by Home home
Between 1999 and 2015 they discovered $21 trillion in
unaccounted transactions on the books.[183]
Conspiracy theorists claim that Rumsfeld statement, made
the day before 9/11, suggests foreknowledge. A deliberate
attempt to bury an unacceptable reality. That reality is that
the U.S economy has a hidden counterpart. The Black
Budget economy. Its scale is virtually untold and no one,
outside of its deep state controllers, really have any idea at
all how much is spent or what this dirty money pays for.
It could have simply been pure coincidence. Yet it is not the
only one that ties curious financial irregularities to 9/11.
When AA flight 77 hit the Pentagon, it struck a recently
112
A Dangerous Ideology
reinforced section of the building, called 'Wedge One,' on the
west side of the building. It housed personnel from Resource
Services of the Army. Most were civilian accountants,
bookkeepers and, coincidentally, budget analysts. 34 died,
their office and data analysis was destroyed.
The obvious 'truther' suggestion is that these people were
investigating the missing money. However, others have
pointed out that this isn't the case.[26]
Firstly, some have claimed the Department of Defense Audit
Service (attached to the Inspector General’s Office) wasn't
situated in Wedge One of the Pentagon but rather in Texas.
However Wikipedia, hardly definitive, lists it as being in
Arlington, Virginia. You might wonder why Rumsfeld would
bother making any announcement at all about the money if
he knew 9/11 would effectively erase the issue from history.
Furthermore, this was just an accounting error (admittedly
on an unimaginable scale) not, as claimed by the conspiracy
theorists, evidence of governmental fraud.
This seems plausible. However, in 2002 the Inspector
General issued another report identifying a further $1.1
trillion of unaccountable transactions. Some questioned why
this report made no mention at all of the previously stated
'accounting error.' The head of the Department of the Army,
Thomas White, said they didn't publish any further comment
regarding the 2001 financial statement of the missing $2.3
trillion due to:[27]
“… the loss of financial-management
personnel sustained during the September
11 terrorist attack.”
Perhaps key investigators were, coincidentally, killed that
day. Maybe the conspiracy theorists do have reason for
suspicion. However, there is no question that suspicion is
justified when we look at some of the other financial
'coincidences' surrounding 9/11.
In April 2001 the lease holder for the Twin Towers and the
Salomon Brothers Building (WTC 7), Larry Silverstein, signed
a 99 years lease with NYC Port Authority.[28] From the
outset there were some unusual aspects to the deal.
113
A Dangerous Ideology
The towers were valued at $1.2 billion and the Port Authority
held $1.5 billion insurance coverage on the properties. Yet
Silverstein insisted on $3.55 billion worth of coverage as part
of the deal. His flabbergasted brokers struggled to cover this.
They had to cobble together a consortium of 25 providers in
order to meet Silverstein's insurance requirements and force
the purchase through.
So complex was this arrangement, when the Towers were hit,
much of the coverage was still on a temporary contractual
footing. Silverstein also insisted on an exclusivity clause to
'rebuild' the structures, if they were destroyed, at an
additional cost to the contract.
Immediately following the attacks Silverstein started legal
enquiries to ascertain if both towers were 'individually'
insured for the full $3.55Bn.[29] What followed was a
protracted claim for $7.1Bn which the courts partially
upheld in 2007, netting Silverstein a tidy $4.55Bn pay-out.
[30]
On 9/11, AA Flight 11 struck the North Tower between 93rd
and 100th floors, immediately destroying them in the violent
explosion that killed the occupants. These innocent people
predominantly worked for a single financial firm, worth an
estimated $13Bn, called Marsh & McLennan.
Marsh & McLennan had commissioned a software company
called Silver Stream to develop a unique, highly secure
trading platform between themselves and the insurance
giant AIG. Coincidentally, staff worked around the clock to
have it ready for the firm's roll out deadline of September
10th 2001.[31]
Silver Stream were no lightweights either, having also built
platforms for the likes of Deutsche Bank, Bankers Trust,
Alex Brown and Morgan Stanley among others. Yet the
system they built for Marsh and McLennan was so bespoke
only Marsh' and AIG could use it. It was effectively a closed
loop system for extremely secure transactions, accessible
only to authorised personnel. Its Data centre was housed on
the 95th Floor, the epicentre of the impact blast.
