted, however, that the Shmel flamethrowers could not have sparked the inferno during a special forces operation to free the 1,200 hostages on Sept. 3. More than 330 people died in the Sept. 1-3 attack, about half of them children.
If prosecutors find that the commandos intentionally ignited the gym, as some Beslan residents and a regional lawmaker believe, it would mean that Russia violated an international convention banning the use of incendiary weapons that might injure or kill civilians, said Alexander Cherkasov, a senior member of the Memorial human rights group. Prosecutors also would then face the potentially unpleasant prospect of having to open an investigation into the military and security officials who organized the rescue operation, he said.
Although classified as a flamethrower, the Shmel in fact launches rocket-propelled projectiles, according to Jane's Information Group, an international center for defense information. The Shmel has three modifications: the RPO-A, whose shells explode; the RPO-Z, whose shells are incendiary; and the RPO-D, whose shells create smoke.
The commandos used the RPO-A type, Shepel told reporters on July 12. Its shells contain fuel-air explosives that on detonation form a ball of fire, creating a powerful blast effect.
Shepel said the fire lasts only a split second, while exposure of three to five seconds is required to inflict burns on a person or set fire to a building. "I am saying it once again: They don't have an incendiary effect," he said.
Military experts fired an RPO-A shell at dry, wooden building in a reconstruction of what happened in Beslan, he said. The force of the impact destroyed the building but the building did not catch fire, he said.
However, Alexander Pashin, an independent arms analyst, said that any type of explosive could create a fire.
Shepel initially said in November that it was the hostage-takers who had used flamethrowers, Novaya Gazeta reported Monday.
Prosecutors began investigating whether commandos had fired flamethrowers only after Beslan residents handed them used flamethrower barrels that they found around the school. Coding on the barrels was sufficient evidence to trace the barrels to their users.
Despite Shepel's denial last week, speculation persists that troops used the incendiary PRO-Z shells. Those shells contain napalm and leave traces of luminescent phosphorus on the site of detonation, Novaya Gazeta said.
Stanislav Kesayev, the head of a commission that is investigating the school seizure for the North Ossetia regional administration, said that preliminary results of a medical study found traces of phosphorus on the bodies.
Moreover, Beslan residents said the ruins of the gym glowed at night for weeks after the end of the hostage standoff, Novaya Gazeta said.
Beslan residents attending the ongoing trial of the only suspected surviving hostage-taker in the North Ossetian Supreme Court in Vladikavkaz said they had not noticed any glowing but were convinced that the commandos had caused the fire. Aza Gumesova, whose child died in the gym, said the fire was so hot that the metal crowns on her child's teeth melted.
A federal parliamentary commission headed by Federation Council Deputy Speaker Alexander Torshin is investigating what happened at Beslan. State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said in early July that the commission would present its findings in September, but Torshin is still not ready to set a date. He said the commission needed to study the ongoing trial of the suspected hostage-taker, Nurpasha Kulayev. Torshin did not have any comment about Shepel's remarks, his spokeswoman, Valeria Shatunova, said Tuesday.
The blaze might have led to the collapse of the roof over the school's gym, burying many hostages, said Cherkasov, the Memorial activist. "It was difficult for the seriously injured people to get out. The ones who were trapped under the roof couldn't get out, and they continued to burn," he said. "If it hadn't been for the fire, many people could have gotten out and been saved."
www.vk.mesi.ru
The Shmel, classified as a flamethrower, fires rocket-propelled projectiles.
Even if RPO-A shells were used and did not ignite the fire, they could have caused the roof to collapse just as RPO-A shots destroyed a wooden house in the test by military experts, he said. Likewise, the roof could have collapsed due to explosions from bombs planted by the hostage-takers in the gym, he said.
Areas of the school where the terrorists holed up also suffered great destruction, suggesting that commandos might have aimed the flamethrowers only there, Cherkasov said.
But if the blame falls on the commandos, rights activists will demand that they act more discriminately in possible future hostage crises, Cherkasov said.
Pashin, the arms analyst, said the commandos were professionals who would have carefully chosen their weapons and refrained from firing indiscriminately if there had been a risk of civilian casualties.
Shepel also said the military experts' test "sweeps away all talk that the weapons that were used are banned ... by international agreements and conventions."
The 1980 Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, of which Russia is a signatory, bans or restricts the use of certain weapons that are deemed particularly cruel. Protocol 3 of the convention bans the targeting of civilians with incendiary weapons and restricts the use of air-delivered incendiary weapons against military targets that are close to groups of civilians.
The convention lacks verification and enforcement mechanisms, and it does not spell out any formal process for resolving compliance concerns. Initially, the convention covered only international armed conflicts, but signatories extended it to apply to internal conflicts in 2001.
Staff Writer Anatoly Medetsky reported from Moscow.
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