http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/11/18/evidence-for-informed-trading-on-the-attacks-of-september-11/
Evidence for Informed Trading on the Attacks of September 11
by Kevin Ryan
November 18, 2010
Just after September 11th
2001, many governments began investigations into possible insider
trading related to the terrorist attacks of that day. Such
investigations were initiated by the governments of Belgium, Cyprus,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Monte Carlo, the Netherlands,
Switzerland, the United States, and others. Although the investigators
were clearly concerned about insider trading, and considerable evidence
did exist, none of the investigations resulted in a single indictment.
That’s because the people identified as having been involved in the
suspicious trades were seen as unlikely to have been associated with
those alleged to have committed the 9/11 crimes.
This is an example of the circular logic
often used by those who created the official explanations for 9/11.
The reasoning goes like this: if we assume that we know who the
perpetrators were (i.e. the popular version of “al Qaeda”) and those who
were involved in the trades did not appear to be connected to those
assumed perpetrators, then insider trading did not occur.
That’s basically what the 9/11
Commission told us. The Commission concluded that “exhaustive
investigations” by the SEC and the FBI “uncovered no evidence that
anyone with advance knowledge of the attacks profited through securities
transactions.” What they meant was that someone did profit through
securities transactions but, based on the Commission’s assumptions of
guilt, those who profited were not associated with those who were guilty
of conducting the attacks. In a footnote, the Commission report
acknowledged “highly suspicious trading on its face,” but said that this
trading on United Airlines was traced back to “A single U.S.-based
institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda.”[1]
With respect to insider trading, or what
is more technically called informed trading, the Commission report was
itself suspect for several reasons. First, the informed trades relating
to 9/11 covered far more than just airline company stock. The stocks
of financial and reinsurance companies, as well as other financial
vehicles, were identified as being associated with suspicious trades.
Huge credit card transactions, completed just before the attacks, were
also involved. The Commission ultimately tried to frame all of this
highly suspicious trading in terms of a series of misunderstandings.
However, the possibility that so many leading financial experts were so
completely wrong is doubtful at best and, if true, would constitute
another unbelievable scenario in the already highly improbable sequence
of events represented by the official story of 9/11.
In the last few years, new evidence has
come to light on these matters. In 2006 and 2010, financial experts at a
number of universities have established new evidence, through
statistical analyses, that informed trades did occur with respect to the
9/11 attacks. Additionally, in 2007, the 911 Commission released a
memorandum summary of the FBI investigations on which its report was
based.[2] A careful review of this memorandum indicates that some of the
people who were briefly investigated by the FBI, and then acquitted
without due diligence, had links to al Qaeda and to US intelligence
agencies. Although the elapsed time between the informed trades and
these new confirmations might prevent legal action against the guilty,
the facts of the matter can help lead us to the truth about 9/11.
Early signs
Within a week of the attacks, Germany’s
stock market regulator, BAWe, began looking into claims of suspicious
trading.[3] That same week, Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Martino,
made it clear that he had concerns by issuing this public statement: “I
think that there are terrorist states and organisations behind
speculation on the international markets.”[4]
Within two weeks of the attacks, CNN
reported that regulators were seeing “ever-clearer signs” that someone
“manipulated financial markets ahead of the terror attack in the hope of
profiting from it.” Belgian Finance Minister, Didier Reynders, said
that there were strong suspicions that British markets were used for
transactions.[5] The CIA was reported to have asked the British
regulators to investigate some of the trades.[6] Unfortunately, the
British regulator, The Financial Services Authority, wrote off its
investigation by simply clearing “bin Laden and his henchmen of insider
trading.”[7]
Conversely, German central bank
president, Ernst Welteke, said his bank conducted a study that strongly
indicated “terrorism insider trading” associated with 9/11. He stated
that his researchers had found “almost irrefutable proof of insider
trading.”[8] Welteke suggested that the insider trading occurred not
only in shares of companies affected by the attacks, such as airlines
and insurance companies, but also in gold and oil. [9]
The extent of the 9/11-related informed
trading was unprecedented. An ABC News Consultant, Jonathan Winer,
said, “it’s absolutely unprecedented to see cases of insider trading
covering the entire world from Japan to the US to North America to
Europe.”[10]
By October 2001, the Chicago Board
Options Exchange (CBOE) and the four other options exchanges in the US
had joined forces with the FBI and the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) to investigate a list of 38 stocks, as well as multiple
options and Treasury bonds, that were flagged in relation to potential
informed trades. SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt gave testimony to the House
Financial Services Committee at the time, saying, “We will do everything
in our power to track those people down and bring them to justice.”[11]
Mary Bender, chief regulatory officer at
the CBOE, stated “We’ve never really had anything like this, [the
option exchanges are] using the same investigative tools as we would in
an insider-trading case. The point is to find people who are connected
to these heinous crimes.”
The people ultimately found included an
unnamed customer of Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown (DBAB). This involved a
trade on United Airlines (UAL) stock consisting of a 2,500-contract
order that was, for some reason, split into chunks of 500 contracts each
and then directed to multiple exchanges around the country
simultaneously.[12] When the 9/11 Commission report pointed to a “single
U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al
Qaeda,” it was referring to either DBAB or its customer in that
questionable trade.
Michael Ruppert has since written about
DBAB, noting that the company had previously been a financier of The
Carlyle Group and also of Brown Brothers Harriman, both of which are
companies closely related to the Bush family. Ruppert also noted that
Alex. Brown, the company purchased by Deutsche Bank to become DBAB, was
managed by A.B. (Buzzy) Krongard, who left the firm in 1998 to join the
CIA as counsel to director George Tenet.[13] Krongard had been a
consultant to CIA director James Woolsey in the mid 1990s and, on
September 11th, he was the Executive Director of the CIA, the third highest position in the agency.
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