Briefing Paper

The Case for Bush Administration Advance Knowledge of 9-11 Attacks


by Michael C. Ruppert

© COPYRIGHT 2002, Michael C. Ruppert and FTW Publications, www.copvcia.com all rights reserved. May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]

[Ed. Note: May 31, 2002 - After commissioning a professional translation of a Russian news story used as a source in FTW reportage, we discovered the word "suicide" was not contained in warnings to the Bush Administration from Russian intelligence. Although the word "suicide" was not in the story by Izvestia, the fact remains 25 pilots training for hijack missions and attacks in the U.S. could have meant nothing other than suicide missions.]

April 22, 2002, 12:00 PDT (FTW) (Revised May 18, 2002) -- A dispassionate examination of existing reliable, open-source evidence on advance warnings of the Sept. 11 attacks provides strong and sustainable grounds to conclude the Bush Administration was in possession of sufficient advance intelligence to have prevented the attacks, had it wished to do so. With a known intelligence budget of approximately $30 billion, it must be assumed there are classified files that only add to the weight of the available data presented here.

This article will focus on four primary areas where the U.S. was in possession of information that forewarned of the attacks in sufficient detail to have prompted their prevention. Those areas are: Documented warnings received by the United States Government (USG) from foreign intelligence services; Obvious and large scale insider stock trading in the days before the attacks; Known intelligence successes achieved by the USG in its penetrations of Al Qaeda; and, the case of Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, a U.S. Naval intelligence officer jailed in Canada at the request of U.S. authorities, who -- with his attorneys -- spent months attempting to warn USG and Canadian intelligence officials of the pending attacks, only to be rebuffed and ignored.

As a last-ditch measure in August, Vreeland, the jailed and disowned intelligence operative, had two pens smuggled into his jail cell of a different color and style of ink than what was allowed by the jail. He wrote a hasty warning listing details of the attacks and then had the letter sealed into his jail property, out of reach, and promptly advised jailers that he was in possession of unapproved pens. These pens were admittedly confiscated by jail authorities, who have retained possession of them and acknowledged that Vreeland had no such pens in his jail cell after that time.

This article will not focus on a number of well-known and documented instances where the Bush Administration actively interfered with or curtailed investigations into Al Qaeda-linked groups that could have provided even more intelligence. Included in this category are reports by the BBC's Gregg Palast, the French book "The Forbidden Truth," and a lawsuit/OPR complaint filed by an active FBI agent alleging investigations that could have prevented the attacks were derailed by superiors.


WARNINGS FROM FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE

This section focuses on known advance warnings received by the U.S. government from foreign intelligence services that proved to be specific enough to have identified the date (within one week), method, targets, and perpetrators of the attacks. It will not include warnings issued to the USG that could be considered vague or non-specific. The latter includes documented warnings sent by the governments of Egypt and Israel. However, in light of the specific warnings, these additional warnings add greater weight to the argument that the Administration was in possession of sufficient information to have prevented the attacks.

As reported in the respected German daily Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on Sept. 13, the German intelligence service, the BND, warned both the CIA and Israel in June of 2001 that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture. The story specifically referred to an electronic eavesdropping system known as Echelon, wherein a number of countries tap cell phone and electronic communications in partner countries and then pool the information. The BND warnings were also passed to the United Kingdom.

No known denial by the BND of the accuracy of this story exists, and the FAZ story indicates that the information was received directly from BND sources.

According to a Sept. 14 report in the Internet newswire online.ie, German police, monitoring the phone calls of a jailed Iranian man, learned the man was telephoning USG intelligence agencies last summer to warn of an imminent attack on the WTC in the week of Sept. 9. German officials confirmed the calls to the USG for the story but refused to discuss additional details.

In August 2000 French intelligence sources confirmed a man recently arrested in Boston by the FBI was an Islamic militant and a key member of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. The FBI knew the man had been taking flying lessons at the time of his arrest and was in possession of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals, as reported by Reuters on Sept. 13.

According to a story in Izveztia on Sept. 12, Russian intelligence warned the USG that as many as 25 pilots were training for missions involving the crashing of airliners into important targets.

In an MSNBC interview on Sept. 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated he had ordered Russian intelligence to warn the USG "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent assaults on airports and government buildings before the attacks on Sept. 11.

Conclusion: From just these five press stories, then, the USG had received credible advance warnings, some from heads of state, that commercial aircraft would be hijacked by as many as 25 hijackers at airports, with Boston a strong candidate, during the week of Sept. 9. The call to Odigo would have signaled the exact day.

No known preventive measures were taken.

INSIDER TRADING

The documented pre-Sept. 11 insider trading that occurred before the attacks involved only companies hit hard by the attacks. They include United Airlines, American Airlines, Morgan Stanley, Merrill-Lynch, Axa Reinsurance, Marsh & McLennan, Munich Reinsurance, Swiss Reinsurance, and Citigroup.

In order to argue that the massive and well-documented insider trading that occurred in at least seven countries immediately before the attacks of Sept. 11 did not serve as a warning to intelligence agencies, then it is necessary to argue that no one was aware of the trades as they were occurring, and that intelligence and law enforcement agencies of most industrialized nations do not monitor stock trades in real time to warn of impending attacks. Both assertions are false. Both assertions would also ignore the fact that the current executive vice president of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for enforcement is David Doherty, a retired CIA general counsel. And also ignored is the fact that the trading in United Airlines stock -- one of the most glaring clues -- was placed through the firm Deutschebank/Alex Brown, which was headed until 1998 by the man who is now the executive director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard.

One wonders if it was a coincidence then, that Mayo Shattuck III, the head of the Alex Brown unit of Deutschebank -- which had its offices in the WTC -- suddenly resigned from a $30 million, three-year contract on Sept. 12, as reported by the New York Times and other papers.

The American exchanges that handle these trades, primarily the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE) and the NYSE, know on a daily basis what levels of put options are purchased. "Put options" are highly leveraged bets, tying up blocks of stock, that a given stock's share price will fall dramatically. To quote 60 Minutes from Sept. 19, "Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market."
It is hard to believe that they missed:

- A jump in UAL put options 90 times (not 90 percent) above normal between Sept. 6 and Sept.10, and 285 times higher than average on the Thursday before the attack. [CBS News, Sept. 26]

- A jump in American Airlines put options 60 times (not 60 percent) above normal on the day before the attacks. [CBS News, Sept. 26]

- No similar trading occurred on any other airlines. [Bloomberg Business Report, the Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT), Herzliyya, Israel citing data from the CBOE]

- Morgan Stanley saw, between Sept. 7 and Sept.10, an increase of 27 times (not 27 percent) in the purchase of put options on its shares. [ICT Report, "Mechanics of Possible Bin-Laden Insider Trading Scam," Sept. 21, citing data from the CBOE].

- Merrill-Lynch saw a jump of more than 12 times the normal level of put options in the four trading days before the attacks. [Ibid]

These trades were certainly noticed
after the attacks.

"This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you've ever seen in your entire life... This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence," said Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News, interviewed on Good Morning Texas on Sept. 20.

"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, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle," reported the Montreal Gazette on Sept. 19. The paper also wrote, "Agence France Presse, on Sept. 22, reported, 'And Germany's Bundesbank chief, Ernst Weltke, said on the sidelines of the meeting that a report of the investigation showed "bizarre" fiscal transactions prior to the attacks that could not have been chalked up to coincidence.

"Weltke said the transactions, 'could not have been planned and carried out without a certain knowledge,' particularly heavy trading in oil and gold futures."

ABC World News reported on Sept. 20, "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 U.S., to North America, to Europe."

How much money was involved? Andreas von Bulow, a former member of the German Parliament responsible for oversight of Germanys intelligence services estimated the worldwide amount at $15 billion, according to Tagesspiegel on Jan. 13. Other experts have estimated the amount at $12 billion. CBS News gave a conservative estimate of $100 million.

Not a single U.S. or foreign investigative agency has announced any arrests or developments in the investigation of these trades, the most telling evidence of foreknowledge of the attacks. This, in spite of the fact that former Security and Exchange Commission enforcement chief William McLucas told Bloomberg News that regulators would "certainly be able to track down every trade."

What is striking is that a National Public Radio report on Oct. 16 reported Britain’s Financial Services Authority had cleared bin Laden and his henchmen of insider trading. If not bin Laden, then who else had advance knowledge?

It has been standard and established USG policy to be alert and responsive to anything even remotely resembling an attack on U.S. companies and/or the economy. The word "remote" does not apply here. The possible claim by the Bush Administration that, 'Gee, we just happened to miss this,' becomes even more implausible when considering the lengths intelligence agencies go to in order to track stock trades.

Note that the Israeli Institute for Counter-Terrorism was the first entity to release a detailed report on the insider trading. That alone is prima facie evidence of a direct relationship between the financial markets and terrorist investigations.

CIA AND THE MARKETS

We can thank Fox News on Oct. 16 for breaking post 9-11 stories disclosing the use of sophisticated PROMIS software by the FBI and the Justice Department. A multitude of court records and investigative reports have established not only the reality, but the versatility of a program initially designed to incorporate data from a variety of data bases in different languages into one readable format. PROMIS has since been refined to include artificial intelligence and "back doors" inserted by intelligence agencies to allow for surreptitious retrieval and/or removal and alteration of data.

The Fox stories clearly confirmed, especially when added to stories from last summer by the Washington Times which were based on interviews with Justice Department officials, that PROMIS was used to monitor banking and financial transactions in a virtual real-time environment.

This writer has written extensively on the software. More information can be found on the Web site at http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.html.
However, one point is critical to this report. In fall 2000 I was visited in Los Angeles by two members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) national security staff. They were conducting a major investigation inside the U.S. to determine whether or not the RCMP's version of the software had been compromised. During discussions with the Mounties, I confirmed several times that the software was used to monitor stock trades in real time. A subsequent investigation led me to contact several people in Canada who had been interviewed in the same investigation. They were stockbrokers.

In a taped panel discussion, which aired March 14 on Canada's Vision-TV, I faced a panel of three Canadian experts on the issue of U.S. foreknowledge of, and possible complicity in, the 9-11 attacks. Among them was Ron Atkey, former Canadian immigration minister and the former parliamentary head of the committee charged with oversight of Canada's military and intelligence operations. Over the course of the program I made specific statements, relying not only on the RCMP interactions but also on previous investigations, that it was documented that intelligence services track stock trades in real time. On camera, I produced the business cards of the two RCMP agents. Atkey, who had not hesitated to challenge me on other points during the show, went silent.

INTELLIGENCE SUCESSES

Four basic intelligence successes need to be acknowledged here. These admitted successes, while not addressing any other still secret penetrations of the Al Qaeda network, further diminish any Bush Administration assertion that it did not know of the attacks.

On Feb. 13 United Press International terrorism correspondent Richard Sale, while covering a Manhattan trial of one of Osama bin Laden's followers, reported the National Security Agency had broken bin Laden's encrypted communications. Even if that prompted an immediate change in bin Laden's methods of communication, just six months before the attacks, the administration has consistently maintained -- and military and covert experience dictates -- that the attacks were planned for at least several years.

The FAZ story indicates that the secret eavesdropping program Echelon had been successful in securing details of the pending attacks. Echelon employs highly sophisticated computer programs capable of both voice and word recognition to filter billions of telephone conversations and locate specific targets. Assuming, as some sources indicate, Al Qaeda stopped using encrypted communications after it was known that their system was compromised, why was the NSA not able to pick up any cell phone calls or e-mails? Mohammed Atta and other alleged hijackers were known to have used cell phones. The FAZ story establishes that as late as June, Al Qaeda operatives were being tracked in this manner.

In the trial of a former Deutschebank executive Kevin Ingram, who pled guilty to laundering drug money to finance terrorist operations linked to Al Qaeda just two weeks before the 9-11 attacks, indications surfaced that the Justice Department had penetrated the terrorists’ financial network. A Nov. 16 Associated Press story by Catherine Wilson stated, "Numerous promised wire transfers never arrived, but there were discussions of foreign bankers taking payoffs to move the money to purchase weapons into the United States, said prosecutor Rolando Garcia."

Two questions are begged but unanswered. How were the wire transfers blocked and how was the Justice Department able to monitor the money flows without alerting either the bankers or the suspects?

Finally, as reported by the German paper Die Welt on Dec. 6 and by Agence France Presse on Dec. 7, Western intelligence services, including the CIA, learned after arrests in the Philippines, that Al Qaeda operatives had planned to crash commercial airliners into the WTC. Details of the plan, as reported by a number of American press outlets, were found on a computer seized during the arrests. The plan was called "operation Bojinka."

Details of the plot were disclosed publicly in 1997 in the New York trial of Ramsi Youssef for his involvement in the 1993 WTC bombing.

DELMART "MIKE"VREELAND

"I believe that, from the information I have seen,"Mike"Vreeland tried to pass information to the Canadian government that should have been passed to the U.S. government. That information had to do with the attacks of Sept. 11. Whatever other attempts were made by Vreeland and his attorneys to alert U.S. and Canadian officials of the attacks, it is clear that he did pass information about the pending attacks to his guards in August. I am willing to go to the Secretary of the Navy to determine whether or not he was actually a Navy officer.

"I know that there have been other U.S. citizens with a similar background used on missions similar to what has been alleged by Vreeland. This man fits a pattern. I would like for the Secret Service to put him on a polygraph.
" --"Mike" Osborne, a veteran former CIA case officer with 26 years of experience in counter-terrorism.

With a court record now estimated to approach 10,000 pages, the case of Delmart "Mike" Vreeland is starting to attract worldwide attention. Vreeland, with a growing amount of evidence admitted into court record in Toronto, Canada, claims to be a former U.S. Naval lieutenant assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence. He was jailed in Canada -- at the request of U.S. authorities -- in December 2000 after returning from Moscow.

Although Canadian authorities initially alleged vague fraud charges against him and also held him on an extradition warrant alleging credit card fraud in Michigan, the actual motive for his arrest now seems to be something quite different. All Canadian charges against Vreeland were dropped this March and he has been granted political refugee status in Canada until the extradition issues are resolved.

Vreeland's position is he returned from Russia to meet with a Canadian and a Russian intelligence operative, and had intended to hand over a sealed pouch containing intelligence documents. When the handoff was compromised and the Canadian did not show for the Toronto meet, Vreeland opened the pouch and looked at some of the documents. Those documents, which he later had translated, gave specific warnings of the pending WTC attacks that took place nine months later. Again, on its face, since these documents were in a sealed intelligence pouch, this indicates intelligence operatives were aware of the contents because they had placed them there originally.

According to both Vreeland and his lawyers, as reported in numerous interviews with this writer and other members of the FTW staff immediately after his arrest, Vreeland began making urgent attempts to alert both Canadian and U.S. intelligence officials of the coming danger.

After eight months of unsuccessful attempts to have either Canadian or U.S. intelligence services debrief him, Vreeland wrote a desperate, last-ditch warning in August. Through means he will not disclose, he acquired two high-tech Pilot water-based pens with light blue ink and used them to write the letter. The only pens permitted by Canadian jail authorities were oil-based, dark blue Bic pens.

Immediately after writing the letter, Vreeland notified his jailers that he had pens which might be considered contraband. A Sept. 17 letter from the Ministry of Correctional Services was entered as Exhibit "M" into court records on Oct. 7, along with Vreeland's warning letter which had been opened on Sept. 14 and marked as Exhibit "N." The letter states, "On August 13, 2001 inmate Vreeland's corridor #2 was searched and as far as we know 2 blue ink pens were removed from his cell because they were considered contraband. There is no written record of them being placed in his personal property. He did submit a request to have them returned to him on August 14, 2001, but was denied."

Since the ink on the warning letter, if tested, will match the ink in the confiscated pens, there can be no doubt that the letter was written a month before the attacks.

In an interview with this writer published on April 4, Vreeland clearly stated his belief that Al Qaeda operations had been completely penetrated by U.S. intelligence services. That belief is supported by a statement in his warning letter.

The statement, following a list of potential targets that included the WTC, the Pentagon and the White House said, "Let one happen, stop the rest." Such a statement could only imply complete penetration or compromise of the terrorist cells perpetrating the attacks.

Compelling evidence continues to grow that Vreeland was, in fact, a U.S. Navy officer. On Jan. 10 from open court with a court reporter recording the conversation, his attorneys placed a speaker-phone call to the Pentagon. A Pentagon operator, after checking a military database, confirmed Vreeland was a U.S. Navy officer and provided an office listing and a telephone number for his office. In addition, redacted and incomplete military records provided by the Pentagon to the Canadian courts indicate Vreeland had a service record of more than 1,200 pages.