Shortly before 9/11 it became apparent there were some
114
A Dangerous Ideology
major financial irregularities within the system. Analysts
employed by Marsh' initially noticed up to $10M in possibly
fraudulent purchase orders. Many of those tasked with
investigating the potential irregularities were attending a
conference call meeting to discuss the situation in the North
Tower. All those attending this meeting were murdered that
day.[32]
Despite the scale of the destruction, a specialist German
data retrieval firm called Convar were able to reconstruct
some information from hard disk fragments found at Ground
Zero. Speaking in late 2001 Peter Herschel, Convar’s director
at the time, reported that they had identified evidence of
insider trading linked to the attacks.
“The suspicion is that inside information
about the attack was used to send financial
transaction commands and authorizations in
the belief that amid all the chaos the
criminals would have, at the very least, a
good head start. Of course it is also possible
that there were perfectly legitimate reasons
for the unusual rise in business volume. It
could turn out that Americans went on an
absolute shopping binge on that Tuesday
morning. But at this point there are many
transactions that cannot be accounted for.
Not only the volume but the size of the
transactions was far higher than usual for a
day like that. There is a suspicion that these
were possibly planned to take advantage of
the chaos.”
One of Convar's data retrieval experts, Richard Wagner,
added:
“There is a suspicion that some people had
advance knowledge of the approximate time
of the plane crashes in order to move out
amounts exceeding $100 million. They
thought that the records of their tran
sactions
could not be traced after the main frames
were destroyed.” [22]
115
A Dangerous Ideology
9/11 researcher Michael Ruppert received information from
whistle-blowers inside Deutsche Bank (one of Silver Streams
other clients) who told him:[34]
“.....in the moments right before the attacks
and during the attack — there was a 40
minute window between the time the first
plane struck the World Trade Center and the
second plane — that Deutsche Bank’s
computers in New York City had been 'taken
over.' Absolutely co-opted and run. There
was a massive data purge, a massive data
download, and all kinds of stuff was
moving.”
If large scale financial fraud, centred on the World Trade
Centre, was underway during the attacks, it obviously
suggests some people, with considerable financial interests,
knew what was going to happen. Furthermore, a potentially
secret trading system would presumably have been quite
useful in any such attempt.
Is this precisely the kind of speculative dross conspiracy
theorists are prone too? Suspicion does not evidence
anything other than a furtive imagination.
On 12th September 2001 the United States Security and
Exchange Commission (SEC) launched an investigation into
the possible insider trading linked to the attacks. There was
a huge amount of peculiar activity in the markets as
unnamed investors bought something called 'put options' on
stocks that were subsequently affected by the attacks.
Ostensibly you agree to sell shares at a fixed price, within a
fixed time frame. If the stock falls you make money because
you have bought the 'option' to sell the shares for a fixed
price which now exceeds the cost of buying them. Enabling
you to trade them for profit. For example, following 9/11,
American and United Airlines stock fell by 39% overnight,
providing big gains for those who invested in the right 'puts'
before the attacks.[34]
Whilst these are a standard financial instruments, traders
normally expect a similar number of 'call option' (betting the
116
A Dangerous Ideology
stock will rise) to be exchanged on any normal day. Yet in
the days leading up to the attacks they noticed an extremely
high volume of 'puts.' These are usually very high risk
investments as, under normal circumstances, you can't be
certain the stock will fall and could end up losing your shirt
in a long odds gamble.
They weren't just purchased on airline stock either. Puts
were also bought on the stock of other companies impacted
by 9/11. For example Marsh & McLennan and Morgan
Stanley (the WTC's main tenants.) Other companies, such as
Axa Group, similarly affected, also had extremely high level
of 'puts' purchased on their stock in the days leading up to
9/11.
Not only were some investors able to predict falling stocks
with incredible accuracy, they were also able to identify
precisely where to invest the equally high risk 'call options',
betting stock would rise. The defence contractor Raytheon,
who make the Tomahawk missiles the U.S. military used in
response to 9/11, saw a six fold increase in 'calls' purchased
on its stock on September the 10th. The day before the
attacks.
This prompted many traders to alert the SEC of their
suspicions. The concern being the terrorist's financiers had
possibly profited financially, as well as politically and
psychologically, from their crime. Effectively by 'insider
trading' shares, certain that some stock values would
collapse while others would soar, as a result of 9/11.
However, it wasn't just the U.S. based SEC who were alerted
to the possibility of mass financial fraud. A number of other
European agencies were investigating the possibility.
