911 Insider Trading Linked to CIA

While most of us were shocked and appalled by the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, some people made money?a lot of money?from them. A number of transactions in the financial markets indicated clear and specific knowledge about what was going to happen that day. And the reason may the large number of people who were once high up in the CIA and went on to dominate Wall Street and banking.

“Selling Short” means borrowing stock, selling it at current market prices, but not being required to actually produce the stock right away. If the stock price falls later on, the seller can buy it back at the pre-crash price. “Put Options” are purchased low prices, such as $1 per share, and are sold in groups of 100. If exercised, they give you the right to sell the stock the put is written on at a future date at the price that?s set when the contract is issued. This means that the owner of the put can sell the stock at a high price even if it has dropped, and keep the difference.

Michael C. Ruppert, of the Center for Research on Globalization, writes that 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 had purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options. Assuming that 4,000 of these put options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the upcoming attacks, they 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 reason for this imbalance, and 4,000 of these new options add up to a profit of almost $4 million. The levels of put options purchased in that time period was more than six times higher than normal, and no similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange during that period.

The stockbroker Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center. 2,157 of its October $45 put options were bought in the three trading days before 911, while only an average of 27 per day were bought before September 6. Morgan Stanley’s share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 after the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based on knowledge of the upcoming attacks, someone made a profit of at least $1.2 million.

Another stockbroker, Merrill Lynch & Co., also occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center. 12,215 of its October $45 put options were bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume had been 252 contracts per day, so this was a 1,200% increase. When trading resumed after 911, Merrill’s shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50. If 11,000 option contracts were bought by people with “inside knowledge,” their profit was about $5.5 million.

On September 29, 2001, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “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.”

Why go to the trouble of making these deals when the profits aren’t collected? It’s because the suspension of trading for four days after the attacks made it impossible for them to get their cash out quickly before officials started investigating. You can place a “put” or “call” anonymously, by hiding behind an overseas corporation for instance, but it’s easier to track money than to identify corporate directors, so collecting the money could be risky.

We need to understand the relationships between the CIA, banks and brokerage houses. During the 911 attacks, A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard was Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown, which was acquired by Banker’s Trust in 1997. Krongard then became Vice Chairman of Banker’s Trust, which is one of the 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin as being connected to the laundering of drug money. Krongard handled “private client relations” with some of the world’s wealthiest people.

Krongard joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush this March. Bankers Trust was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999, and is now the largest bank in Europe. It played several key roles in events connected to 911. The CIA has long monitored insider trading as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves against U.S. interests, using Promis software. Clark Clifford, former Secretary of Defense, managed to get the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI a license to operate on American shores. John Foster and Allen Dulles, who were both active in intelligence operations during WW II, ended up as partners in the pwoerful Wall Street firm of Sullivan, Cromwell.

Bill Casey, Ronald Reagan’s CIA Director, was a Wall Street lawyer and stockbroker. David Doherty, the current Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange, is a retired lawyer for the CIA. Ex-President George Herbert Walker Bush was CIA Director for 13 months from 1976-77. John Deutch, retired CIA Director from the Clinton Administration, is now on the board of Citigroup, the nation’s second largest bank, which has been involved in the documented laundering drug money. In 2001, Citigroup purchased the Mexican bank Banamex for this purpose.

There are plenty of other bank and Wall Street connections to the CIA. There’s a lot of proof that at least part of the CIA (along with the FBI) had evidence of the upcoming 911 attacks, but didn’t stop them, because the information didn’t filter up to the top, where action could be initiated. Could the information have been deflected along the way by “insiders” who saw them it a chance to make big money, despite the fact that thousands of people would die as a result?

The administration has fiercely resisted any genuine investigation of the 911 disaster, and continues to do so.

What really went on during 911? Will we ever know the truth?

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