This is difficult to reconcile with the U.S. Navy's assertion that Vreeland was discharged as a seaman recruit after four months of unsatisfactory service in 1986.

No press entity has covered the Vreeland case more than FTW. This writer has traveled twice to Toronto, sat in on court proceedings, and retained the services of a Canadian correspondent to cover the case. I have interviewed Vreeland personally and conducted numerous interviews with his attorneys. Greta Knutzen, FTW's Canadian correspondent, has also interviewed Vreeland and his attorneys, as well as Vreeland's mother. Knutzen has attended every court proceeding since January. All of our previous reporting on the case can be located on the Internet at www.copvcia.com. "Mike" Vreeland believes that if he is successfully extradited to the U.S., he will be assassinated. Previous press stories concerning Vreeland's criminal past and a criminal arrest record fail to account for the fact that, as an undercover operative who targeted organized crime and terrorist organizations, a criminal record would have been necessary to give him credibility with organizations that previously demonstrated capabilities to retrieve law enforcement records. They also fail to account for an Oct. 2, 1986 Los Angeles Times story that lists Vreeland as a non-criminal witness to a major cocaine bust carried out by LAPD investigators known to have contacts with USG intelligence services.

There is much about Vreeland's past that is objectionable, questionable, or both. But even in a worst-case scenario, nothing in his past explains how he was able to write a detailed warning of the attacks before they occurred, and why the intelligence services of both Canada and the U.S. ignored attempts to warn them while both Vreeland and his attorneys were banging down their doors.

CONCLUSION

There is clear and substantial evidence to suggest that the Bush Administration had sufficient foreknowledge of the attacks of Sept. 11 to have prevented them. Rather than viewing each of the four listed areas as a separate piece of evidence, they should be considered as a body, in the exact same way exhibits presented to a jury in a criminal trial are viewed as a body. By viewing the evidence in this manner, an unavoidable conclusion is reached -- the USG knew 25 hijackers during the week of Sept. 9 were going to use United and American airlines commercial planes, some of them likely originating in Boston, to attack the WTC and the Pentagon. A multitude of press stories and intelligence reports indicate the WTC would have been the primary target.

Given the financial commitments made during insider trading activity that occurred immediately before the attacks involving businesses that were directly damaged by the attacks, the threats had clearly moved from the realm of speculation to reality. Why else would mysterious investors have risked millions of dollars to purchase the put options? There is compelling evidence to suggest these trades were noted by the CIA and other USG entities.

Recently, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., has been widely criticized in the mainstream press for raising the need for a Congressional investigation to answer some of these obvious questions. This, in spite of the fact that popular reaction indicates a different sentiment. An opinion poll, conducted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution just a day after McKinney's remarks received wide public attention in a Washington Post story dated April 12, was pulled after poll numbers showed that 51 percent of the respondents agreed with McKinney.

The people seem to recognize and agree with the opinion of former CIA officer "Mike" Osborne who says, "I think that the U.S. government needs to get behind McKinney's questions because her agenda is truth and justice, and nothing else."

[Ed. Note: Special Thanks to Kyle Hence for meticulous research on insider trading acoverage in the major media and to Tom Flocco for diligent work on the Kevin Ingram case.]



PROFITS OF DEATH -- INSIDER TRADING AND 9-11

by Tom Flocco - Edited by Michael C. Ruppert


[© Copyright 2001. From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be recopied, distributed or posted on the worldwide web for non-profit purposes only.]

FTW, December 6, 2001 -- On October 9th, FTW broke a story on insider trading connected to the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center that sparked worldwide controversy. In that story we reported how the Israeli Herzliyya Institute for Counterterrorism had documented that unknown individuals -- with accurate foreknowledge of the attacks -- had purchased an obvious and unusually large number of "put" options on United and American Airlines shortly before the attacks.

Additional companies hit hard by the insider trading included Axa Re(insurance) and Munich Re as well as American investment giants Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.

Put options are essentially a bet that a stock's price will fall abruptly. The seller, having entered into a time-specific contract with a buyer, does not need to own the actual shares at the time the contract is purchased. Therefore, if a holder of the put option has a contract to sell a stock such as American Airlines for (e.g.) $100 a share on a Friday and the stock falls to $50 on Wednesday, they can purchase the stock, sell it on Friday and double their money. The person on the other end of the contract (the call) has an obligation to buy the shares at the agreed upon price. The bank handling the transaction as a broker is the only entity knowing the identities of both parties.

FTW also revealed that the A.B. Brown (Alex Brown) investment arm of the banking giant Deutschebank/A.B. Brown had been headed until 1998 by the man who is now the Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency - A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. In fact, Krongard is but one name in a long history of CIA interconnections to stock trading and the world's financial markets. We also discussed, in detail, the evidence indicating that the CIA and other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time for the purpose of identifying potential attacks of any nature that might damage the U.S. economy.

The original FTW story is located at:

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/10_09_01_krongard.html.

Critics of FTW's initial story - not having read any of five related stories dating back to an October 2000 piece on PROMIS software - claimed that we had not made the links to establish culpability. But we knew that the links were there, that our case was solid, and that new evidence would not go undiscovered for long.

Now, investigative reporter Tom Flocco digs deep and strikes pay dirt in a three-part series that reveals not only deeper links between the CIA, Wall Street and the insider trades of 9-11, but also discloses that a key executive at Deutschebank - an American - became, just weeks before the attacks, a convicted felon. His crime: conspiracy to launder drug money to arrange the purchase of U.S. weapons - in association with two Pakistanis who also attempted to acquire nuclear bomb components - for use by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. - MCR

CIA Does Not Deny Stock Monitoring Outside U.S.

(Part I in a series)

In a returned phone call from the Central Intelligence Agency, press spokesman Tom Crispell denied that the CIA was monitoring "real-time," pre-September 11, stock option trading activity within United States borders using such software as the Prosecutor's Management Information System (PROMIS).  

"That would be illegal. We only operate outside the United States," the intelligence official said.

However, when asked whether the CIA had been using PROMIS beyond American borders to scrutinize 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."

Extensive media reporting confirms that investors at Deutschebank-Alex Brown and other global financial entities may have profited from prior knowledge of the attacks while purchasing disproportionate pre-attack put option contracts on targeted U.S. airlines and related insurance or investment firms. All of these firms suffered serious losses resulting from the September 11th attacks and their stocks abruptly plummeted.

Confirmation that the CIA or other U.S. intelligence agencies were monitoring financial markets and had seen these trades before the attacks would have staggering implications for thousands of victims' families.

The CIA official also declined to comment on the actual capabilities of PROMIS.  The highly technical software has been described as a system that "interfaces with any database...as police can input an alleged terrorist's name or credit card, and the software will provide details of the person's movements through purchases...," according to an 11-10-01 Toronto Sun report.

The importance of PROMIS is that it is not only capable of interfacing with a wide variety of data bases in different computer languages and then integrating the data, but it has also been modified for intelligence purposes. It has then been sold throughout the world by spy agencies through third parties to clients such as banks and investment houses envious of its unique capabilities. One key modification by agencies such as the CIA and Mossad - not disclosed to most users -- is a secret "back door" that permits those with the right codes to enter databases undetected, retrieve and/or alter information, and leave without a trace. PROMIS has been extensively reported as being used throughout the world's financial markets because of its versatility in facilitating international transactions.

Further clouding the issue of pre-attack stock screening by U.S. intelligence, the Canadian daily revealed that U.S. police said many of the suspected terrorists were apprehended (and detained) "through use of the state-of-the-art computer software program PROMIS."

In March 2000, CIA director George J. Tenet told the Senate that Osama bin Laden's group (Al Q'aeda) was "embracing the opportunities offered by recent leaps in information technology." A FOX News story and stories in FTW disclosed in November that Osama bin Laden was believed to have the software.

The issue of CIA monitoring of stock trades follows on the heels of wide reports indicating that investigators are carefully probing the insider trading with its resultant profits, reported to be in the 10's of millions of dollars -- some of which a Deutschebank investor has yet to claim.

A promis is a promis

Crispell also declined comment when asked whether the Treasury Department or FBI had questioned CIA Executive Director and former Deutschebank-Alex Brown CEO, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, about CIA monitoring of financial markets using PROMIS and his former position as overseer of Brown's "private client" relations. [Note: Krongard stayed with A.B. Brown to head "private client" operations after it was acquired by Banker's Trust in 1997. As Krongard was leaving in 1998 to join the CIA as counselor to Director George Tenet, Banker's Trust was acquired by Deutschebank. Banker's Trust had been previously criticized by the U.S. Senate and regulators for money laundering.  Krongard was promoted to Executive Director at CIA in March 2001. - MCR]

Wide reports -- including a 9/28/01 story in the Asian Wall Street Journal and a 10/1/01 story in The Guardian -- indicate that investigators are checking Deutschebank's alleged links to Saudi "private banking," terrorist bank accounts, and $2.5 million in unclaimed United Airlines (UAL) put options profits; however, no government acknowledgement had ever been given of CIA's alleged use of PROMIS software prior to the attacks.

In a recent phone conversation, when asked about alleged terrorist ties to Deutschebank and potential pre-attack CIA trade monitoring via PROMIS, Treasury Department spokesman Rob Nichols remarked, "This is clearly an interesting line of questioning regarding conflicts of interest."

However, news searches indicate that no member of Congress has publicly questioned whether wealthy terrorist-connected Saudi nationals participated in the private client operations of Deutschebank-Alex Brown. Osama bin Laden and almost all of the alleged 9-11 hijackers are of Saudi nationality. Also, no member of Congress expressed public interest in asking Krongard about whether or not the CIA affected "real-time" pre-attack trade monitoring using PROMIS software at any location.

[Note: Under a program known as Echelon, the governments of the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand routinely circumvent prohibitions on domestic electronic spying by having the agencies of the other governments do it for them. - MCR]

Michael Ruppert, editor and publisher of From The Wilderness (FTW) newsletter (www.copvcia.com), has been interviewed by both the House and Senate for his expertise on illegal covert CIA operations. He said recently that, "It is well documented that the CIA has long monitored such (suspicious or unusual) trades -- in real time -- as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves contrary to U.S. interests."

Ruppert was the first to point out after 9-11 that CIA Executive Director Buzzy Krongard has extensive past ties to Deutschebank-Alex Brown.  Ruppert added, "There is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific [criminal] foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks...and the firm which was used to place put options on UAL stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three position at the CIA."

Ruppert also confirmed that two October 17 calls to the FBI resulted in spokespersons declining to give their names after revealing that "the FBI has discontinued use of the PROMIS software." Moreover, on October 24, Justice Department spokesperson Loren Pfeifle declined to answer any questions about where, when, or how PROMIS had been used and would only say, "I can confirm that the DOJ has discontinued use of the program." This followed almost 17 years of denials by the FBI and the Department of Justice -- in court and under oath -- that they used the software at all in a law enforcement or intelligence capacity.

Krongard's current lofty intelligence community position, combined with his prior leadership of a financial institution allegedly connected to terrorist hijacker bank accounts [see Part II], suspicious UAL options contracts, and "private banking" is so controversial that it has not as yet sparked any official investigation. That said, the evidence is substantial enough to potentially ee the prior-knowledge issue -- if Congress chooses to act.

And while Treasury Department official Rob Nichols agreed that unresolved conflict of interest questions remain, the CIA Executive Director is still currently charged with supervision of the U.S. intelligence investigation of his former firm and its "private banking" operations.

Reuters has reported that Krongard "was [also] involved in setting up the CIA experiment into investing in high-tech companies with the goal of acquiring innovative technology for its own use."

Commenting on the CIA's venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, started in 1999 to encourage development of private-sector technologies for use in the intelligence world, Krongard said on August 1, 2001 -- just 5 weeks before the Trade Center attacks -- "I think In-Q-Tel's a wonderful model...in accessing the capabilities of the private sector."

On October 16, Fox News reported that, according to sources, accused Russian spy and FBI agent Robert Hanssen sold high-tech PROMIS software to Russia, and that Osama bin Laden allegedly purchased it from Russian organized crime sources.

Fox reported that, "Government officials suspect bin Laden may have the highly sophisticated U.S. government software that has been used by several other governments, including the United States, for classified intelligence and law enforcement information."

The admission by U.S. government officials that PROMIS was widely used by a number of governments further blurs the pre-attack stock monitoring issue since intelligence officials will likely continue to decline comment, save for closed-door congressional oversight hearings or challenges by those victims' families choosing to bypass settlements adjudicated by the Attorney General's office in favor of direct intervention by the courts.

The buck stops where?


Tom Crispell, the CIA official, was cooperative while attempting to maintain intelligence confidentiality in the face of what he termed as "ongoing investigations surrounding the Twin Towers tragedies by the CIA, FBI, Justice, and Treasury Departments." However, this was in great contrast to an FBI spokesperson who refused to offer either his first or last name, while declining comment on any matter related to events of September 11.

During a series of calls, some spokespersons quickly attempted to defer and deflect questions to another government agency, i.e. "We don't deal with that issue. Call the other [entity]."

However, many would agree, given the evidence, that the 9-11 terrorism is closely linked to economic issues. President Bush has stated that this is "economic warfare." Yet few appear to be questioning an apparent paucity of critical information sharing among key government agencies on the issue.

As U.S. investigators retrace the financial trails connecting the Twin Towers, terrorist hijackers and their accomplices, many of whom may still be in the country, evidence is being turned up by FBI, CIA, Justice, Treasury and NSA that does involve global banking conglomerate Deutschebank-Alex Brown.

$2.5 million unclaimed UAL investor profits

For example, according to a 10-19-2001 Wall Street Journal report, an unnamed investor purchased 2,000 United Airlines (UAL) put option contracts through Deutsche Bank-Alex Brown on September 6 -- betting the stock would shortly plummet.  And USA Today reported that an individual purchased 810 UAL puts on August 6.

A Baron's source claimed on 10-8-2001 that the pre-attack UAL order placed through Deutsche Bank was for 2,500 contracts which were "split into 500 chunks each, directing each order to different U.S. exchanges around the country simultaneously."

According to San Francisco Chronicle reporters Christian Berthelsen and Scott Winokur a source familiar with the UAL trades said investors have yet to claim $2.5 million in profits on contracts purchased before United airliners crashed into a New York Trade Tower and a deserted Pennsylvania field on September 11.

The Chronicle source also identified Deutschebank-Alex Brown as the investment firm used to purchase some of the UAL options; and Rohini Pragasam, a bank spokeswoman, declined to comment on the transaction.

The source (who requested anonymity) said, "Usually, if someone has a windfall like that, you take the money and run.  Whoever did this thought the Exchange [NYSE] would not be closed for four days. This smells real bad."

The German news weekly Der Spiegel revealed that Deutschebank also handled accounts worth about $100 million for Osama bin Laden's family. These were part of 10 accounts it suspected were linked to terrorists or terrorist activities and which it later handed over to German authorities after the attacks, according to a report in Britain's The Guardian. But no further comments have been forthcoming from the financial giant.

German Central Bank President Ernst Welteke said a study -- concerning principal hijack subjects residing in Germany and unusual patterns in short-selling of insurance, airline and other financial company shares -- pointed to "terrorism insider trading" in those stocks.

The SEC Is Investigating

A phone interview with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) press spokesman John Nester, of the Washington, DC office, revealed that the Commission, "has already forwarded a general request to Deutschebank-Alex Brown and other investment firms for unspecified information related to the suspicious put option contracts placed prior to the attacks on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon." But the spokesman declined comment regarding the identities of complying banks or the contents of any information obtained.

Nester augmented his response by adding that "according to SEC Associate Director of Enforcement Bill Baker -- who just spoke on a panel outside New York last week -- our SEC probe is much broader than investigations made by countries in Europe (who also lost citizens), many of whom have already closed their financial investigations of investment banks like Deutschebank." No results of those probes have been made public.

While the SEC media director said "the investigation is still ongoing with no current conclusions," Nester (speaking for the SEC), had difficulty explaining the job description of current New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Executive Vice President for Enforcement, David P. Doherty. He would only say that the NYSE "regulates itself as an SRO or self-regulating organization...." This vague answer is all the more provocative because Doherty is a retired General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Nester added, "The SEC has oversight responsibility regarding the NYSE, and we are also working with Justice, Treasury, and the FBI, having set up professional point men at each firm we are looking at -- so we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time we call a company [related to the attacks] to get an answer to a question."

The "reinvent the wheel" statement raised an eyebrow regarding the level of corporate cooperation in the investigation, although Nester declined to add further comment.

In Spite of CIA Ties the NYSE Is Little Help

When asked about the status of the investigation into the disproportionate pre-attack stock option trades involving United and American Airlines, Merrill Lynch, Marsh and McLennan Insurance, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and American Express, etc. -- all icons of American capitalism -- NYSE Communications Director Ray Pellecchia said, "We don't even confirm that there is an ongoing investigation."

"We report to the SEC as a matter of course," Pellecchia added. But after being referred to as a "persistent piece of work," this writer asked Pellecchia to discuss Doherty's role in the investigations.  He said, "We stand by this statement."

And after pressing for information about what the NYSE is actually doing to investigate the suspicious trades on behalf of thousands of victims' families who may be concerned about the "prior-knowledge" issue, Pellecchia still declined to confirm that Doherty's enforcement office had even sent a report to the SEC.

When asked why so many former key CIA executives currently hold, or have held in the past, top level executive management positions connected in some way to the stock market via either the SEC, NYSE, or other investment banking entities, Pellecchia replied tersely, "I am quite aware of Mr. Doherty's background and experience."

Pellecchia also declined to discuss anything related to current CIA Executive Director A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard and his past relationship with Alex Brown.

Expecting Miracles?

Questions remain as to who will ultimately take center stage in investigating conflicts of interest or the real-time monitoring of world financial markets by U.S. intelligence entities to protect national security; let alone terrorist ties to wealthy Saudi private clients at global financial institutions having direct access (via correspondent banking relationships) to U.S. banks.

For 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.

Profits of Death (A Special FTW Series)

Part II -- Trading with the Enemy

by Tom Flocco - Edited by Michael C. Ruppert

[© Copyright 2001. From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be recopied, distributed or posted on the worldwide web for non-profit purposes only as long as this Copyright statement appears intact.]

[Editor's Notes - A disclosed in Part I and in previous stories by FTW, an abnormal amount of "put" options - bets that a stock price would suddenly fall - were placed on United Air Lines and American Airlines in the days before the attacks of September 11th. These were only two of the companies affected by the attacks which experienced highly suspicious trading in their shares. In Part I we described how put options work. They are basically futures contracts that obligate the "put buyer" to purchase the shares at a price that might be well above the market price when the contract matures. Heavy purchases of put options before a dramatic drop in a particular share price are clear-cut indicators of criminal activity based upon insider trading.

Last month we identified the purchasing end of the contract incorrectly as a "call." That person, unhappily obligated to pay too high a price for the shares, is better described as the "put buyer."

Investigative journalist Tom Flocco also revealed dramatic new links to the growing mountain of evidence that puts the Central Intelligence Agency at the heart of America's and the world's financial markets. In particular he showed that the firm which had handled many of the put option purchases on United Airlines -- Deutschebank-Alex Brown -- was once headed by the man who is now the Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard.

I would like to thank and acknowledge British investigative journalist/writer David Guyatt for first bringing to my attention, Krongard's past relations with Alex Brown.

Part II of this series is easily one of the most damning pieces of investigative journalism that I have ever seen or participated in. In it Tom Flocco will now reveal even darker direct connections between the worlds of high finance, terrorism, and intelligence. And he will reveal some names that will shock you. - Mike Ruppert]

Part II -- Trading with the Enemy

FTW, December 11, 2001 -- No member of Congress is publicly, as yet, questioning the hazy areas of "private client banking" -- repeatedly described by the U.S. Senate and Justice Department as being a vehicle for drug money laundering -- and apparent conflicts of interest linked to documented 9/11-related insider trading in United Air Lines stock. The trades were placed through one of the world's three largest pools of investment capital, Deutschebank-Alex Brown.

This, in spite of the fact that there is mounting evidence of "real-time" monitoring of stock market trades by intelligence entities (See Part I at www.copvcia.com). The recent indictment of a former Deutschebank executive, Kevin Ingram -- who has since pled guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money and arrange the sale of U.S.-made arms to individuals in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where U.S. military personnel are currently at risk -- raises further alarm. Although Ingram was not at Deutschebank when the insider trades were placed, his history (as well as a star-studded cast of international financiers connected to the CIA) reveals a frighteningly dark saga showing the degree to which dirty money influences "the Street" and the world's financial markets. It also provides more evidence that the CIA knew of the September attacks in advance.

Ingram is also an acknowledged former protege of former Goldman Sachs CEO and current New Jersey Senator, Jon Corzine who sits on the Senate Banking Committee. He has also worked closely with another former Goldman Sachs, CEO - Robert Rubin, who served as Secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton.

Related to Deutschebank-Alex Brown's role as the broker for the UAL and other suspicious trades, Ernst Welteke, President of the Bundesbank (Germany's central bank), said recently that a Bundesbank study pointed strongly to "terrorism insider trading" in the days leading up to September's carnage in the U.S., according to the London Observer on September 23, 2001.

But reporter John H. Berlin also made the ominous prediction that "their decision [to investigate] provided by far the most authoritative support for persistent rumors that the terrorists could have funded their next strike with huge [insider trading] profits from the [first] attacks." This seems an unlikely proposition since experts acknowledge that attacks of the magnitude of 9-11 take years to plan and perhaps millions of "up-front" dollars to finance.

Other motives, such as generating funds for covert operations by the CIA, have also not been ruled out.  Nor has the possibility been excluded that Deutschebank, which handled key but unquestionably suspicious transactions, was generating money for itself by placing "put" options on United Airlines and then putting the profits back into its own tills -- perhaps to "prop up" poorly performing divisions at the global banking giant.

This last scenario is a possibility, given the fact that Deutschebank has been demonstrated in Part I of this series to have intelligence links that might have forewarned the bank of the attacks.

There is precedent for the "slush fund" theory, as Deutschebank's U.S. affiliate, Bankers Trust (BT) pled guilty to it in March 1999.  BT diverted $19.1 million from "unclaimed" funds to prop up profitability at other units, according to a May 30, 2001 New York Times report.

The revelations referred to the growing scope of BT's misuse of unclaimed client funds, and on the laxity of state and federal bank regulation of BT by claiming "a closer look at the scheme reveals that it goes well beyond the transgressions the bank owned up to."

And as the investigation was heating up, a high-ranking BT executive with long-time intelligence ties had to be thinking that it was getting near time to get out of Dodge City.

Times reporter Tim O'Brien said that it was the auditors at the NY State Comptroller's Office who uncovered BT's diversion of funds after noticing that BT's unclaimed account dropped from $10.2 million in 1993 to only $3.9 million in 1994; so they started requesting documents which the BT executives subsequently refused to provide.

According to analysis by lawyer Matthew Lee, executive director of Inner City Press, it was not the primary regulators of BT -- the Federal Reserve (Fed) and the NY State Banking Department (NYSBD) -- who discovered the fraud. And O'Brien and Lee question why the limited-budget NY Comptroller's office detected the scam; and whether the Fed and NYSBD just swept their findings under the rug to keep them out of the public eye.

The revelations led O'Brien to conclude that when the Fed became aware of the scope of the Comptroller's investigation and what was being turned up, it ordered BT to find a merger partner (maybe even suggesting Deutschebank) and then took the investigation out of the hands of the (uncontrollable) NY State Comptroller.

Buzzy the Banker Joins the CIA

According to a CIA press release, in February 1998, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, former CEO of Deutschebank-Alex Brown (the nation's oldest investment banking firm) and Vice Chairman of the Board of Bankers Trust, left BT and the investment banking community to join the CIA full time.

As a matter of fact, the Washington Post reported that Krongard helped engineer the $2.5 billion BT merger with Deutschebank shortly before sliding over to the intelligence side of the stage.

Buzzy (as his friends call him) had served a long-term "moonlighting" stint as a "consultant" to a series of CIA Directors.  He left his banking position to become counselor to CIA Director George Tenet just 11 months prior to the final $19.1 million guilty plea by BT, which was by then a subsidiary of Deutschebank.

Given Krongard's lofty intelligence and investment banking positions, there are no reports available dealing with important questions concerning his knowledge about such relevant issues as the disposition of "unclaimed" funds, monitoring of global stock trades for national security purposes, and wealthy "private client" operations -- let alone whether the developing investigation into BT fraud had necessitated his, "leaving town just ahead of the sheriff," as it were.

Yet Krongard has since risen to new heights, having received a March 16, 2001 Bush Administration promotion President George W, Bush to Executive Director, the number three position at the intelligence agency.

Ingram's Last Trade

On August 28, 2001, 14 days before the Trade Center attacks, former Deutschebank senior bond investment trader Kevin Ingram, pled guilty in a $2.2 million dollar money laundering conspiracy, resulting from a government sting operation investigating the illegal sale of night vision goggles, Beretta machine pistols, M-16 machine guns with silencers, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortars, surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), TOW anti-tank missiles, and Stinger missiles, according to court papers examined by the New York Post.

The next day, Alert Global Media, Inc., publishers of Money Laundering Alert, reported that Ingram "pled guilty on August 28 to money laundering conspiracy as part of an agreement [plea bargain] with the U.S. government, which will drop other charges and receive Ingram's testimony against two co-defendants from Egypt and Pakistan." Some published reports say that both of the other defendants were from (current U.S. ally) Pakistan.

"Bin Laden has long-standing contacts with senior officials [of Pakistan]...," said Andrew Pearce of the Rand Institute in Washington. The Times of India also reported on June 17, 2001 that one of three Pakistani middlemen working illegally with Ingram asked undercover agents about the chances of obtaining components for nuclear weapons.

Earlier (July 7) Associated Press reported that "Kevin Ingram, 42, an investment counselor at the World Trade Center, was indicted June 28 on three counts of trying to conceal at least $350,000 and one count of violating the Arms Export Act."

"Ingram allegedly laundered $100,000 and $250,000 for federal agents, both times taking a 9 percent cut before being asked to launder the $2.2 million," according to court papers examined by the New York Post in a June 15, 2001 report.

AP added that "Ingram is also named in two other counts...for trying to launder $2.2 million in illegal arms sales. Ingram, out on $250,000 bond, faces a maximum of 100 years in prison if convicted of all charges."

Arrested with Ingram were two New Jersey-based Pakistanis who had offered to make a partial payment for the arms "in the form of heroin," also according to both AP and the New York Post.

A September 29, 2001 Bloomberg News/St. Louis Post Dispatch report revealed that Ingram had angered his judge in July by failing to disclose his Swiss bank account.  Bloomberg reported that the Swiss account contained $1,086,000 in cash and 75,800 shares of Carver Bancorp, Inc. worth $650,000.

"He was afraid of the implications, and he just panicked," attorney Richard Lubin told U.S. Magistrate Judge Ann E. Vitunac at a bail hearing on July 10. Vitunac raised Ingrams's bond to $1.25 million and ordered him jailed two days later.

Curiously, however, given the terrorism that has transpired, federal agents refused to divulge the name of the country that would have received the arms according to court papers examined by the New York Post and others.  However, the documents confirmed that the defendants "referred to their foreign arms buyer...as a well-known, former military official who wanted to partially pay for the weapons with heroin."

On June 15, 2001, the New York Post, reported that experts said the most likely buyers connected to the former Deutschebank securities trader and the two Pakistanis were current U.S. ally Pakistan or Osama bin Laden.

The Associated Press reported on 12/1/01 that Ingram had been sentenced to 18 months plus two years probation and a $20,000 fine on the money laundering charges in this case. All other charges were dropped in the plea bargain. AP quoted Ingram as saying at his sentencing hearing, "I made a horrible mistake and I did something wrong. I'm very sorry about it, sorry for my family." Ingram's sentence will likely be served at a minimum security facility in Fairton, New Jersey.

Interesting confirmation of the U.S. government's familiarity with banking operations connected to terrorist activities was revealed in an 11/16/01 AP story by Catherine Wilson. In describing events in a Florida prosecution of Egyptians connected to Ingram's case she wrote, "Numerous promised wire transfers never arrived, but there were discussions of foreign bankers taking payoffs to move the money to purchase weapons into the United States, said [federal] prosecutor Rolando Garcia." This is yet another clear indication that intelligence agencies routinely monitor banking transactions in terrorist-related cases. It has not been disclosed whether Ingram's plea bargain produced testimony in this case


In spite of these revelations, no reporter or government official has asked or disclosed how many times Ingram had laundered money or completed arms shipments before he was finally nabbed.  The extensive array of military hardware in the possession of the Taliban and al Q'aeda beg this question.

A "Trader's" Powerful Friends

Deutschebank-Alex Brown's role in brokering the insider trades that scream foreknowledge of the attacks further provides a common denominator -- given the activities and histories of key executives at the highest levels of the world's financial markets. Ingram's history speaks of access to power and financial policy making at the highest levels. Not only was he an associate of Robert Rubin before Rubin left Goldman Sachs to become Clinton's Treasury Secretary, he has had ongoing relationships with Corzine, who also sits on the Senate's Subcommittee on Securities and Investment -- a subcommittee which should be investigating the insider trading.

Prior to working for Deutschebank, Ingram was a highly placed executive with the investment bank Goldman Sachs. Both Rubin and Corzine have served as CEOs at Goldman. Rubin currently sits on the board of Citigroup -- a bank which has been cited for drug money laundering by the U.S. government and which (May 2001) purchased a Mexican bank (Banamex) which has now lost two suits and one appeal over press reports that its former owner, Roberto Hernandez, was a world-class drug money launderer. Hernandez currently sits on the board at Citigroup as a result of the buyout. So too does former CIA Director John Deutch. (See FTW: Vol. IV, No. 3 - May 31, 2001 or visit www.copvcia.com.)

Kevin Ingram joined Goldman Sachs in 1988 after a brief stint at Lehman Brothers, and by 1992 was promoted to run Goldman's Collateralized Mortgage Obligations desk, overseeing all trading of mortgage and asset-backed securities, according to the New York Observer. Mortgage trading has long been suspected of being a vehicle for the laundering of "hot" money.

In Black Enterprise (BE) magazine's 1992 "Top 25 Blacks On Wall Street," Ingram was said to have left his (nine-year) high profile Goldman Sachs treasury securities and options desk position in 1996 to head Deutschebank's U.S. mortgage-backed securities department -- and ultimately their global securities operations in 1998.

BE added that "at Deutschebank, Ingram and his team of 25 professionals structure and issue securities for an international clientele, including...high net-worth individuals. These deals can range from $1 million to several billion dollars."

No member of the House or Senate has even broached the subject of hearings to question either Ingram or recent Deutschebank-Alex Brown Vice Chairman and current CIA Executive Director A.B. Krongard as to whether they dealt with any wealthy Middle Easterners or Saudis in particular. Almost all of the September 11 hijackers were of Saudi nationality. Since both men had high supervisory positions connected to the secretive "private client" operations of Deutschebank, and Deutschebank handled the insider trades, this is an obvious course of inquiry.

Ingram's position at Deutschebank became tenuous when the bond market crashed in 1998 and the protŽgŽ of Corzine and Rubin likely felt insecure. The tumbling bond market combined with periodic absences where "he would sometimes go incommunicado for days -- unusual for someone who ran a trading desk and was responsible for open positions of $7 billion and more."  Deutschebank asked for his resignation in September 1999, according to the New York Observer.

The Reverend Jackson to the Rescue


From Fox-TV News' Bill O'Reilly to well-experienced citizen researchers with monikers like "Uncle Bill, Alamo Girl, and John Huang2" (who post startling, yet often under-publicized findings on grass-roots websites like Jim Robinson's "Free Republic"), evidence of "shakedowns" related to the race-card continue to surface -- even when connected to terrorism.

Ingram turned to "Rev. Jesse Jackson's Wall Street Project [for help with the financial settlement of his resignation process]. The Wall Street Project is a Rainbow Coalition-sponsored organization that pushes for increased minority hiring on the Street," according to the New York Observer. And with the specter of a racially-charged lawsuit looming, Deutschebank ultimately settled with Jackson and Ingram for an undisclosed multi-million dollar figure in February 2000.

According to Observer sources, Ingram then made a contribution to Rainbow Push of "around" $100,000 -- as a fiscal tribute to his benefactor.

The "Blind Trust" of a Senatorial Patron?

After the February 2000 Deutschebank settlement, Ingram moved on, raising funds for a soon to-go-bankrupt dot-com company called TruMarkets. Astonishingly, some of TruMarkets $30 million seed money came from the blind trust of Ingram's former Goldman Sachs patron, U.S. Senator Jon Corzine, according to the New York Observer of 11/29/01.  

But federal prosecutors and fellow Senators have never questioned whether Corzine was aware that investigators had been targeting the former Deutschebank executive at the same time regarding money laundering of illegal narcotics proceeds (both drugs and cash) to support the unlawful purchase of U.S. arms to sell to Muslim terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.


It is also a reach to wonder why Corzine -- who took office in January 2001 -- would not have been aware of a Federal banking investigation into dealings with terrorists that had been engineered by a former associate to whom he had been a mentor. It was during this period of time that an undercover agent began holding a series of meetings with Ingram in which Ingram let it be known that "funds coming in from arms sales needed to be laundered," again according to the New York Observer.

Larger questions remain as to whether strings were pulled for Ingram by influential individuals at a time when the prison population has exploded into a cottage industry full of poor and middle class Americans convicted for possession or use of small amounts of drugs. Most of these people -- like Ingram -- are minorities.

Neither Ingram nor his lawyer would comment or return calls. And no one has successfully interviewed the prosecutors regarding decisions which influenced what most would consider to be incredibly soft treatment, given the nature of the charges and what happened on September 11.

That there is serious interest or enough courage to seek answers about prior knowledge of the attacks from Deutschebank-linked key players and associates under their supervision by America's elected legislators is not even remotely assured at present.

Tom Flocco is a freelance writer and researcher.  (email: TomFlocco@cs.com)

Previous stories in this series:

- Part I of this series is located at: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/12_06_01_death_profits_pt1.html

- Part III of this series is located at: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/01_09_02_death_profits_pt3.html


THE PROFITS OF DEATH -
Part III in a Special FTW
Series on Insider Trading and September 11th

ALL ROADS LEAD TO DEUSTCHEBANK AND HARKEN ENERGY, W's OWN 1991 INSIDER TRADING SCAM - THE MOTHER OF ALL ENRONS

by Tom Flocco and Michael C. Ruppert

Edited by Michael C. Ruppert

[© Copyright 2002, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be recopied, distributed or posted on the worldwide web for non-profit purposes only.]

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[Editor's Notes - In Part I of this series FTW, thanks to the brilliant research of Tom Flocco, demonstrated that the CIA has, in fact, been involved in monitoring stock trades on world financial markets, and that current CIA executives have had recent business relationships with firms handling obvious insider trades connected to the attacks of September 11th. Those connections ran directly into the heart of German financial giant Deutschebank. In Part II we documented that a former Deutschebank executive, Kevin Ingram, had recently been convicted on drug and money laundering charges that were directly a result of attempts to arm Islamic terrorist groups. Now in Part III, we conclude this series by revealing a devastating conflict of interest in investigating these leads on the part of President George W. Bush by virtue of his own past insider trading through Harken Energy in Bahrain and Kuwait.

The Administration's apparently deliberate omission of key mid-Eastern banks in these two countries from post 9-11 investigations suggests clearly that the principal financial institutions of the countries where Harken did business have something to hide which the Bush Administration does not want to see the light of day - especially as potentially explosive Enron investigations gather steam.

After our publication of Part II a number of careful FTW readers were careful to point out that our description of "put" options was oversimplified to the point of describing a short-sell, rather than the more highly leveraged "put option." We acknowledge this error but re-emphasize that the point of these stories - which could easily be sidetracked into lengthy and detailed discussions of the workings of financial instruments - is not the trades themselves, but who might have made the trades, why they made them and, most importantly, why the Bush Administration wants so desperately to conceal information about them from the world. - MCR]

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FTW, January 9, 2002 -- President George W. Bush may have personal reasons for hampering investigations into insider trading connected to the attacks of September 11th. There is substantial evidence suggesting that a detailed investigation into Deutschebank's connection to Islamic terrorists and 9-11 might reopen a mysteriously closed 1991 investigation of criminal insider trading connected to Harken Energy, a Houston company where George W. Bush served on the board of directors as a major stockholder with his some of his father's key campaign contributors. On January 30, 1990 Harken, with a remarkably unsuccessful history of drilling projects, signed major oil drilling contracts with Bahrain. Five months later, Bush's company suffered an unexplained huge loss of stock value just prior to the Gulf War -- but not before the future president had already cashed out, making close to a million dollars selling his own stock. Because of 9-11 leads suggesting the possible involvement of certain Arab banks in financing the attacks, a conflict of interest exists, clearly limiting how far the President would be willing to pursue the most obvious leads. And U.S. government investigations since 9-11 have avoided looking at key Middle Eastern banks in Bahrain and Kuwait already linked to terrorist activities.

In fact, two banks located in Bahrain and Kuwait - The Faysal Islamic Bank and the Kuwait Finance House - which had been listed in European reports as having terrorist ties were glaringly omitted from George W Bush's financial crackdown after September 11th. [Source: The Inner City Press, 9-11-99.] Both banks have correspondent relationships with Deutschebank.

In spite of mounting evidence of a number of connections between German financial giant Deutschebank and the terrorist attacks of September 11 - including previously documented links to insider trading based upon events of 9/11 - no press agency or government entity is questioning why certain banking institutions in Kuwait and Bahrain with deep financial ties to the Bush family have been overlooked in the President's supervision of a so-called "worldwide crackdown on terrorist financing."  Reuters reported on 11-7-2001 that the Treasury Department added 61 additional people and organizations to the President's original Executive Order of September 23 -- including banks in Somalia and Nassau, The Bahamas. But mysteriously, no banks in Bahrain, Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia were named in either the original order or its expansion.

Moreover, the President's lack of effective direction and oversight of terrorist finance appears to be abetted and endorsed by the U.S. Congress.

Just 32 days before the attack on the WorldTradeCenter and Pentagon, a Financial Times of Asia (FT) Wire-Business Line report linked Deutschebank to the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Pakistani and Afghani heroin smuggling, and money laundering of narcotics proceeds (8-10-2001).  Retired Pakistani intelligence chief Brig Imtiaz was jailed for eight years on July 31, 2001 for laundering heroin profits -- for covert actions -- via a CIA-linked drug smuggling cell, using Deutschebank and other financial entities and properties.

Former State Department official Jonathan Weiner confirmed that Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have been of little help to federal officials regarding known terrorist funds moving back and forth between those countries. Weiner made these statements in a National Public Radio (NPR) interview on 11-21-2001.

Weiner told host Linda Wertheimer, "Since September 11th, all those countries have frozen accounts or have looked in their banking systems for the money of people associated with terrorist finance, [and] have gone through the entire list provided by the United States."

He added that "country after country has announced, 'we've looked for funds. We've looked diligently. We've been ready to freeze some funds. We just haven't found anything.' No money in the UAE, no money in Kuwait." Weiner then revealed, "There is, I can tell, no money announced in Saudi Arabia, none announced in Bahrain.

"Well, given that we know [that terrorist] funds came out of there and we know [that terrorist] funds went back there, their inability to find funds is pretty astonishing," said the former State Department official.

While 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudis, it is Bahrain and Kuwait's strange lack of assistance in ferreting out terrorist financial support and insider trading evidence that raises questions, given their extremely close ties to both Bush presidents.

The close financial relationships of both Bush 41 and Bush 43 (referring to their respective presidencies) with government officials of Bahrain as stockholders via Texas corporation Harken Energy, which had secured major drilling rights came during the period when the elder Bush and his advisor son were making U.S. military decisions prior to the Gulf War. Many Harken investors were major campaign donors to Bush 41.

Current President Bush made his first million dollars as a result of a classic insider stock trade--directly related to the sale of his stock in Harken. Moreover, Bush's oil stock sale was finalized immediately prior to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait -- at the height of its share price -- before plummeting days later on news of Iraq's invasion.

George W. avoided prosecution, thanks to some "well-connected" lawyers, and a soft investigation of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) violations -- supervised by a presidential parent who pulled the strings with SEC enforcement staff. This, as current and past Enron employees have now lost their pensions as a result of illegal insider stock sales in the oil industry through another company directly connected to the Bushes.

George H. W. Bush, the elder is a hero, an icon, with his picture in Kuwaiti public buildings, and has been a regular visitor to Kuwait since U.S. the Gulf War.

However, considering that Kuwait Finance House and Faysal Islamic Bank of Bahrain are both correspondent banks with Deutschebank, questions remain as to why President Bush would not place them on his list of banks under scrutiny for terrorist ties, given the German bank's many links to the 9/11 attacks and the above revelations by a former State Department official.

BANKING ON TERRORISM

According to German news weekly Der Spiegel, Deutschebank handled accounts for the bin Laden family worth $103 million British pounds (The London Guardian, 10-1-2001).

The New York Times (9-29-2001) added that FBI officials are "focusing more than ever on Germany," and in particular, an apartment used by Mohamed Atta -- considered the lead hijacker -- and Ramzi Muhammad Abdullah Bin Al Shibh, who also shared the apartment with other hijackers. Fox News and the Washington Post both reported on 1-2-2001 that Al Shibh wired $14,000 to Zacarias Moussaoui, now in U.S. custody and referred to as the "20th hijacker."

An American official said "It looks like it was organized in Germany... there is clear evidence of meetings between Mr. Atta, Mr. al-Shehhi, and Mr. Jarrah, three of the four suspected hijackers," according to the Times.

Mamoun Darkanzanli, a Syrian businessman whose bank accounts were frozen after the attacks, has been implicated by American officials as an associate of Osama bin Laden who took part in a 1996 attack on U.S. troops at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials say currently jailed terrorist and bin Laden's highest ranking associate in U.S. custody -- Mamdouh Mahmud Salim -- named Darkazanli as the co-signer of Salim's bank account at Deutschebank in Hamburg, also according to the Times. The bin Laden family, with whom the Bushes have had long standing business deals through The Carlyle Group, was later awarded the contract to rebuild the facility.

The New York paper reported that Deutschebank was also linked to Wadih el-Hage, a naturalized American citizen from Lebanon who served as bin Laden's personal secretary at his Sudan office, and was named by prosecutors as also setting up terrorist front businesses for bin Laden in Kenya during 1994.

El-Hage's business card lists Mamoun Darkazanli's current apartment as his Hamburg address, while his confiscated address book lists Darkazanli's address, phone numbers and yet another Deutschebank account in Hamburg -- but not the same account as Salim's.

Investigators also suspect that Darkazanli was supporting bin Laden's Al-Q'aeda network financially, using Deutschebank as his supporting entity for terrorism.

According to the Asian Wall Street Journal (9-28-200), insiders familiar with the family say the bin Ladens do most of their banking with the London branch of Deutschebank and the Saudi National Commercial Bank; however, they also use Citigroup, a bank long linked to drug money laundering and on whose board of directors sit former CIA Director John Deutch and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Rubin is also the former CEO of Goldman Sachs which was once the home of convicted Deutschebank drug money launderer Kevin Ingram. (See Part II).

DEUTSCHEBANK'S "CORRESPONDING" LACK OF INTELLIGENCE

Michigan Senator Carl Levin's Minority Banking Report of February 2001 calls correspondent banking the "gateway to money laundering," a financial technique wherein illicit money is moved from bank to bank with "no questions asked," thereby cleansing funds prior to being used for legitimate purposes. Via correspondent banking relationships, banks not licensed in the U.S. may gain access to American financial markets by establishing a correspondent relationship with banks that are. Deutschebank is licensed in the U.S. and maintained offices at the World Trade Center. All U.S. Deutschebank records were destroyed in the September 11 attacks.

An obvious question then is why none of these Middle Eastern financial institutions have felt the sting of U.S. investigative wrath since the attacks.

In another curious disclosure, the FBI also says al Shamal Islamic Bank -- Osama bin Laden's personal bank -- headquartered in Khartoum, Sudan -- which the terrorist leader helped capitalize with $50 million in private funds, "is being investigated by U.S. or overseas authorities." According to U.S. News (10-8-2001), the Bureau won't say which authority.  President Bush, however, has failed to place Osama bin Laden's al Shamal Islamic Bank in his Executive Order -- freezing all of its correspondent transactions with other banks of the world. [See http://www.banking.state.ny.us/il01102a.pdf ]

This is especially strange, since the Washington Post (9-29-2001) reported that a an unnamed bin Laden associate testified (at the U.S. trial on the 1998 African embassy bombings) that "$250,000 was wired from al Shamal Islamic Bank directly into the bin Laden cohort's Texas bank account -- where he used it to buy a plane delivered to bin Laden... intended to transport Stinger missiles...." Two months later, FT (11-29-2001) offered more information, reporting that "The money was wired from the Wadi al Aqiq account at al Shamal bank via Bank of New York to a Bank of America account held in Dallas, Texas by Essam al Ridi. Al Ridi, an Egyptian flight instructor who met bin Laden in Pakistan in 1985, flew the plane to Khartoum."

Congress has not sought to inquire as to whether bin Laden's Stinger missiles were flown directly out of Texas, or how his fellow terrorists were able to buy a plane in Dallas to illegally transport arms, or how a bin Laden associate was able to become a Texas flight instructor -- let alone whether he taught other terrorists how to fly airplanes in Dallas.

A Financial Times of Asia Wire story (8-10-2001) revealed that dirty money profits for covert actions resulting from CIA-linked heroin smuggling (which is a primary means of financing terrorist operations) through Pakistan and Northern Afghanistan have been shown to find their way into the international banking system. This was the role played by Kevin Ingram, formerly of Deutschebank in New York as described in Part II of this series.

And while U.S. News (10-8-2001) reported that FBI officials say Deutschebank is "being investigated by U.S. or overseas authorities," again the Bureau will not say which authorities, indicating that the U.S. may not even be taking a lead role in investigating the matter.

A spokesman for Deutschebank said it had provided investigators with information on accounts linked to members of the bin Laden family (The Guardian, 10/1/01).  No further information has been made public.  

Meanwhile, continued and current revelations indicate that negligence and the "prior-knowledge issue" -- insider trading or otherwise - -will not go away. An executive at a Pan Am flight school in Minnesota told Rep. James L. Oberstar (D-MN) and Rep. Martin O. Sabo (D-MN) that he had discussed and been questioned by an FBI agent on August 15 -- 27 days before the 9/11 attacks, "warning that a Boeing 747-400, which [alleged terrorist Zacarias] Moussaoui was seeking to learn how to fly, could be used as a bomb,'' (Washington Post, 1-2-2002).  But shockingly, the executive also told the lawmakers that "it took between four and six telephone calls to find an [FBI] agent who would help," according to a letter obtained by the Post.

In a Fox News interview hosted by Rita Cosby on 1-3-2002, political analyst Dick Morris eed more governmental negligence by reporting that President Bush "used information provided by FBI wiretaps dating back to 1993 to determine which terrorist-related bank accounts he would freeze in 2002," -- indicating lengthy U.S. intelligence prior knowledge of terrorist financial transactions.  Fox's revelation of the additional careless handling of critical pre-9/11 intelligence data may yet face scrutiny in three states via courtrooms of victim families, despite congressional oversight silence -- and a quickly legislated compensation statute making victim families promise not to sue the government.

Given evidence of prior knowledge, insider trading, CIA ties, and other financial relationships leading directly into Deutschebank
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/12_06_01_death_profits_pt1.html),
the question is begged as to why "President Bush's original Executive Order [freezing assets] didn't name any banks," (Washington Post, 9-29-2001).  The President has the power to freeze American monetary operations connected to global banks with institutions in countries refusing to cooperate in his terrorist finance probe.

On December 31, 2001, a U.S. State Department Memo revealed that the president again avoided dealing with middle eastern countries -- with close ties to the Bush family -- by announcing that assets of 1 German and 5 Irish terrorist-linked organizations had been frozen--but still no banks linked to the epicenter of terrorist finances in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates had been touched (http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/02010202).

THE CIA, TERROISM AND DRUG MONEY

Documented Russian organized crime connections to money laundering also lead back to Deutschebank, Pakistan, and terrorist financing.

On September 5, 1999, the German newspaper Weld am Sonntag quoted Deutschebank CEO Rolf Breuer saying that "It could be that we were abused as an intermediate coordinating point" in the fast-developing Russian money laundering scandal. Deutschebank and its U.S. affiliate Bankers Trust (BT) filed "suspicious transaction" reports about Russian clients, as BT had "correspondent banking" relationships with Russia's Inkombank, which "allegedly had ties to organized crime," according to USA Today ( 8-27-1999 ). Moreover, an Inner City Press story (9-11-1999) also revealed that German magazine Der Spiegel quoted Breuer as admitting that it was "possible" his bank was "misused" as an intermediary for money laundering.

The FT Asia Wire report (8-10-2001) suggested that at least 30 Pakistan Army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officials, serving and retired have accumulated wealth through heroin smuggling. In pervious stories, FTW and other news agencies have thoroughly documented that the Pakistani ISI is a creation and surrogate of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The FT report also revealed that "Pakistani residents are allowed to maintain dollar accounts with no questions asked about the origin of the money and about its liability for income tax." FT added that "the total amount of dollars in private circulation since the military regime came to power was almost equal to that in the Government coffers, if not more....[and] largely, if not totally, derived from the heroin trade."

Additional direct CIA and Deutschebank ties to heroin smuggling and money laundering were also revealed by the FT story. "In the 1980's, at the instance [sic] of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Internal Political Division of the [Pakistani] Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), headed by Brig Imtiaz... started a cell for the use of heroin for covert actions. This cell promoted the cultivation of opium and the extraction of heroin in Pakistan as well as in those parts of Afghanistan under Mujahedeen control for being smuggled into the Soviet-controlled areas to get the Soviet troops addicted.

"After the withdrawal of the Soviets, ISI's [Pakistani] heroin cell started using its network of refineries and smugglers to send heroin to the West and use the money to supplement its legitimate economy... After capturing power on October 12, 1999, Gen. Pervez Musharraf had Brig Imtiaz, because of his proximity to Mr. Nawaz Sharif, arrested and prosecuted for having assets disproportionate to his known sources of income....He was convicted by a court on July 31, 2001 (52 days before the 9-11 attacks), and jailed for eight years.

"According to evidence produced in the court by the National Accountability Bureau, Brig Imtiaz had foreign exchange bearer certificates worth $20 million, a Pakistani rupee account in the Union Bank with a balance of Rs 2.13 billion, a dollar account in Deutschebank with a balance of $19.1 million, five residential houses, five commercial units and three shops. This huge wealth was allegedly accumulated by him through heroin smuggling."

BAHRAIN, KUWAIT AND DEUTSCHEBANK - THE DOOR TO HARKEN ENERGY

According to attorney Matthew Lee of Inner City Press (ICP), after September 11, regulators in Luxembourg, former headquarters of the notorious Pakistani Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), circulated a list of five banks, in addition to President Bush's U.S. Executive Order of September 23, freezing the accounts of suspected terrorist-connected individuals and organizations.

In Part II of the Profits of Death series, located at: (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/12_11_01_death_profits_pt2.html) the U.S. government's ongoing scrutiny of terrorist banking was documented in an AP story by Catherine Wilson. The story provided clear indication that U.S. intelligence agencies routinely monitor banking transactions in terrorist-related cases. Wilson wrote about the current prosecution of Egyptians in a case connected to former Goldman Sachs and Deutschebank securities trader Kevin Ingram's attempt to launder heroin and cash for the illegal sale of weapons to Islamic terrorists. She added that "numerous promised wire transfers never arrived, but there were discussions of foreign bankers taking payoffs to move the money to purchase weapons into the United States..."

Moreover, the AP story never questioned how the federal agents knew the names of particular banks and bankers, so as not to arouse suspicion on the part of Kevin Ingram and the other Middle Eastern accomplices, because the bankers had previously been "in-the-loop" of drug money laundering and illegal arms sales.

The Bush Administration would necessarily have to be concerned if congressional investigations of Deutschebank ties to Faysal Islamic Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait Finance House started to dredge up and revive old financial investigations into the 1991 probe of Harken Energy.

AN INSIDE TRADER DIRECTS PROBE OF INSIDE TRADERS - THE MOTHER OF ALL ENRONS

One reason why the Administration has not frozen the assets of the two banks in Kuwait and Bahrain with correspondent relationships with Deutschebank leads directly to Harken.

The probe in question is tied to Bahrain and Kuwait, and directly involves George W. Bush and SEC lawyers appointed by his father.  According to SEC records, on four separate occasions President George W. Bush disregarded federal statutes by failing to file insider stock trade reports on a timely basis, back-dating one trade by some four months. (Harken Energy SEC Abstract Filing, transaction date: 6-22-1990; Oil stock sale made 41 days prior to Iraq's attack on Kuwait -- $848,560 profit, filing date: 3-4-1991- 8 1/2 months late and reported to the SEC two days after Gulf War was over on 3-2-1991;  Harken Energy SEC Abstract Filing, transaction date: 6-16-89, filing date: 10-23-1989 -- 17 weeks late.) [Sources: Wall Street Journal, 4-4-1991 and 9-28-99; Time, 10-28-1991; U.S. News, 3-16-1992; Associated Press, 10-28-94; Houston Post, 10-18-1994.]

The younger Bush denied the charge of insider trading in spite of his positions on the Harken Energy board of directors, audit committee, and stock restructuring panel. He added that he had no idea Harken was going to get an audit report full of red ink until weeks after he had made his stock sale.

During December, 1999 into January, 2000, journalist Tom Flocco's former research associate, Mario Calabrese, repeatedly called the SEC requesting copies of George W. Bush's original Harken Energy stock filings.  After some 3 1/2 weeks of calls made during the critical Florida Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court arguments deciding the Bush-Gore election, SEC representative Linda Thompson called Mr. Calabrese on January 14, 2001 to confirm that all original Bush SEC documents had been destroyed. Thompson said that "the dates you requested have all met their (6 year) retention time."  It is possible that copies are still available via major search engines.

The future president completed his key insider trade eight days before Harken announced a $23 million second quarter corporate loss and about six weeks before the invasion. Having just profited by nearly $1 million--representing a 200 % insider windfall--George Jr. watched Harken stock take a nosedive on the bad news. Thus, Harken Energy, a Houston oil company doing business in Bahrain, wherein some of his father's largest contributors also maintained substantial stock positions, made George W. his first million which served as seed money for his upcoming Texas Rangers deal.

The April 4, 1991 Wall Street Journal added that "Mr. Bush did not return their phone calls seeking comment, and the Bush White House tersely said 'It doesn't comment on the activities of the president's children.'" Moreover, the SEC also declined to comment, according to The New York Times. [3-9-92]

Neither the younger Bush nor the media made much of the blatant conflicts of interest since the chairman of the SEC was Richard Breedon, former lawyer with Houston firm of Baker and Botts. Breedon had served as deputy counsel to Bush 41 when he was Vice President under Ronald Reagan.

Moreover, the SEC investigation of George W. was led by general counsel James R. Doty who, according to a UPI report, mysteriously neglected to interview any of the Harken directors --including the younger Bush -- regarding "enforcement" oversight.  Moreover, Doty had previously served as George W. Bush's personal lawyer Bush 43's purchase of the Texas Rangers baseball franchise.

So, in the end, a future president--George W. Bush -- was cleared of insider trade wrongdoing by his personal attorney and by his father's counsel. That said, the Bush Administration is currently keeping a low profile regarding campaign contributors at Enron Corporation which participated in insider stock sales that bankrupted the corporation while Enron employees were prohibited from cashing in their Enron stock-based 401K plans as their value plummeted.

BUSH IN BAHRAIN - PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

In October 1991, Time Magazine questioned why the tiny country of Bahrain would stake so much of its financial future on Harken Energy, which it labeled an "obscure, money-losing company with no refineries and no experience in offshore oil exploration."  The magazine also noted that oil insiders speculated that Bahrain's rulers saw the arrangement as a way to gain influence with the Bush Administration.

In January, 1991, The Village Voice reported a potential nexus regarding foreign policy and personal financial interests as in 1990, the Bush Administration signed an agreement with Bahrain that chose the small country as the permanent principal allied base in the Middle East, although it was some 200 miles away from the hostilities in Iraq and Kuwait.

The military base deal came right after Harken announced its January 30, 1990 joint oil-drilling venture with Bahrain, suggesting that the elder Bush's contributors and his son, the future President of the United States, were involved in personal financial business involving Harken, while also making decisions - including dispatching Ambassador April Glaspie to tell Saddam Hussein that it's actions vis a vis Kuwait were none of the U.S.'s business - that led directly to the Gulf War.

And neither Bush let the press know that they had permitted Kuwait and Bahrain to infuse $19.6 million in foreign cash to hire U.S. public relations firm Hill & Knowlton to lobby Congress and the American people into a war frenzy against Iraq.

A former U.S. ambassador to Bahrain, Sam Zakhem, funneled $7.7 million in advertising and lobbying dollars through two front groups: Coalition for Americans at Risk (a former front group for the contras in Nicaragua) and Freedom Task Force. The Iran-Contra front group prepared and placed TV and newspaper ads and had 50 speakers available for pro-war rallies and publicity events; however, neither disclosed Bahrain as the source of the money. [Source: O'Dwyer's Foreign Agent Registration Act Report, October, 1991 and "Flacking for the Emir," by Arthur E. Rowse, The Progressive, October, 1991]

AN ILLEGAL PRIVILEGE TO "NOT" RELEASE DOCUMENTS

On March 16, 1992, U.S. News & World Report said that "according to documents on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bush 43's position on the Harken (restructuring) committee gave him detailed knowledge of the company's deteriorating financial condition."

Spokesmen from Texas Gov. Ann Richards' campaign said "Was this a real investigation, or was it a whitewash of an insider stock sale by the son of the sitting president?" UPI noted that "while Bush claims the [conflicted] SEC investigation absolved him of illegal insider trading, he has refused to release the investigation files."

The younger Bush has continued his practice of hiding family information (which should be publicly available) to Congress and the American people. On September 18 he asserted "Executive Privilege" in a proclamation refusing to release his father's vice-presidential and presidential papers as required by law. This is a violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. What those documents might have revealed remains a mystery that only legal action by families of the victims of 9-11 might disclose.

On December 20, 2001, Fox News analyst, Judge Andrew Napolitano, quoted Congressman Dan Burton, Chairman of the House Government and Reform Committee, saying that "George Bush is abusing his power regarding executive privilege in refusing to release documents." Burton (and other members of the House Government Reform Committee are) attempting to acquire the elder Bush's papers, Vice President Cheney's closed-door energy policy meeting papers and closed FBI investigative reports of alleged wrongdoing in the Bureau's Boston field office. All requests have been denied by Bush and Cheney.

It does not seem likely that Chairman Burton will push for records that may reopen Harken energy in the past or shed light on Enron in the present. Only an as-yet nonexistent suit filed in civil court by families of the victims of 9-11 would have the necessary legal clout to drag the records into court. In the meantime all the profits of death remain hidden behind a wall of government secrecy.

Tom Flocco is a freelance writer and researcher. Email: TomFlocco@cs.com

Previous stories in the Profits of Death series:

PART I - CIA Does Not Deny Stock Monitoring Outside the U.S.:

 http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/12_06_01_death_profits _pt1.html

PART II - Trading With The Enemy: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/12_11_01_death_profits _pt2.html


(One of a series of stories on CIA foreknowledge of the WTC attacks.)

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 UAL

by Michael C. Ruppert

[© COPYRIGHT, 2001, Michael C. Ruppert and FTW Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. - May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]

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 WorldTradeCenter 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 (re?) 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.á 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 eure 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 eed 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.fromthewilderness.com/
free/ciadrugs/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.



And You Thought The Government Was Really Doing Something About Enron!

DAMAGE CONTROL BY DYNCORP - HARM ASSISTED AT HARVARD

by Catherine Austin Fitts

[© Copyright 2002, FTW Publications. All Rights Reserved. May be copied, reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only. Contact service@copvcia.com for specific permissions to repost on websites.]

[ED. NOTE: On February 1, 2002 the New York Times reported that HarvardWatch, an association of HarvardUniversity students and Alumni had called for an investigation of one of their own in the Enron case. They did so with good and obvious reason.

One man, Herbert S. "Pug" Winokur, who is a director of the Harvard Corporation and Harvard Management Company, seems to be at the center of everything. He was Chairman of Enronís finance committee. His investment firm, Capricorn Holdings, is a lead investor in DynCorp which manages, under contract, much of the financial data and other electronic records for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Justice (including the FBI), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and other US government agencies. The SEC, the Justice Department, and the FBI are the agencies charged with investigating Enron. Both DoD and HUD had contracts with Enron. Whatís more, Highfields Capital, an investment firm which manages large portions of the Harvard endowmentís $19 billion portfolio, "profited by acquiring options last year betting that Enronís stock would fall," said the Times. As we have noted in at least six FTW stories since 9/11/01, the purchase of these "put" options is a surefire indicator of insider trading.

The obvious implication, noted by HarvardWatch, is that someone, knowing that Enron was going to crash, tipped off Highfields, which then made $50-120 million in quick profits.

Wondering who DynCorpís auditor is? -- Itís Arthur Andersen, the document-shredding company. And, a DynCorp operation in Bosnia and Kosovo has recently been eed as being directly involved in a child sex ring that was trading girls as young as eight as sex slaves.

Still worse yet, while most activists are trumpeting the dog and pony show being given by Congress, the SEC, and the General Accounting Office (GAO), full of blustery rhetoric and convenient outrage, what the government and Congress are really doing is giving the bad guys all the time they need to destroy evidence, transfer assets, and hide the money.

One final point: Just two federal agencies -- whose information systems are managed, in part, by DynCorp and who have sensitive audit contracts with Arthur Andersen, the Pentagon, and HUD -- have "lost" more than $3 trillion of your money since the fall of 1997. This, while anti-war activists are rightly concerned about a "mere" $48 billion proposed increase in the Pentagonís next budget. Forty-eight billion is only 1.6% of the $3 trillion that is missing! That money, once stolen from the government, had to be laundered someplace. Could it have moved through Enron Online, the largest money laundry in the history of man? Could it have moved through any of the 300-plus subsidiaries that Enron operated in the Cayman Islands? Is that why the Cayman Islands expressed willingness to cooperate with any request for cooperation from the US authorities at the same time that it stated that no one from the US, either from Congress or a regulatory agency, had bothered to even ask?

We may never know. Thanks to a Congress asleep at the wheel, all the records have been destroyed or transferred -- along with the key employees whose brains contain the essential knowledge -- to the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), which successfully purchased the remnants of Enron at a bankruptcy sale. If thereís one thing we know for certain, itís that Swiss bankers never kiss and tell.

Former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Wall Street Banker Catherine Austin Fitts has moved into the street for a showdown. Sheís not fooled for a second and sheís calling the real culprits out in the street for a fight. -- Mike Ruppert]

----------

"The earth is not dying. It is being killed, and the people killing it have names and addresses." -- Utah Phillips

In congressional testimony on February 7, 2002, Herbert S. "Pug" Winokur, Chairman of the Enron Finance Committee, gave an opening statement that he had been "misled" by Enron management, Enron's auditor, Arthur Andersen, and Enron's counsel, Vinson & Elkins.

Every trucker and teacher in my West Tennessee home of HickoryValley knows that Mr. Winokur's whining is yah-yah.

We are paying $150,000 a year to our Congressman and two Senators to help Winokur and his pals steal from us. Congress is stalling for time. While Winokur and his pals dish out "yah-yah," their colleagues shred documents, transfer assets, and stolen cash gets tucked away.

As the Assistant Secretary of Housing in the first Bush Administration, I cleaned up the Iran-Contra financial fraud known as the S&L crisis and the HUD scandal. That was another very expensive stink engineered between Houston and Wall Street banks, just like Enron. Later as the head of my own private investment bank, I helped clean up the major thefts perpetrated by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or BCCI. With many years experience dealing with high-stakes-stealing, rest assured you can trust your intuition -- Congress and the Department of Justice have taken the art of cover up and providing "air cover" for white collar criminals to new heights of mendacity. Did your congressional representatives and attorney general press for seizures of records and cash for the last few months while the Enron money was getting away? No siree!

While Mr. Winokur was spinning his yah-yah, the Wall Street law firms of Sullivan & Cromwell and Covington & Burling were quietly closing the transfer of the Enron Online trading operation to UBS, one of the largest Swiss banks. And as Winokur's whining distracted us on C-SPAN, Wall Street got safely away with the family jewels and dirty laundry.

Not a word did we hear on Thursday about getting back cash or holding up any transfers to the secrecy of a Swiss bank until we are sure we have the investigatory control necessary to protect our interests. Everyone here in Tennessee knows the statement, "Possession is 99% of the law." The real deal is that the Swiss now have possession. That this happened without a whimper from Congress begs the question: Why?

Us folks here in West Tennessee are busy. As I drive all over the country, folks say the same thing wherever I go -- "We are pressed for time." Somebody has to do the real work while our leaders are preoccupied with stealing our money and keeping us in the dark. We have more important things to do than to spend hours listening to yah-yah constructed by a team of fancy lawyers whose core competency is lying for money. To buy groceries and health care insurance, we need cash. That takes a lot of time if you do it with honest work.

To help my fellow citizens hold Mr. Winokur and our representatives accountable, I drafted a list of follow up questions for Mr. Winokur. I have sent them to him at his last posted e-mail address.

As I finished the questions, an e-mail came in from Michael Bartell, Chief Information Officer of the SEC. He was responding to an inquiry I made regarding DynCorp's management of the SECís sensitive information systems. Winokur's firm, Capricorn Investments, is the lead investor in DynCorp, and he is on the DynCorp board. Winokur's involvement in DynCorp, as well as his leadership of the largest private endowment investor in the country, the Harvard Endowment, is integral to his role in the Enron affair and his ability to ensure that no Congressman dare cross him and his pals.

Below are copies of the SEC's letter to me, my response to the SEC, and my questions for Winokur.

My prayer is that these materials will be useful to you in exercising your responsibility as a citizen, or as a shareholder or constituent in any of the organizations and companies in which Winokur has power and influence to manage resources on your behalf. The students at Harvard already have.

Now itís your turn. Do your duty.

--Catherine Austin Fitts

Solari
Hickory Valley, Tennessee
February 9, 2002

catherine@solari.com

http://www.solari.com

----------------------

HERBERT S. (PUG) WINOKUR, CHAIRMAN OF ENRON FINANCE and DYNCORP COMPENSATION COMMITTEES, and MEMBER, HARVARD CORPORATION AND HARVARD MANAGEMENT

Chairman
Capricorn Holdings
30 East Elm Street
Greenwich, Connecticut 06830

http://www.capricornholdings.com

----------------------

CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION RE: DYNCORP AND THEIR AUDITOR, ARTHUR ANDERSEN

Ms. Catherine Austin Fitts
Via email catherine@solari.com

Dear Ms. Fitts,

Thank you for your electronic mail message on January 14, 2001 to our Office of the Inspector General.   The message was forwarded to me for response. I appreciate your bringing the DynCorp Inc. article in Insight magazine to our attention.

We have had discussions with senior DynCorp officials and understand that the alleged activities noted in the Insight article were thoroughly investigated by both DynCorp and the Department of the Army, and appropriate action has been taken.  In addition, the DynCorp organization that provides the SEC with IT infrastructure support is a completely separate organization (Information & Enterprise Technology subsidiary) from the organization referenced in the article, and none of the personnel assigned to the SEC have had any involvement with the referenced contract.

Again, I appreciate your concern and bringing the article to our attention.

Sincerely,

Michael Bartell
CIO
Securities and Exchange Commission

----------------------------

February 8, 2002

Mr. Bartell:

Thank you very much for your response.

DynCorp's lead investor is Herbert S. Winokur's company, Capricorn Holdings. Mr. Winokur is the former Chairman of DynCorp and currently sits on their board as does his partner, Dudley Mecum. He is currently the chair of DynCorp's compensation committee. That is the person who leads the process to determine how much all the senior management gets paid -- both salary and stock options. DynCorp's most recent proxy lists their auditor as Arthur Andersen.

Mr. Winokur is also the chair of the Finance Committee of Enron. This is the person on the board who is most responsible for the board in ensuring that the company's finances are managed on a sound and prudent basis commensurate with optimizing shareholder's value. Mr. Winokur testified before Congress today on behalf of a special committee of the Enron board. He indicated that he and his fellow board members had been misled by Enron's management, Enron's auditor, Arthur Andersen, and their outside general counsel, Vinson & Elkins.

Under these circumstances, I would like your official position on the internal control issues related to:

1. DynCorp's management of SEC and Department of Justice computer systems used by the enforcement teams currently investigating criminal and civil allegations regarding fraud and obstruction of justice by Enron, Enron's board (including Mr. Winokur) and Arthur Andersen, including their admission of document shredding.

2. Use by the SEC of any information systems contractors that have Arthur Andersen as an auditor or critical joint venture partner or subcontractor and the internal control implications to the SEC of doing so.

3. Accessibility through your website of the SEC contract budget so that investors can understand the potential for conflicts of interest created by government outsourcing critical information systems (and access to internal knowledge) to companies whose investors benefit from changes in SEC policies.

I would also like to know what contracts Arthur Andersen has with the SEC and whether or not -- given their admission of document destruction and Mr. Winokur's testimony regarding their lying to board members -- you plan to continue to use such a company? My understanding is that most government contracts permit an immediate cancellation for convenience.

Thank you very much for your response and attention to this matter. I believe it goes to the heart of the SEC mission of ensuring the transparency of financial information that is an essential prerequisite for free markets. For the SEC to do that it must have the ability to protect its own privacy and the integrity of its information and information systems and its own financial reporting and management.

Good housekeeping starts at home.

Very Truly Yours,

Catherine Austin Fitts
Solari
Former Assistant Secretary of Housing, First Bush Administration.

----------------------

REPORT TO SOLARI ACTION NETWORK

February 8, 2002

Questions for:

Mr. Herbert S. "Pug" Winokur

Chairman, Finance Committee, Enron in response to his Congressional testimony today:

Mr. Winokur:

Today in testimony you said that the Enron bankruptcy was a result of Enron management, their auditor Arthur Andersen and outside general counsel Vinson Elkins misleading you and the other directors and not doing their job properly.

Can you explain:

1. Why your company DynCorp uses Arthur Andersen as it auditor? I am assuming that you as a lead investor and member of the DynCorp board would not jeopardize your investment and shareholder's investment by retaining an auditor who had misled you and a board in a manner that would lead to such a collapse?

2. Why as a member of Harvard Corporation's board would you have less foresight than your largest money manager Highfields Capital as well as your fellow board members who had the foresight to make substantial profits from selling or shorting Enron stock while you and your board members were in this state of "unaware" you so well described? How is it that Highfields had access to this information and you did not?

3. As a member of Harvard Corporation's board and a GP of Capricorn Holding's partnerships, are you taking the appropriate action to have Vinson & Elkins and Arthur Andersen removed from any relationship or work for any of the investments of these entities? Under the laws governing your responsibilities, what is the liability to you and your fellow fiduciaries of permitting these firms to continue if -- as you say -- they are responsible for causing the biggest bankruptcy in history and doing so by helping management mislead their own board?

4. Is the timing of the Powers report of the Enron board special committee and your testimony -- after Arthur Andersen and Enron documents have been shredded and Enron Online (with all the large mysterious trading with Citigroup, JP Morgan-Chase, UBS, Deutschebank and the other large banks active with Enron in the offshore derivative and gold markets) already transferred -- more than coincidental?

5. Given the performance of Enron's auditor Arthur Andersen, do you believe that the federal government should continue to outsource large amounts of its most sensitive information systems, procurement and accounting and payments systems and/or advisory work (related to same) to Arthur Andersen? What about other auditors who have participated in significant restatements of earnings and who have significant relationships with companies that can benefit from access to sensitive government information or trading on inside information?

6. Do you believe that it is a conflict of interest for your company, DynCorp, to manage many of the information systems for the people working on criminal and civil investigations (Department of Justice, SEC and FBI) of you and your colleague's role in Enron fraud and shredding of documents/obstruction of justice as well as fraud and obstruction of justice by Enron's auditor Arthur Andersen and attorneys Vinson & Elkins?

7. Would you care to comment on why the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Department of Defense (DOD) and some of the other federal agencies for which your company DynCorp manages highly sensitive information systems are reported to be missing so much money; over $3 trillion since fall of 1997? Do you have any idea where that money is or if it was laundered out of the country into offshore accounts? As a highly experienced financial fiduciary with intimate knowledge of the federal information systems as the former Chairman and current board member of DynCorp, perhaps you could illuminate for us some of the ways that this much money could be fraudulently moved out of the bank accounts held by the NY Fed and its members as depository and trustee for the US Treasury and federal agencies and moved off shore through thousands of off shore subsidiaries and special purpose entities?

8. In light of the fact that the federal government is paying millions to have private contractors manage their accounting and information systems, yet those systems never seem to work, would you care to comment as to whether outsourcing our governmentís financial systems to private contractors whose investors profit from the same or other companies selling goods and services to these same agencies makes sense?

9. As chairman of the Enron finance committee and a member of the executive committee are you responsible to ensure that the board hires and retains management, auditors and attorneys who do not mislead the board or others? If that is not your responsibility, whose responsibility is it?

10. Under the standards of sound fiduciary management, you, as board member and chair of the Enron Finance Committee, are responsible to ensure that the company's finances are properly managed. If you are someone who is so easily misled by management, attorneys and auditors do you consider yourself competent to serve on any boards of directors of organizations with large financial and resource responsibilities? Based on the results to shareholders, creditors and taxpayers, do you draw any connection between the performance of Enron or government agencies such as DoD and HUD losing billions of other people's money and your performance as board member or contractor?

10. Do you believe that Enron should continue to serve as a government contractor when its management, auditors and lawyers are people who you believe would mislead their own board?

-------------------------

E-MAIL TO MR. WINOKUR

To: bgrizle@capricornholdings.com
From: catherine@solari.com
On: February 8, 2002 8:08pm EST

Dear Pug:

I have posted the following questions to the Solari Action Network as a suggested follow up to your Congressional testimony.

I would welcome the opportunity to circulate your reply.

Best,

Catherine Austin Fitts
Solari

Attached: Report to Solari Action Network of February 8 Questions for Winokur)

-------------------------

THE HARVARD MILITIA TO THE RESCUE

To read Harvard Watch's excellent report, "Trading Truth at Harvard: A Report on Harvard's Enron Entanglements, " covering (i) Enron and Mr. Winokur's use of Harvard's Kennedy and Business Schools to influence government policy on outsourcing of defense functions to private contractors and energy deregulation, (ii) Highfields Capital's profits on Enron short selling and (iii) various relations between Harvard and Enron, see:

http://www.harvardwatch.org

To support their excellent recommendations, call or write

Lawrence Summers
President
Harvard College

---------------

NOTES:

-- Mr. Summers is also named in the GATA lawsuit alleging illegal manipulation of gold prices in his capacity as Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration.

-- From 1992 through 2000, the Harvard Endowment rose from approximately $4 billion to $19 billion.

SUGGESTED READING:

DynCorp Disgrace, by Kelly O'Meara

Cover Story, Insight Magazine, February 4, 2002

Employees of the corporation have been buying and selling women and young girls for sex while working under contract for the United States.

http://insightmag.com/main.cfm/include/
detail/storyid/163052.html

-------------------------

-- Catherine Austin Fitts is a former managing director and member of the board of directors of Dillon Read & Co, Inc, a former Assistant Secretary of Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner in the first Bush Administration, and President of The Hamilton Securities Group, Inc. She is the President of Solari, Inc, an investment advisory firm. Solari provides risk management services to investors through Sanders Research Associates in London.





"Oh Lucy! - You Gotta Lotta
'Splainin To Do"

A TIMELINE SURROUNDING SEPTEMBER 11TH - IF CIA AND THE GOVERNMENT WEREN'T INVOLVED IN THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS
WHAT WERE THEY DOING?

by Michael C. Ruppert

[© COPYRIGHT 2001, All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. May be copied and distributed for non-profit purposes only.]

[Expanded and Revised Sept. 4, 2002 - Evidence of Bush Administration Foreknowledge and complicity is now overwhelming. Since our last revision July 11, 2002, 16 New Items! (noted in RED)]
Nov. 2, 2001, 12:00 PST -- On Oct. 31 the French daily Le Figaro dropped a bombshell. While in a Dubai hospital receiving treatment for a chronic kidney infection last July, Osama bin Laden met with a top CIA official -- presumably the chief of station. The meeting, held in bin Laden's private suite, took place at the American hospital in Dubai at a time when he was a wanted fugitive for the bombings of two U.S. embassies and last year's attack on the USS Cole. Bin Laden was eligible for execution according to a 2000 intelligence finding issued by President Bill Clinton before leaving office in January. Yet on July 14, 2001 he was allowed to leave Dubai on a private jet, and there were no Navy fighters waiting to force him down.
In 1985 Oliver North -- the only member of the Reagan-Bush years who doesn't appear to have a hand in the current war -- sent the Navy and commandos after terrorists on the cruise ship Achille Lauro. In his 1991 autobiography "Under Fire," while describing terrorist Abu Abbas North wrote, "I used to wonder: how many dead Americans will it take before we do something?" One could look at the number of Americans Osama bin Laden is alleged to have killed before Sept. 11 and ask the same question.
It gets worse, much worse. A more complete timeline listing crucial events both before and after the Sept. 11 suicide attacks, which have been blamed on bin Laden, establishes CIA foreknowledge of them and strongly suggests that there was criminal complicity on the part of the U.S. government in their execution. It also makes clear that the events that have taken place since Sept. 11 are based upon an agenda that has little to do with the attacks.
[June 19, 2002] -- As the revelations of Bush Administration foreknowledge have progressed from silence, to trickle, to cascade, the question has now changed from forcing the evidence into the open into one of forcing both the media and the people to avoid denying this information in the hopes that their desire for a sense of "normalcy" can be fulfilled. As many of us have known for years, normalcy went out the window forever when the first plane hit the tower. And what has been revealed will not be resolved with an expensive fact-finding commission, a few firing, or even an impeachment proceeding. What is needed in America -- and in the global economic system -- is an overhaul, not a tune up.
1.1991-1997 - Major U.S. oil companies including ExxonMobil, Texaco, Unocal, BP Amoco, Shell and Enron directly invest billions in cash bribing heads of state in Kazakhstan to secure equity rights in the huge oil reserves in these regions. The oil companies further commit to future direct investments in Kazakhstan of $35 billion. Not being willing to pay exorbitant prices to Russia to use Russian pipelines, the major oil companies have no way to recoup their investments. [Source: "The Price of Oil" by Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, July 9, 2001 - The Asia Times, "The Roving Eye Part I Jan. 26, 2002.]
2.    January 1995 - Philippine police investigating a possible attack on the Pope uncover plans for Operation Bojinka, connected to World Trade Center (WTC) bomber Ramsi Youssef. Parts of the plan call for crashing hijacked airliners into civilian targets. Details of the plan are disclosed in Youssef's 1997 trial for the 1993 WTC bombing. [Source: Agence France-Presse, Dec. 7, 2001]
3.  Dec. 4, 1997 - Representatives of the Taliban are invited guests to the Texas headquarters of Unocal to negotiate their support for the pipeline. Subsequent reports will indicate that the negotiations failed, allegedly because the Taliban wanted too much money. [Source: The BBC, Dec. 4, 1997]
4. Feb. 12, 1998 - Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca -- later to become a special ambassador to Afghanistan -- testifies before the House that until a single, unified, friendly government is in place in Afghanistan, the trans-Afghani pipeline needed to monetize the oil will not be built. [Source: Testimony before the House International Relations Committee: http://www.house.gov/international_relations/105th/ap/wsap212982.htm]
5.  August 1998- After the U.S. cruise missile attacks on Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan in retaliation for the African embassy bombings, Unocal officially withdraws from participation in the CentGas trans-Afghani gas pipeline project. [Various sources, Unocal]
6.  1998 - The CIA ignores warnings from Case Officer Robert Baer that Saudi Arabia was harboring an Al Qaeda cell led by two known terrorists. A more detailed list of known terrorists is offered to Saudi intelligence in August 2001 and refused. [Source: Financial Times Jan. 21, 2001; "See No Evil" by Robert Baer (release date February 2002)]
7.  April 1999 - Enron with a $3 billion investment to build an electrical generating plant at Dabhol, India loses access to plentiful LNG supplies from Qatar to fuel the plant. Its only remaining option to make the investment profitable is a trans-Afghani gas pipeline to be built by Unocal from Turkmenistan that would terminate near the Indian border at the city of Multan. [Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002]
8.  July 4, 1999- President Clinton signs Executive Order 13129, which freezes Taliban assets in the U.S. and prohibits trade between the Afghan fundamentalist regime and U.S. entities. [Source: Federal Register, Vol. 64, No. 129, July 7, 1999]
9.  1998 and 2000 - Former President George H.W. Bush travels to Saudi Arabia on behalf of the privately owned Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the U.S. While there he meets privately with the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family. [Source: Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2001. See also FTW, Vol. IV, No. 7 - "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy"
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/carlyle.html]
10.  March 2000 - An FBI agent, reportedly angry over a glitch in Carnivore that has somehow mixed innocent non-targeted emails with those belonging to Al Qaeda, destroys all of the FBI's Denver-based intercepts of bin Laden's colleagues in a terrorist investigation. [Source: The Washington Post, May 29, 2002]
11.  2000 (est.) - The FBI refuses to disclose the date of an internal memo stating that a Middle Eastern nation had been trying to purchase a flight simulator. [Source: Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2002]
12.  August 2000 -- Suspected Al Qaeda operatives wiretapped by Italian police made apparent references to plans for major attacks involving airports, airplanes and the United States according to transcripts obtained by the Los Angeles Times. The Times suggests that the information might not have been passed to U.S. authorities (hard to believe), but it did report that Italian authorities would not comment on the report. The Times also noted that "Italian and U.S. anti-terrorism experts cooperate closely." [Source: The Los Angeles Times, May 29, 2002]
13.  Oct. 24-26, 2000 - Pentagon officials carry out a "detailed" emergency drill based upon the crashing of a hijacked airliner into the Pentagon. [Source: The Mirror, May 24, 2002]
14.  January 2001 - The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, Va. -- right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996 that frustrated efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. [Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast, Nov. 7, 2001]
15.  Jan. 30, 2001 - Sept. 11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah was questioned in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A number of UAE, Middle Eastern, European, and U.S. sources were cited in this CNN report, which said the CIA requested Jarrah be interrogated because he had been in Afghanistan and was suspected to have ties to terrorists. An unnamed CIA spokesman said the other sources' claims that the agency knew anything about Jarrah before Sept. 11 were "flatly untrue." Jarrah's Jan. 30 detainment at the airport in Dubai, UAE came six months after he took flying lessons in the U.S. Jarrah was released because "U.S. officials were satisfied," said the report. [Source: CNN, Aug. 1, 2002 http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/08/01/cia.hijacker/index.html] 
16.  Feb. 13, 2001 - UPI terrorism correspondent Richard Sale -- while covering a trial of bin Laden's Al Qaeda followers -- reports that the National Security Agency has broken bin Laden's encrypted communications. Even if this indicates that bin Laden changed systems in February, it does not mesh with the fact that the government insists that the attacks had been planned for years.
17.  May 2001 - Secretary of State Colin Powell gives $43 million in aid to the Taliban regime, purportedly to assist hungry farmers who are starving since the destruction of their opium crop in January on orders of the Taliban regime. [Source: Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001]
18.  May 2001 - Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a career covert operative and former Navy Seal, travels to India on a publicized tour, while CIA Director George Tenet makes a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Armitage has long and deep Pakistani intelligence connections. It would be reasonable to assume that while in Islamabad, Tenet, in what was described as "an unusually long meeting," also met with his Pakistani counterpart, Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmad, head of the ISI. [Source: The Indian SAPRA news agency, May 22, 2001]
19.  June 2001 - German intelligence, the BND, warns the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists are "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." [Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept. 14, 2001; See
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/f_a_zeitung_story.html]
20.  June 8, 2001- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) publishes a story headlined, "Central Asia: Charges Link Russian Military to Drug Trade." According to the article, figures for 1999 published in a report by the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) revealed that 80 percent of the heroin consumed in Western Europe originated in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The UNDCP report also revealed half of the drugs in that 80 percent traveled through Central Asia. A study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published in March 2000 said Russian soldiers headquartered in Tajikistan were suspected of helping drug traffickers by providing them with transportation facilities. This was confirmed by a Russian intelligence officer who told the Moscow News weekly, "You can come to an arrangement [with custom officials] so that the search of military transport planes remains purely formal. The same goes for train convoys carrying military cargo [to Russia from Tajikistan]." [Source: www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/06/08062001111711.asp]
21.  July 2001 - FBI agents in Arizona write a memorandum warning about suspicious activities involving a group of Middle Eastern men taking flight training lessons in Phoenix. The memorandum specifically mentions Osama bin Laden and warns of connections to terrorist activities. [Source: The New York Times, May 14, 2002]
22.  summer 2001 - The National Security Council convenes a Dabhol working group as revealed in a series of government e-mails obtained by the Washington Post and the New York Daily News. [Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002]
23.  summer 2001 - According to a Sept. 26 story in Britain's The Guardian, correspondent David Leigh reported that "U.S. department of defense official, Dr. Jeffrey Starr, visited Tajikistan in January. The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence established that U.S. Rangers were also training special troops in Kyrgyzstan. There were unconfirmed reports that Tajik and Uzbek special troops were training in Alaska and Montana."
24.  summer 2001 (est.) - Pakistani ISI Chief Gen. Ahmad (see above) orders an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta who was, according to the FBI, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. Ahmad recently resigned after the transfer was disclosed in India and confirmed by the FBI. The individual who makes the wire transfer at Ahmad's direction is Ahmad Umar Sheik, the lead suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. [Source: The Times of India, Oct.11, 2001.]
25.  summer 2001 - The online newswire online.ie reports on Sept. 14 that an Iranian man phones U.S. law enforcement to warn of an imminent attack on the WTC in the week of Sept. 9. German police confirm the calls but state that the U.S. Secret Service would not reveal any further information. [Source:
http://www.online.ie/news/viewer.adp?article=1512332.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/online_ie_story.html ]
26.  summer 2001 - Jordanian intelligence, the GID, makes a communications intercept deemed so important that King Abdullah's men relay it to Washington, probably through the CIA station in Amman. To make doubly sure the message got through it was passed through an Arab intermediary to a German intelligence agent. The message: A major attack was planned inside the U.S., and aircraft would be used. The code name of the operation was "The Big Wedding."  "When it became clear that the information was embarrassing to Bush Administration officials and congressmen who at first denied that there had been any such warnings before Sept. 11, senior Jordanian officials backed away from their earlier confirmations." This case was authenticated by ABC reporter John K. Cooley. [Source: International Herald Tribune (IHT), May 21, 2002]
27.  summer 2001 (est.) - The National Security Agency intercepts telephone conversations between bin Laden aide Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohammed Atta and does not share the information with any other agencies. [Source: Jonathan Landay, Knight Ridder Newspapers, June 6, 2002]
28.  June 26, 2001 - The magazine indiareacts.com states that "India and Iran will 'facilitate' U.S. and Russian plans for 'limited military action' against the Taliban." The story indicates that the fighting will be done by U.S. and Russian troops with the help of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. [Source: indiareacts.com, June 26, 2001]
29.  summer 2001 - Russian intelligence notifies the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots have been specifically training for missions involving hijacked airliners. This is reported in the Russian press and news stories are translated for FTW by a retired CIA officer. (Note: The story currently on the Izvestia web site has been edited to delete a key paragraph.) [Source: Izvestia, Sept. 12, 2001,
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/izvestia_story_pic.html]
30.  July 4-14, 2001 - Osama bin Laden receives treatment for kidney disease at the American hospital in Dubai and meets with a CIA official, who returns to CIA headquarters on July 15. [Source: Le Figaro, Oct. 31, 2001]
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/Le Figaro_osama_dubai.html
31.  July 15, 2001- Members of the G8, meeting in Genoa, Italy, discuss the Taliban, pipelines, and the handing over of Osama bin Laden. According to Pakistani representative Ambassador Naiz Naik, the U.S. delegation, led by former Clinton Ambassador to Pakistan Tom Simmons warned of a "military option" if the Taliban did not change position. [Source: Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, "Bin Laden: La Verite Interdite," pp76-7. Thanks to Prof. Peter Dale Scott]
32.  July 2001 - Immediately after the G8 Summit three American officials -- Tom Simmons (former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth (former assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs) and Lee Coldren (former State Department expert on South Asia) -- meet with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers in Berlin and tell them that the U.S. is planning military strikes against Afghanistan in October. A French book released in November, "Bin Laden - La Verite Interdite," discloses that Taliban representatives often sat in on the meetings. British papers confirm that the Pakistani ISI relayed the threats to the Taliban. [Source: The Guardian, Sept. 22, 2001; the BBC, Sept. 18, 2001; The Inter Press Service, Nov. 16, 2001; Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections, Feb. 21, 2002]
33.  July 2001 - The G8 summit at Genoa, Italy is surrounded by anti-aircraft guns, and local airspace is closed off after Italian and Egyptian officials (including President Hosni Mubarak) warn American intelligence that airliners stuffed with explosives might be used to attack President Bush. U.S. officials state that the warnings were "unsubstantiated." (But I wonder if they would have taken away the anti-aircraft artillery?) [Source: Los Angeles Times, Sept. 27, 2001]
34.  July 26, 2001 - CBS News reports that John Ashcroft has stopped flying commercial airlines due a threat assessment. Ashcroft told the press that he didn't know anything about what had caused it.
35.  Aug. 2, 2001 - U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Christine Rocca (a former CIA officer), meets in Islamabad with a Taliban ambassador and demands the extradition of bin Laden. This was the last known meeting on the subject. [Source: Brisard and Dasquie, p 79. Thanks to Prof. Peter Dale Scott]
36.  August 2001 - The FBI arrests an Islamic militant linked to bin Laden in Boston. French intelligence sources confirm that the man is a key member of bin Laden's network and the FBI learns that he has been taking flying lessons. At the time of his arrest the man is in possession of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. [Source: Reuters, Sept. 13, 2001]
37.  Aug. 11 or 12, 2001 ‚ U.S. Navy Lt. Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on U.S. fraud charges and claiming to be an officer with U.S. naval intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope, which he gives to Canadian authorities. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court Records]
38.  August 2001 - As reported in the IHT both a French magazine (name not given) and a Moroccan newspaper simultaneously report that a Moroccan agent named Hassan Dabou had penetrated Al Qaeda to the point of getting close to bin Laden, who was "very disappointed" that the 1993 bombing had not toppled the WTC. Dabou was called to the U.S. after reporting this, which curtailed his ability to stay in touch with the organization and gather additional intelligence that might have prevented the attacks. Though not proved beyond a doubt, these stories have been met with a wall of silence. [The IHT, May 21, 2002]
39.  August 2001 - Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings. [Source: MSNBC interview with Putin, Sept. 15, 2001]
40.  August 2001 - President Bush receives classified intelligence briefings at his Crawford, Texas ranch indicating that Osama bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. [CBS News; CNN, May 15, 2002]
41.  late-August 2001- Prince Turki, the pro-U.S. head of Saudi intelligence (also known to be close to bin Laden), is replaced by his more neutral half-brother, Prince Nawwaf who is an ally of Crown Prince Abdullah. [Source: Saudi Arabian Information Resource, Aug. 31, 2001; http://www.saudinf.com/ - Thanks to Prof. Peter Dale Scott]
42.  August/September 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops nearly 900 points in the three weeks prior to the attack. A major stock market crash is imminent.
43.  August/September 2001 - According to a detailed 13-page memo written by Minneapolis FBI legal officer Colleen Rowley, FBI headquarters ignores urgent, direct warnings from French intelligence services about pending attacks. In addition, a single Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) in Washington expends extra effort to thwart the field office's investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, in one case rewriting Rowley's affidavit for a search warrant to search Moussaoui's laptop. Rowley's memo uses terms like "deliberately sabotage," "block," "integrity," "omitted," "downplayed," "glossed over," "mis-characterize," "improper political reasons, "deliberately thwarting," "deliberately further undercut," "suppressed," and "not completely honest." These are not terms describing negligent acts but rather, deliberate acts. FBI field agents desperately attempt to get action, but to no avail. One agent speculates that bin Laden might be planning to crash airliners into the WTC, while Rowley ironically noted that the SSA who had committed these deliberate actions had actually been promoted after Sept. 11. [Source: Associated Press, May 21, 2002]
44.  Sept. 3-10, 2001 - MSNBC reports on Sept. 16 that a caller to a Cayman Islands radio talk show gave several warnings of an imminent attack on the U.S. by bin Laden in the week prior to 9-11.
45.  early-September 2001 - An FBI internal document, based upon field notes from Minnesota field agents discloses that the agents had been investigating and had questioned the "20th hijacker," Zacarias Moussaoui. The field notes speculate that Moussaoui, who had been taking flight lessons, might crash an airliner into the WTC. Interestingly, the field agents' requests to obtain a search warrant for his personal computer were denied. French intelligence confirms to the FBI that Moussaoui has ties to terrorist groups and may have traveled to Afghanistan. The agents also had no knowledge of the Phoenix memo (See Item #18). One news story states that agents were in "a frenzy," absolutely convinced that he was "going to do something with a plane." [Source: Newsweek, May 20, 2002 issue, story by Michael Isikoff].
46.  Sept. 1-10 2001 - In an exercise, called Operation "Swift Sword" and planned for four years, 23,000 British troops are steaming toward Oman. Although the 9-11 attacks caused a hiccup in the deployment, the massive operation was implemented as planned. At the same time two U.S. carrier battle groups arrive on station in the Gulf of Arabia just off the Pakistani coast. Also at the same time, some 17,000 U.S. troops join more than 23,000 NATO troops in Egypt for Operation "Bright Star." All of these forces are in place before the first plane hits the WTC. [Sources: The Guardian; CNN; Fox; The Observer; International Law Professor Francis Boyle, the University of Illinois.]
47.  Sept. 4-5, 2001 - A freshman at Brooklyn's New Utrecht High School who had recently emigrated from Pakistan reportedly predicts the destruction of the World Trade Center a week prior to the 9-11 attacks, according to the JournalNews newspaper in White Plains, N.Y. Citing "three police sources and a city official familiar with the investigation" as well as confirmation from the FBI that the bureau had received this information, the paper reported that in the midst of a heated class discussion the student pointed to the World Trade Center from a third story window and said, "Do you see those two buildings? They won't be standing there next week." New York City Board of Education spokeswoman Catie Marshall confirmed for the JournalNews "that school officials reported the matter to police within minutes of the Sept. 11 attack" and students told the paper that "FBI agents and NYPD detectives descended on the school on Sept. 13 to interrogate the student [who made the prediction] and others in his class," which was "an English class for Arab-American students." [Source: The JournalNews, Oct. 11, 2001, http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/101101/11warumors.html]
48.  Sept. 5, 2001 - "Five hundred websites -- many of them with an Arab or Muslim connection -- crash when an anti-terrorism taskforce raids InfoCom Corp. in Texas," reported Britain's the Guardian on Sept. 10, 2001. A taskforce of approximately 80 federal agents and officials from the FBI, Secret Service, INS, Customs, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, IRS, and Commerce Department occupied InfoCom's office building in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, Texas for four days, "copying every hard disc they could find." InfoCom hosts many websites for Middle Eastern clients and is located across the street from the Holy Land Foundation, a charitable organization which has been alleged to have connections with terrorist groups. InfoCom's vice president of marketing, Ghassan Elashi, is also the chairman of the Holy Land Foundation. [Source: The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,549590,00.html]
49.  Sept. 7, 2001 - Florida Governor Jeb Bush signs a two-year emergency executive order (01-261) making new provisions for the Florida National Guard to assist law enforcement and emergency-management personnel in the event of large civil disturbances, disaster or acts of terrorism. [Source: State of Florida website listing of Governor's executive orders]
50.  Sept. 6-7, 2001 - Put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) totaling 4,744 are purchased on United Air Lines stock, as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the United puts are purchased through Deutschebank/A.B. Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current executive director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [Source: The Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT), http://www.ict.org.il/, Sept. 21, 2001 (Note:The ICT article on possible terrorist insider trading appeared eight days *after* the 9/11 attacks.); The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal; The San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 29, 2001]
51.  Sept. 10, 2001 - Put options totaling 4,516 are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [Source: Herzliyya Institute - above]
52.  Sept. 6-11, 2001 - No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by United and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600 percent above normal. This at a time when Reuters (Sept. 10) issues a business report stating, "Airline stocks may be poised to take off."
53.  Sept. 6-10, 2001 - Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which owns 25 percent of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the Sept. 11 attacks. [Source: ICT, above;
FTW
, Oct. 18, 2001, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/oct152001.html]
54.  2001-2002 - It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad, and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to alert national intelligence services of just such kinds of attacks. Promis was reported as recently as June 2001 to be in Osama bin Laden's possession and, as a result of recent stories by Fox, both the FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least summer 2002. This would confirm that CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [Sources: The Washington Times, June 15, 2001; Fox, Oct. 16, 2001;
FTW
, Oct. 26, 2001, - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/11_19_01_magic_carpet.html
FTW
, Vol. IV, No. 6, Sept. 18, 2001 - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/sept1801.html;
FTW
, Vol. III, No. 7, Sept. 30, 2000 - http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/052401_promis.html]
55.  Sept. 9, 2001 - President George W. Bush is presented with detailed war plans to overthrow Al Qaeda, according to U.S. and foreign sources speaking to NBC News. [Source: MSNBC, May 16, 2002. Thanks to Prof. Peter Dale Scott]
56.  Sept. 10, 2001 - This item has been removed solely at the request of the party previously named in this entry. Recent court proceedings – which occurred after the news story we had cited - have indicated that there was no connection between the story listed here, the person named therein and the attacks of 9-11-01. At the request of the previously named party, FTW has replaced the $1,000 reward with a $1,000 donation to The Childrens Defense Fund on behalf of the named party and the issue is now amicably resolved without any hard feelings between that party and FTW.
57.  Sept. 10, 2001-According to Newsweek, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly cancelled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns. [Source: Newsweek, Sept. 24, 2001]
58.  Sept. 10, 2001- The Houston Chronicle reports the FBI was notified of a fifth grader from a Dallas suburb who told his teacher, "Tomorrow, World War III will begin. It will begin in the United States, and the United States will lose." The Chronicle was unclear on specifically when Garland, Texas school district officials told the FBI about the incident, but it was some time between Sept. 13, 2001 and the story's publication date of Sept. 19, 2001. [Source: Houston Chronicle, Sept. 19, 2001 http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/1055222
59.  Sept. 10, 2001- San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown receives a call from what he described as "his security people at the airport" eight hours before the terrorist attacks "advising him that Americans should be cautious about their air travel," as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. Brown was scheduled to fly to New York from San Francisco International Airport. He told the Chronicle the call "didn't come in any alarming fashion, which is why I'm hesitant to make any alarming statement." [Source: San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 12, 2001, http://www.sfgate.com/today/0912_chron_mnreport.shtml]
60.  Sept. 11, 2001-The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the federal agency that runs many of the nation's spy satellites, schedules an exercise involving a plane crashing into one of the agency's buildings. "On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001," according to a website advertising a homeland security conference in Chicago run by the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute, CIA official John Fulton and his team "were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way." Fulton is the head of the NRO's strategic gaming division. [Source: National Law Enforcement and Security Institute, http://www.nlsi.net, http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020821/ap_wo_en_ge/us_sept_11_plane_exercise_1]
61.  Sept. 11, 2001- After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon occur, National Public Radio's congressional correspondent David Welna reports, "I spoke with congressman Ike Skelton, a Democrat from Missouri and a member of the Armed Services Committee, who said that just recently the director of the CIA warned that there could be an attack -- an imminent attack - on the United States of this nature. So this is not entirely unexpected." [Source: http://www.thememoryhole.org/updates.htm]
62.  Sept. 11, 2001 - United Air Lines flight 23, scheduled to fly from New York City to Los Angeles was delayed after four Muslim passengers began demanding that the plane take off immediately. This happened apparently after the first plane had hit the WTC. The passengers were thrown off the flight. [Source: The Globe and Mail, June 13, 2002]
63.  Sept. 11, 2001 - Gen. Mahmud of the ISI (see #16), friend of Mohammed Atta, is visiting Washington on behalf of the Taliban. He is meeting with the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., and Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., [Source: MSNBC, Oct. 7, 2001; The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2002]
64.  Sept. 11, 2001 - Employees of Odigo, Inc. in Israel, one of the world's largest instant messaging companies with offices in New York, receive threat warnings of an imminent attack on the WTC less than two hours before the first plane hits. Law enforcement authorities have gone silent about any investigation of this. The Odigo research and development offices in Israel are located in the city of Herzliyya, a ritzy suburb of Tel Aviv that is the same location as the Institute for Counter Terrorism, which eight days later reports details of insider trading on 9-11. [Source: CNN's Daniel Sieberg, Sept. 28, 2001; MSNBC Newsbytes, Brian McWilliams, Sept. 27, 2001; Ha'aretz, Sept. 26, 2001]
65.  Sept. 11, 2001 - For 50 minutes, from 8:15 AM until 9:05 AM, with it widely known within the FAA and the military that four planes have been simultaneously hijacked and taken off course, no one notifies the President of the United States. It is not until 9:30 that any Air Force planes are scrambled to intercept, but by then it is too late. This means that the National Command Authority waited for 75 minutes before scrambling aircraft, even though it was known that four simultaneous hijackings had occurred. [Source: CNN; ABC; MSNBC; Los Angeles Times; The New York Times; www.tenc.net]
66.  Sept. 11-12, 2001-Nearly a month before the first reported outbreak, White House officials start taking the powerful antibiotic Cipro to treat anthrax. By the end of the year it will be known that the Ames strain of anthrax used in the attacks against Sens. Leahy and Daschle was produced by CIA programs coordinated through Fort Detrick, the Batelle Memorial Institute and the Dugway Proving Ground. [Source: NBC; CNN; www.tetrahedron.org, www.judicialwatch.org]
67.  Sept. 13, 2001 - China is admitted to the World Trade Organization quickly, after years of unsuccessful attempts. [Source: The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2001]
68.  Sept. 14, 2001 - Canadian jailers open the sealed envelope from Mike Vreeland in Toronto and see that is describes attacks against the WTC and Pentagon. The U.S. Navy subsequently states that Vreeland was discharged as a seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and has never worked in intelligence. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court records]
69.  Sept. 15, 2001 - The New York Times reports that Mayo Shattuck III has resigned, effective immediately, as head of the Alex Brown (A.B.) unit of Deutschebank.
70.  Sept. 29, 2001 - The San Francisco Chronicle reports that $2.5 million in put options on American and United airlines are unclaimed. This is likely the result of the suspension in trading on the New York Stock Exchange after the attacks, which gave the Securities and Exchange Commission time to be waiting when the owners showed up to redeem their put options.
71.  Oct. 10, 2001 - The Pakistani newspaper The Frontier Post reports that U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain has paid a call on the Pakistani oil minister. A previously abandoned Unocal gas pipeline project from Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan, to Pakistan is now back on the table "in view of recent geopolitical developments."
72.  Oct. 11, 2001 - The Ashcroft Justice Department takes over all terrorist prosecutions from the U.S. Attorneys office in New York, which has had a highly successful track record in prosecuting terrorist cases connected to Osama bin Laden. [Source: The New York Times, Oct. 11, 2001]
73.  mid-October 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average, after having suffered a precipitous drop has recovered most of its pre-attack losses. Although still weak and vulnerable to negative earnings reports, a crash has been averted by a massive infusion of government spending on defense programs, subsidies for "affected" industries and planned tax cuts for corporations.
74.  Oct. 29, 2001- The Bush Administration drafts "an executive order that would usher in a new era of secrecy for presidential records and allow an incumbent president to withhold a former president's papers even if the former president wanted to make them public," wrote the Washington Post. The order also required members of the public to prove "at least a demonstrated, specific need'" for a president's papers to be released. Critics contend this would overturn the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which releases documents after 12 years. The White House maintained that a Supreme Court decision in 1977 allows presidents various privileges for their records. [Source: Washington Post, Nov. 1, 2001, http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20731-2001Oct31?language=printer]
75.  Nov. 21, 2001 - The British paper The Independent runs a story headlined, "Opium Farmers Rejoice at the Defeat of the Taliban." The story reports that massive opium planting is underway all over the country.
76.  Nov. 25, 2001 - The Observer runs a story headlined "Victorious Warlords Set To Open the Opium Floodgates." It states that farmers are being encouraged by warlords allied with the victorious Americans are "being encouraged to plant as much opium as possible."
77.  Dec. 4, 2001 - Convicted drug lord and opium kingpin Ayub Afridi is recruited by the U.S. government to help establish control in Afghanistan by unifying various Pashtun warlords. The former opium smuggler who was one of the CIA's leading assets in the war against the Russians is released from prison in order to do this. [Source: The Asia Times Online, Dec. 4, 2001]
78.  Dec. 25, 2001 - Newly appointed Afghani Prime Minister Hamid Karzai is revealed as being a former paid consultant for Unocal. [Source: Le Monde]
79.  Jan. 3, 2002 - President Bush appoints Zalmy Khalilzad as a special envoy to Afghanistan. Khalilzad, a former employee of Unocal, also wrote op-eds in the Washington Post in 1997 supporting the Taliban regime. [Source: Pravda, Jan. 9, 2002]
80.  Jan. 4, 2002 - Florida drug trafficking explodes after 9-11. In a surge of trafficking reminiscent of the 1980s the diversion of resources away from drug enforcement has opened the floodgates for a new surge of cocaine and heroin from South America. [The Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 4, 2002]
81.  Jan. 10, 2002 - In a call from a speaker phone in open court, attorneys for Mike Vreeland call the Pentagon's switchboard operator, who confirms that Vreeland is indeed a naval lieutenant on active duty. She provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his office in the Pentagon. [Source: Attorney Rocco Galati; Toronto Superior Court records]
82.  Jan. 10, 2002 - Attorney General John Ashcroft recuses himself from the Enron investigation because Enron had been a major campaign donor in his 2000 Senate race. He fails to recuse himself from involvement in two sitting federal grand juries investigating bribery and corruption charges against ExxonMobil and BP Amoco, which have massive oil interests in Central Asia. Both were major Ashcroft donors in 2000. [Source: CNN, Jan. 10, 2002; FTW, "The Elephant in the Living Room, Part I," April 4, 2002,
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/04_04_02_elephant.html]
83.  Jan. 23, 2002 - Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Pakistan. Pearl is reported dead on Feb. 21. Lead suspect Ahmad Umar Sheik, former colleague of Gen. Ahmad, is arrested on Feb. 12 and named as the lead suspect in the kidnapping and murder. Legal sources close to the Pakistani government tell FTW that Pearl was investigating the ISI. [Source: CNN.com]
84.  Feb. 9, 2002 - Pakistani leader Gen. Musharraf and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai announce their agreement to "cooperate in all spheres of activity," including the proposed Central Asian pipeline. Pakistan will give $10 million to Afghanistan to help pay Afghan government workers. [Source: The Irish Times, Feb. 9, 2002]
85.  Feb. 18, 2002 - The Financial Times reports that the estimated opium harvest in Afghanistan in the late-spring 2002 will reach a world record 4,500 metric tons.
86.  mid-April, 2002- World Bank chief James Wolfensohn, at the opening of the World Bank's offices in Kabul, states he has held talks about financing the Trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline. He confirms $100 million in new grants for the interim Afghani government. Wolfensohn also states that a number of companies have already expressed interest in the project. [Source: Alexander's Gas and oil Connections, citing an Agence France-Presse story]
87. May 13, 2002 - The BBC reports that Afghanistan is about to close a deal for construction of the $2 billion gas pipeline to run from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. The story states, "work on the project will start after an agreement is expected to be struck" at a summit scheduled for the end of the month. Unocal will build the pipeline. [Source: BBC, May 13, 2002]
88.  May 2002- A number of sources report progress on both oil and gas pipelines. Regional sources state that Unocal will re-emerge as a pipeline contender after withdrawing from the CentGas pipeline project in 1998. Unocal denies plans to revive the gas pipeline but curiously neglects to mention whether or not it has any interest in the oil pipeline, which local sources say is moving ahead. [Source: The Dawn Group of Newspapers, May 7, May 17, May 22, 2002]
89. May 30, 2002 - Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, Turkmenistan's President Niyazov, and Pakistani President Musharraf meet in Islamabad to sign a memorandum of understanding on the trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline project. The three leaders will meet for more talks on the project in October. The Turkmen-Afghan-Pakistani gas pipeline accord has been published and can be viewed at the following website: http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/nts22622.htm. [Source: NewsBase, June 5, 2002]
90.  May 16, 2002 - White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer states unequivocally that while President Bush had been warned of possible hijackings, "The president did not -- not -- receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers." [Source: CBS News, May 15, 2002]
91. May 19, 2002 - Former FBI Agent Tyrone Powers, now a professor at Anne Arundel Community College states on radio station KISS 98.7 that he has credible evidence suggesting that the Bush Administration did in fact allow the Sept. 11 attacks to further a hidden agenda. [Source: http://www.indymedia.org - May 20, 2002]
92. May 31, 2002 - FBI Agent Robert Wright delivers a tearful press conference at the National Press Club describing his lawsuit against the FBI for deliberately curtailing investigations that might have prevented the 9-11 attacks. He uses words like "prevented," "thwarted," "obstructed," "threatened," "intimidated," and "retaliation" to describe the actions of his superiors in blocking his attempts to shut off money flows to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. These are not words of negligence. They are words describing deliberate and malicious actions. [Source: C-SPAN website]
93. June 4, 2002 - Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Butler, who had called President Bush a joke and accused him of allowing the Sept. 11 attacks to happen, is suspended from his post at the Defense Language School in Monterey, Calif. and could face a court martial. [Source: Associated Press, June 4, 2002]
94.  June 14, 2002- Common Dreams website publishes an account from a former member of the 1/118thInfantry Battalion of the South Carolina National Guard: "My unit reported for drill in July 2001 and we were suddenly and unexpectedly informed that all activities planned for the next two months would be suspended in order to prepare  for a mobilization exercise to be held on Sept. 14, 2001. We worked diligently for two weekends and even came in on an unscheduled day in August to prepare for the exercise. By the end of August all we needed was a phone call, which we were to expect, and we could hop into a fully prepared convoy with our bags and equipment packed." [Source: Common Dreams, http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0614-02.htm]          
95.  June 17, 2002 - Reuters reports that Butler's case has been resolved without the necessity of a court martial. (I guess so. There's enough material here to prove him right. -- MCR) [Reuters, June 17, 2002]
96.  July 2, 2002 - Motions from Zacarias Moussaoui are unsealed in federal court, indicating that Moussaoui wants to testify before both a grand jury and Congress about the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui claims to have information showing that the U.S. government wanted the attacks to happen. [Source: The Washington Post, July 3, 2002]
97.  July 3, 2002 - The first-ever shipment of Russian oil, 200,000 metric tons, arrives in Houston. [Source: The Moscow Times, July 6, 2002].
98.  July 6, 2002 - Afghan Vice President Hajji Abdul Qadir is assassinated by Afghan warlords. The New York Times reports that Qadir may have been assassinated by opium warlords upset by Qadir's efforts to reduce the rampant opium farming and processing that has taken place since the U.S. occupation. Qadir had been overseeing a Western-backed eradication program, according to the Times. However, the opium warlords of the region are same ones sponsored, protected, and in some cases released from prison by the CIA and who have been protected by President Bush's special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad. It is reported that the raw opium is being refined near U.S. bases at Kandahar. [Sources: The New York Times, July 8, 2002; Far Eastern Economic Review, April 18, 2002]
99.  July 26, 2002- White House security prevented the legal watch-group Judicial Watch from serving Vice President Cheney with a lawsuit filed on behalf of Halliburton shareholders. Before becoming vice president Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, which has filed for bankruptcy. [Source: Cybercast News Service, cnsnews.com] 
100.  Aug. 2, 2002- The FBI asked members of the House and Senate intelligence committees to take lie-detector tests as investigators try to determine who leaked information to CNN about communications in Arabic that made vague references to an impending attack on the United States. The communications were intercepted by the National Security Agency on Sept. 10 but weren't translated until Sept. 12. [Source: Associated Press story published in the Boston Globe, Aug. 2, 2002, http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/08.03A.fbi.lie.det.p.htm]
101.  Aug. 5, 2002 - The Associated Press reported Russia's major role over the last five years in the trafficking of Afghan heroin into Europe. [Source: Santa Fe New Mexican, Aug. 5, 2002, www.sfnewmexican.com]
102.  Aug. 16, 2002- A Knight Ridder story discloses that members of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's staff have created a special planning unit for an invasion of Iraq. The unit is composed primarily of civilians and was spearheaded by conservative members of Rumsfeld's staff, such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The story was headlined, "White House Methodically Preparing for Iraq Campaign." [Source: Knight Ridder Newspapers, www.truthout.org/docs 02/08.17B.wh.prep.irq.p.htm]
103.  Aug. 28, 2002- The Globe and Mail of Canada reports Afghanistan will become the world's top producer of opium this year, surpassing Southeast Asia. [Source: the Globe and Mail, Aug. 28, 2002]   
Now, let's go back to the Oct. 31 story by Le Figaro -- the one that has Osama bin Laden meeting with a CIA officer in Dubai in July 2001.
The story says, "Throughout his stay in the hospital, Osama Bin Laden received visits from many family members [There goes the story that he's a black sheep! --MCR] and Saudi Arabian Emirate personalities of status. During this time the local representative of the CIA was seen by many people taking the elevator and going to bin Laden's room.
"Several days later the CIA officer bragged to his friends about having visited the Saudi millionaire. From authoritative sources, this CIA agent visited CIA headquarters on July 15, the day after bin Laden's departure for Quetta.
"According to various Arab diplomatic sources and French intelligence itself, precise information was communicated to the CIA concerning terrorist attacks aimed at American interests in the world, including its own territory.
"Extremely bothered, they [American intelligence officers in a meeting with French intelligence officers] requested from their French peers exact details about the Algerian activists [connected to bin Laden through Dubai banking institutions], without explaining the exact nature of their inquiry. When asked the question, What do you fear in the coming days?' the Americans responded with incomprehensible silence.
"On further investigation, the FBI discovered certain plans that had been put together between the CIA and its 'Islamic friends' over the years. The meeting in Dubai is, so it would seem, consistent with 'a certain American policy.'"
Even though Le Figaro reported that it had confirmed with hospital staff that bin Laden had been there as reported, stories printed on Nov. 1 contained quotes from hospital staff that these reports were untrue. On Nov. 1, as reported by the Ananova press agency, the CIA flatly denied that any meeting between any CIA personnel and Osama bin Laden at any time.
Who do you believe?
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