Following statements from Belgian and Italian officials, who
announced their suspicions, it was the German Central
Bank’s president Ernst Welteke who made the most
definitive statement:[175]
“[There is]....almost irrefutable proof of
insider trading. What we found makes us
sure that people connected to the terrorists
must have been trying to profit from this
117
A Dangerous Ideology
tragedy.”
The subsequent SEC investigation was the biggest in its
history. It examined over nine million securities transactions
involving more than one hundred different companies. It
coordinated with over 20 of the world's largest trading firms
and liaised with ten foreign financial regulatory authorities.
A number of agencies including the FBI, the Department of
the Treasury and the Department of Justice were also
involved.
Following their exhaustive exploration of the 'truth,' in May
2002, the SEC Division of Enforcement produced its report
which concluded:[176]
“We have not developed any evidence
suggesting that those who had advanced
knowledge of the September 11 attacks
traded on the basis of that information.”
The eagle eyed may have noticed some considerable
problems with this statement. Firstly it doesn't state that
insider trading didn't take place. It only claims that “those
who had advanced knowledge of the September 11 attacks”
didn't metaphorically, as well as literally, make a killing. It
also begs the question how, in May 2002, the SEC were able
to identify who those with 'advanced knowledge' were. More
to the point, did they hand this information over to
investigators such as Mary Galligan (head of PENTTBOM)
who, unlike the SEC, had yet to solve the 9/11 crime?
Thankfully, in 2005, the eventual 9/11 Commission Report,
which remains the only official, and therefore definitive
account of 9/11, was able to clarify this for everyone.
Speaking about the abnormal volume of United Airlines 'put'
options traded on September 6th, they stated that 95% of
these options were purchased by:
“A single U.S. based institutional investor
with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda.”
Ruling out complicity in 9/11 on the basis of 'no conceivable
ties,' to al Qaeda is the logical equivalent of discovering a
banana plantation, stripped bare of its fruit, with a very fat,
118
A Dangerous Ideology
guilty looking elephant stood in the middle of it. With ' no
conceivable ties' to monkeys, its complicity in the banana
ravaging incident can be ruled out.
While this nonsensical conclusion from the 9/11
Commission is cited by the some as 'evidence' that no insider
trading occurred, conspiracists have pointed out that it was
the trading patterns themselves that suggest advanced
knowledge, not the trader’s potential links to al Qaeda, or
monkeys. So the question was 'who' was profiting from these
&n
bsp; trades because, irrespective of any established links al
Qaeda, whoever it was made a lot of money out of 9/11.
As a result of these concerns, researchers checked the
Commission's SEC sources used to decide there was no
'advanced knowledge' and no suspicious trading. It therefore
came as something of a surprise that the SEC apparently
decided to destroy all the evidence related to the matter.
Following an FOIA request from David Callahan (editor of
'Smart CEO') he received the following response from the
SEC.[36]
“This letter is in response to your request
seeking access to and copies of the
documentary evidence referred to in footnote
130 of Chapter 5 of the September 11 (9/11)
Commission Report.
We have been advised that the potentially
responsive records have been destroyed.”
This investigation could have potentially uncovered the
financiers of the 9/11 attacks. Presumably, it was by far the
most important inquiry the SEC had ever undertaken. It was
certainly their largest. Unfortunately they destroyed all their
own hard work.
All this stuff, say the conspiracy theorists, evidently suggests
a cover up. It raises the stomach churning possibility of an
institutional financial fraud predicated upon the murder of
thousands of innocent people.
However, others have highlighted alternative explanations for
the anomalous trading. For example the stock price had
119
A Dangerous Ideology
been falling for American Airlines since July and, on the 7th
September, they released a string poor financial reports. So
perhaps the 'puts' weren't so suspicious.[37]
The same cannot be said for all the other companies, such
as Boeing, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup,
Bank of America and dozens more who all saw significant
spikes in 'put' option activity in the days prior to 9/11. All of
which turned out to be very profitable. Nor does it explain
the equally anomalous increase in 'call option' trading in the
stocks of companies whose share price increased following
9/11, such as Raytheon and Stratesec. Again, with universal
success.
To date, no one has offered a reasonable account for the
SEC's remarkable destruction of the evidence that could
have answered these important questions.
This apparent lack of curiosity about the money behind 9/11
was a view shared by the 9/11 Commission itself:
