Oh, the places you go (when you follow the money)

[Minstrel Boy]

Posted to my blog here. Lots of links there, too. (Sorry. Burned out on html.) And thanks to this thread for getting me to think about this.

Oh, the places you go (when you follow the money)

Let's pick a story. Say, data recovery from the World Trade Center.

Remember? While the ruins still smoldered, some genuine questions were still being asked by the mainstream media, which were blessedly unaware of how awkward the answers might prove.

For instance, this story, from December 17, 2001:

German computer experts are working round the clock to unlock the truth behind an unexplained surge in financial transactions made just before two hijacked planes crashed into New York's World Trade Center on September 11.

Were criminals responsible for the sharp rise in credit card transactions that moved through some computer systems at the WTC shortly before the planes hit the twin towers?

Or was it coincidence that unusually large sums of money, perhaps more than $100 million, were rushed through the computers as the disaster unfolded?

And this, from CNN, a few days later:

An unexplained surge in transactions was recorded prior to the attacks, leading to speculation that someone might have profited from previous knowledge of the terrorist plot by moving sums of money. But because the facilities of many financial companies processing the transactions were housed in New York's World Trade Center, destroyed in the blasts, it has until now been impossible to verify that suspicion.

That's where Convar Systeme Deutschland GmbH comes in. The company is helping reconstruct data from hard disk drives found in the ruins of the twin towers. While other data-recovery companies are also involved in the effort, the company says it has a special edge: a laser-based scanning technology developed about two years ago.

Peter Henschel, director of Convar, called the extent of the transactions "extraordinarily high."

Further:

"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, " Henschel said.... "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."

Richard Wagner, a data retrieval expert at the company, said illegal transfers of more than $100 million might have been made immediately before and during the disaster.

"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," Wagner said. "They thought that the records of their transactions could not be traced after the main frames were destroyed."

As Convar recovered the data, at a cost of up to $35,000 per hard drive, the information was forwarded to its clients (apparantly telecommunications, accounting, and credit card firms), which in turn passed it on to the FBI.

A Reuters story claims "Convar has recovered information from 32 computers that support assumptions of dirty doomsday dealings." And an article dated May 30, 2002, says Convar "had recoverd the data from 39 computers...and was beginning to work on another 62....

So, what happened to the WTC data-recovery story, and the "dirty doomsday dealings"?

We need to step back, and ask, what happened to Convar?

In June, 2002, Convar was purchased by security firm Kroll Inc., which employs a number of former FBI and CIA officials, and has a reputation for serving as a cut-out of US Intelligence. It's reportedly known as the "CIA of Wall Street," due to its revolving door of former-and-future spooks, and its role in corporate espionage and the destabilization of foreign governments.

We can learn something about Kroll's reputation from a front-page story of The Washington Post, January 8, 1996:

The French, the CIA, and the Man Who Sued Too Much

William Lee is a 57-year-old Harvard-educated corporate lawyer whose specialty, until recently, was international mergers and acquisitions. But a year ago, the government of France charged that he was a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency, waging a secret war to destabilize French corporate interests in Asia.

...

Some of the French anxiety about Lee stems from what he did next. In mid-1992, he took a part-time position with Kroll Associates, a New York firm that provides investigative services for big companies and employs a number of former CIA and FBI officers.

For French officials, Lee's brief stint with Kroll tagged him as a suspicious person. According to French and U.S. sources, the French equivalent of the FBI, known as the Directorate of Surveillance of the Territory, or DST, suspected that Kroll's Paris operation was a CIA front. They bugged Kroll's Paris offices and harassed some of its clients, according to company executives.

And this story, from October of last year:

Brazil Raids Kroll Offices in SpyProbe

Police raided the Brazilian offices of international security consultant Kroll Inc. and arrested five employees Wednesday in an investigation into allegations of illegal spying by Kroll during the company's probe of a nasty corporate dispute.... Five Brazilians Kroll workers were arrested on conspiracy charges.

...The investigation began in July after Brazil's largest newspaper reported Kroll obtained copies of e-mails written by a top adviser to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the course of its investigation for Brasil Telecom Participacoes SA.

Interestingly, in August of 2001, it was then-Managing Director of Kroll, Jerome Hauer, who arranged for former FBI special agent John O'Neill, to be hired as chief of security at the World Trade Center.

Besides being in Kroll's service on September 11, Hauer was also running Rudolph Giuliani's "Office of Emergency Management," and its hardened "command and control" bunker on the 22nd floor of WTC 7. (Perhaps you remember what happened to that.)

I believe too little attention is paid to the role of extra-governmental agencies, both to the 9/11 story and beyond, because it is in their study that Danny Casolaro saw what he came to call the Octopus: the international network of spooks, former spooks, crooks and terrorists, pursuing trans-national criminal interests. To say "it's the CIA" is too simplistic, too black and white for the world of shadows. As Chaim Kupferberg writes:

It is, in fact, security firms like Kroll Associates, Burns Security, Teg, Wackenhut, and their ilk that should garner our interest at least as much as the web of conservative think tanks that have welded in place the parameters of "mainstream" debate - for it is through these very firms that the former stars of law enforcement have gone through the revolving door into the lucrative private sector. It is a world where former military types mix with various operatives of the CIA, FBI, DEA and any number of alphabet soup agencies charged with the security of our nation.

Since acquiring Convar, Kroll itself has been purchased by Marsh & McLennan, a former occupant of Tower One's 95th floor. Last October, Kroll's former President, Michael Cherkasky, was named Marsh's CEO. (Formerly, Cherkasky had "spent 16 years in the criminal justice system, including serving as chief of the Investigations Division for the New York County District Attorney's Office.")

And what an upstanding corporate citizen Marsh turns out to be. Just yesterday, it reached a deal with New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer "that resolves the actions that were commenced against MMC and Marsh Inc. over questionable brokerage compensation and account placement practices":

As a result of this agreement, the company said it would enact reforms to lead the industry in transparency and service to clients and establish an $850 million fund to compensate clients.

Under the terms of the agreement, the company neither admits nor denies the allegations in the complaint filed by the attorney general and the citation issued by the insurance superintendent.

Corporate espionage, US Intelligence, High Crime, Big Money - you can't talk about any of them, without talking about them all. "We are not talking about only governmental levels. And I keep underlining semi-legit organizations and following the money," says Sibel Edmonds.

And what of those "dirty doomsday dealings" on the World Trade Center hard drives? They'll get back to us, I'm sure of it, any day now....

[ewagner]

1. Thanks for the article

I didn't know any of this was going on....hell......I didn't even know of the $100 Million in transactions going on that morning.......

[LiberalVoice]

2. Hmmmm

I wonder...

[poe]

3. Great post-very relevant-Great blog-visit regularly

If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst."
-- Thomas Hardy
If we do not wakefully intend,
we are subconsciously compelled --

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. Very interesting. Would you consider reposting this on the 9/11 Forum?

That forum, which is new, is here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=125

It might be helpful to be a bit more specific with the title, as people will be going through all the 9/11 threads looking for "their" special interests.

This story is something I had never heard before, a fascinating addition to the stewing mess that is the 9/11 disaster and coverup. I would be most interested in hearing more about the continuing development of this part of the story. Chances are good that there are multiple connections with other pieces, and the more of those that are found, the closer we are to exposing the truth.

Thanks for posting this story.

[Minstrel Boy]

5. If you'd like to repost, or link to it here, that's fine.

I need to step away from the computer for a while. Fingers, cramping...knees, aching...

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. OK, maybe I will do that tonight sometime.

I need to get away from the computer too. If/when I do repost in the 9/11 forum, I'll write a post to this thread to that effect and link to the new one in the other forum. Of course, I would also link to your blog and this thread if I do repost.

My reason for wanting this in the 9/11 forum is that it will be lost here in this general forum. Search criteria wouldn't turn it up. I want to avoid that - all the pieces to this puzzle need to be held onto. You never know which ones will be the critical ones to break open this scandal at last. I'm not a 9/11 researcher myself, but I want the people who are to have this story in their files.

[starroute]

6. The Octopus goes way back

Naive as I am, I'd thought the Octopus only got going in the late 70's, after the post-Watergate reforms (following Sy Hersh's revelations and the Church Committee hearings) forced certain CIA figures to resign and certain CIA functions to be outsourced.

But lately I've become aware that the whole scenario of spooks, former spooks, strategic analysts, military men, defense contractors, and right-wing warhawks goes back at least to the 1950's (Eisenhower's original "military-industrial complex") and was in full swing by 1970.

I've been googling on names like Marvin Liebman and Stefan Possony and James D. Atkinson and the American Security Council and the American-Chilean Council. I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about the Council for the Defense of Freedom and the Coalition for Peace Through Strength.

And though much of the story remains murky, it's becoming clear to me that (with a few rare exceptions, none of them recent) American foreign policy since World War II has been under the control of these people. But it's only since the fall of the Soviet Union left them groping around for new ways to keep the American people panicked and docile that things have gotten *really* out of hand.

[poe]

7. Perhaps you could post some links

those you think most important.
July 2003
The United States Is, and Should Be, an Empire

America is not just the most powerful nation on earth but, arguably, the most powerful nation in history. To protect the global trade routes of democratic capitalism and its own security interests, the United States can intervene anytime, anyplace. Although America’s domain is more seaborne, airborne, and space-based than territorial, some are beginning to refer to this Pax Americana as the American empire. Is the United States an empire? Should we call it that? On July 17, 2003, the New Atlantic Initiative organized a debate on this topic between two renowned authors-Niall Ferguson and Robert Kagan.

http://www.aei.org/events/filter.,eventID.428/summary.a...
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to Ari Shavit: “This is a war of an elite.” Laughing: “I could give you the names of 25 people – all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office – who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.

[jazzjunkysue]

12. They already took it down! Save and send to www.therandirhodesshow.com

[starroute]

18. There are no decent links

I've been digging out this stuff a little at a time since last fall. Basically, I started with Iran-Contra and some of the other intrigues of the Reagan era and began googling on the names of the people involved to find out where they'd come from before that. But most of the sites that mention those people (like Disinfopedia or RightWeb) do so only in passing and with no real consideration of their significance. I'm still trying to piece it all together.

What I'm coming to believe is that virtually all of US foreign policy since shortly after World War II has been driven by the CIA and its affiliates, and that the rise of the New Right starting about 1970 is the visible manifestation of an intrusion of the same goals and methods into US domestic affairs. Propaganda, control of the media, dirty tricks, influsion of large sums of money where they will do the most good -- all are tricks the CIA worked out to maintain US control of other countries that are now being applied here at home. But it's almost impossible to find anything that treats this material with a broad perspective.

I did find one pretty good piece in French -- of which the Babelfish translation is more-or-less comprehensible -- on the World Anti-Communist League and its OSS/CIA background. (http://www.reseauvoltaire.net/article13873.html) And there seem to be other pieces at that site by the same writer that I haven't yet looked at.

The Origins of the Overclass by Steve Kangas (http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/L-overclass.html) has some interesting clues to the influence of the CIA on American society, though it doesn't cover the specific military-industrial / proto-Neocon individuals and groups I mentioned above. (Kangas, by the way, was one of those mysterious "suicides" among investigators of the Octopus.)

Beyond that, I've got a reading list of books I think may be useful but haven't yet started tracking down and reading. As I say, I've only been at this a couple of months.

Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy
Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics
Robert Parry, Lost History
Robert Parry, Secrecy & Privilege
Sid Blumenthal, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment
John S.Saloma, Ominous Politics: The New Conservative Labyrinth
Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right and the Reagan Administration

[poe]

19. very helpful

"The Politics of Heroin" by Alfred McCoy updated edition
"Thy Will Be Done" by Gerard Colby and Charlotte Denett out of print addresses the confluence of Rockefeller oil interests in the Amazon, CIA, and wycliffe bible translators/missionaries and geopolitics. Award winning journalists on a 17 year journey. Amazing what is revealed. A look down from the mountain

Essential reading.

[Minstrel Boy]

20. Another must read for this material is

The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro (Revised Edition), by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith.

[starroute]

21. Here's something else to wrap your head around

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/ReaganContraCommit_TICC.html

Singlaub had first met Cline, along with four future backers of CIA-Cuban operations (Howard Hunt, Paul Helliwell, Lucien Conein and Mitch WerBell) in a small OSS mission at Kunming in China, at the very center of the World War II KMT drug traffic. According to the Wall Street Journal, OSS payments at this base were frequently made with five-pound shipments of opium.

(See also an excerpt from The Great Heroin Coup -- Drugs, Intelligence, & International Fascism by Henrik Kruger at http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg29602.html )

John Singlaub was CIA deputy chief in South Korea during the Korean War. In Vietnam, he was head of the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force, which was responsible for Operation Phoenix. After Jimmy Carter fired him for insubordination, he became asociated with several anti-communist groups and wound up leading the World Anti-Communist League in the middle 80's, when it was the main source of covert aid to the Contras, working largely through J. Peter Grace and Americares. Oliver North was his liaison to the White House.

Ray S. Cline was the key CIA analyst on Korea from 1949 to 1952, then was CIA station chief in Taiwan from 1958 to 1962, where he is said to have helped in the founding of the Political Warfare Cadres Academy at Peitou (which would later be the prime training ground for Latin American death squads) and to have had a lot to do with the early development of the World Anti-Communist League. He was CIA deputy director until 1966, and then was in charge of intelligence at the State Department. He left the CIA in 1973, supported George H.W. Bush's presidential bid in 1979-80, and wrote the blueprint for the first Gulf War.

E. Howard Hunt, who most people remember in connection with Watergate, was involved in the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 and set up the first Latin American affiliates of the World Anti-Communist League (then still called the Asian People's Anti-Communist League) in Mexico. He was William Buckley's supervisor when Buckley was a young CIA officer in Mexico City. In 1960, he was part of the Shackley/Clines operation in Miami and was involved with the Bay of Pigs. Hunt was also the man who Charles Colson ordered to doctor the State Department cables pertaining to the murder of President Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam to make it seem that Kennedy had authorized the murder.

Paul Helliwell was the fellow who set up the heroin smuggling operations through Cuba in the 50's, got the CIA into money-laundering with Castle Bank in the Bahamas, and was also part of the anti-Castro operations out of Miami.

Lucien Conein, who was born in France, is a somewhat more shadowy figure, but he was apparently involved with both Helliwell's drug operations and the Corsican Mafia. In Vietnam, he was CIA liaison to the generals who murdered Diem and also was responsible for paying off Vietnamese tribesmen with drugs they later sold to American troops. In the 70's, he was recruited by E. Howard Hunt as chief of Special Operations for DEA to run Nixon's War on Drugs.

Mitch WerBell was even more shadowy than Conein, since he apparently wasn't officially CIA. He worked for Batista in Cuba in 1959, was involved in some sort of plot in the Dominican Republic in 1965, and in an attempt to overthrow Duvalier in Haiti in 1966-67. He was tangled up with the Robert Vesco affair. He claimed to have worked for Nixon's DEA (apparently along with Conein) to develop assassination devices to use against drug smugglers. In the late 70's, he ran a counter-terrorism training camp and provided security for both Lyndon LaRouche and Larry Flynt.


I apologize for dumping all this here, since I don't mean to be a threadjacker. But it's been driving me nuts and I wanted to lay it out somewhere that I knew an interested audience would see it.

Needless to say, I'm finding the fact that Buzzy Krongard was also OSS something more than disquieting.

[Minstrel Boy]

22. You should read Gaeton Fonzi's The Last Investigation,

a number of these names crop up there. I think that's where I first read about WerBell and Conein.

The Octopus reaches way back, into the old OSS and the opium trade.

[starroute]

25. The counter-insurgency stuff is as important as the drug trade

That's where Singlaub and Cline come in, and the World Anti-Communist League, and the Political Warfare Cadres Academy in Taiwan, and the death squads. James D. Atkinson, who I mentioned above, also fits in here -- he was the author of The Edge of War (Regnery, 1960), about psychological warfare, disinformation, and destabilization.

In fact, the counter-insurgency side is probably the more important, because the drug trade has always had the primary purpose of funding counter-insurgencies, whether in Vietnam, in Latin America, or in Afghanistan.

All the really nasty stuff that is going on in Iraq and Guantanamo comes out of CIA or CIA-related counter-insurgency and unconventional warfare programs. (Why else would our government be labeling the Iraqi resistance with the completely inappropriate term "insurgents"?) And the methods of disinformation and fraud that are now being applied here at home come out of those programs as well.

The Octopus wouldn't be so dangerous if it was just about power and money. It's the twisted ideology at the heart of it that's the real danger -- an ideology that finds it completely acceptable to beat down the aspirations of the majority of the world's people in order to preserve the privileges of a small minority.

[poe]

24. Hopefully this thread will stay up for awhile-realpolitik

:kick:

[Willy Lee]

9. Awesome. Way to connect the dots.

Now, if only journalists would do the same...

[Canuckistanian]

10. Graphs would help...

If someone could make a graph of transactions for that week, would it really show a big jump? Are there any numbers anywhere? Can you get them publically somewhere?

[unpossibles]

11. interesting read. thanks. n/t

[JNelson6563]

13. Nominated

Great work! :toast:

Julie

[Minstrel Boy]

14. Thanks!

I'd just like to know where all those debunkers, who are embarrassed by "tinfoil," disappear to. They love to glom onto the outrageous stuff - the pods; the "no plane hit the Pentagon" threads - but they have nothing to say to stuff like this.

[Corgigal]

15. makes me ill

in the pit of my stomach. It's funny how so many knew that day that something was dirty. I knew because I understood NORAD procedures but to think some rich bastards had to get richer off of victims jumping to their death goes beyond the pale.

Thanks for the info.

[seemslikeadream]

16. A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard

But Krongard exhibited the requisite secretiveness when asked
to explain his interest in intelligence and how he came to land
a job in Tenet's inner circle. If you go back to the CIA's origins
during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services, he
explained, "the whole OSS was really nothing but Wall Street
bankers and lawyers."
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16570-2001Ma ...

Supressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIA’s Highest Ranks
CIA Executive Director “Buzzy” Krongard managed firm that handled “PUT” options on United Airline Stock
by Michael C. Ruppert

FTW - October 9, 2001 – Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial
markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the case of at least one of these
trades -- which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed -- the firm used to place the “put options” on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is
now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Until 1997 A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker’s Trust in 1997. Krongard then
became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker’s Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected
to money laundering. Krongard’s last position at Banker’s Trust (BT) was to oversee “private client relations.” In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with
some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being
closely connected to the laundering of drug money.

Krongard joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President
Bush in March of this year. BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999. The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe. And,
as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.
more
http://www.hereinreality.com/insidertrading.html

Follow the Money: Bush, 9/11, and Deep Threat

by Fran Shor
Published on Wednesday, May 22, 2002 by CommonDreams.org

The CIA and Other Deep Pockets

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 a number of news stories appeared concerning investments in “put” options in United and American Airlines. Put options are shares that are bets on falling market prices for specific stocks. In the week before September 11 put options in United and American Airlines went through a furious and unprecedented spasm of investment. In addition put options for Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, two of the biggest occupants of the World Trade Center, also saw abnormal activity. Most of the investments in these put options originated in Germany through the Deutsche Bank. Deutshce Bank had earlier acquired Banker’s Trust, a investment banking firm whose Vice Chairman in charge of “private client relations” in the late 1990’s was A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard. In March of 2001, Krongard was appointed Executive Director of the CIA.

Certainly, the CIA has a history of laundering money and dealings with shady investment characters. What becomes particularly relevant in the lead-up to 9/11 is the August CIA briefing of Bush concerning the potential threat of attacks by bin Laden using hijacked planes on certain sites, such as the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and the fact that the CIA had bugging equipment on bin Laden messages and international banking operations. Although no one has apparently claimed the money from the put options, questions remain about Krongard and the CIA’s involvement.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0522-07.htm


NEW CIA UNIVERSITY
REVEALS AGENCY PRIORITIES
July 3, 2002,-- 17:00 PDT (FTW) -- The CIA is now operating a university somewhere in northern Virginia. According to an entry in a June 24 newsletter published by an association of former intelligence officers, some of the courses taught at the university are "economic trends, international banking, the world oil market, and how the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, etc. and other non-governmental organizations work."

For four years FTW has been teaching that the CIA's primary role, it's raison d'etre, was to serve the interests of Wall Street and the major banks. In our recent three-country lecture tour, our documentation of the close links between CIA and Wall Street has taken many by surprise. Thirty years ago Professor Peter Dale Scott of Berkeley disclosed that six out of the first seven deputy directors of intelligence (CIA's number two position) had gone directly from Wall Street into service at the Agency. Since Sept. 11, FTW's disclosure that the CIA's current executive director, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, is a former investment banker has caused deeper rumbles. The firm he once headed, AlexBrown/Deutschebank, has been connected to insider trading on United Air Lines stock just before the Sept. 11 attacks. The NYSE's current executive vice president for enforcement, David Doherty, is a retired CIA general counsel.
more
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/070302_CIA_U.html

procedure used at Deutschebank/AB Brown assured anonymity

"European reporters found that most of the suspicious pre-attack trades passed through Deutschebank and especially via CIA Executive Director A.B. Krongard’s former Alex Brown investment division by means of a procedure called portage, which assures the anonymity of individuals making the transactions. But Congress has not publicly revealed whether they will call Krongard and other Alex Brown traders to testify in open hearings, or whether they will subpoena the pre-attack documents in question."
more
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0207/S00119.htm

A Deutsche Bank executive was convicted of money laundering shortly before 9/11, and the bank laundered heroin money linked to the CIA.

And Shattuck actually resigned on September 12(!) from his three-year $30 million contract as head of AB Brown.


SMOKING GUN BURIED DURING CALIFORNIA RECALL VOTE!

On October 7 while the eyes of America were fixed on the California Recall vote the Securities and Exchange Commission quietly announced it was closing its investigation of suspicious stock trades connected to 911. The SEC's reason for closing the investigation can best be summed up as "What insider trading?".

...

* Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45.00 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6.

* Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw 12,215 October $45.00 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in these options had been 252 contracts per day.

The CIA routinely monitors stock trades looking for exactly these kinds of suspicious transactions. The fact that these trades failed to sound any alarms is in itself suspicious as the bank which was the trading hub has a man inside the Agency. That man is CIA Executive Director “Buzzy” Krongard and the bank is Deutsche bank.

http://ez-websites.com/grudge /


September 6-10, 2001: Suspicious trading occurs on American and United, the two airlines used in the 9/11 attacks. "Between 6 and 7 September, The Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put option contracts (a speculation that the stock will go down) in UAL versus 396 call options – where a speculator bets on a price rising. Holders of the put options would have netted a profit of $5 million once the carrier's share price dived after September 11. On 10 September, more trading in Chicago saw the purchase of 4,516 put options in American Airlines, the other airline involved in the hijackings. This compares with a mere 748 call options in American purchased that day. Investigators cannot help but notice that no other airlines saw such trading in their put options." One analyst says: "I saw put-call numbers higher than I've ever seen in 10 years of following the markets, particularly the options markets." (Associated Press, 9/18/01, San Francisco Chronicle, 9/19/01) "To the embarrassment of investigators, it has also emerged that the firm used to buy many of the "put" options ... on United Airlines stock was headed until 1998 by "Buzzy" Krongard, now executive director of the CIA." Krongard was chairman of Alex Brown Inc., which was bought by Deutsche Bank. "His last post before resigning to take his senior role in the CIA was to head Bankers Trust – Alex Brown's private client business, dealing with the accounts and investments of wealthy customers around the world." (Independent, 10/14/01)
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/index.html


Let Bin Laden stay free, says CIA man AB “Buzzy” Krongard

January 09, 2005
Tony Allen-Mills

...

If the world’s most wanted terrorist is captured or killed, a power struggle among his Al-Qaeda subordinates may trigger a wave of terror attacks, said AB “Buzzy” Krongard, who stepped down six weeks ago as the CIA’s third most senior executive.

“You can make the argument that we’re better off with him (at large),” Krongard said. “Because if something happens to Bin Laden, you might find a lot of people vying for his position and demonstrating how macho they are by unleashing a stream of terror.”

Krongard, a former investment banker who joined the CIA in 1998, said Bin Laden’s role among Islamic militants was changing. “He’s turning into more of a charismatic leader than a terrorist mastermind,” he said. “Some of his lieutenants are the ones to worry about.” Krongard, 68, said he viewed Bin Laden “not as a chief executive but more like a venture capitalist”.

...

Several US officials have privately admitted that it may be better to keep Bin Laden pinned down on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than make him a martyr or put him on trial. But Krongard is the most senior figure to acknowledge publicly that his capture might prove counter-productive.

Krongard also acknowledged that the CIA was still having trouble planting spies in Islamic militant ranks. “There are hundreds and hundreds of (Al-Qaeda) cells — it’s like a living, moving bit of protoplasm,” he said.

more
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1431539,00...

[Minstrel Boy]

17. Thanks for the great Buzzy data dump!

:hi:

[ThorsHammer]

23. Very interesting stuff

Also, has anyone here read "Iron Triangle", about the Carlyle Group? It's supposed to be similar to House of Bush, House of Saud in that it shows how many political and business pieces interlock.

[Al-CIAda]

26. Carlyle Group Exposed

VPRO Tegenlicht  – the Carlyle Group Exposed
Just what exactly is this criminal cartel up to?
(has short intro in Dutch)

http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_miscellaneous.htm

[Karenina]

27. Kick!

:kick:

[ThorsHammer]

33. Thanks (nt)

[dbt]

28. Minstrel Boy, when I get my TV network, I want you on it.

Your reports will be delivered from a desk set up on a grassy knoll somewhere and we will have millions of giggles waiting for somebody in the audience to pick up on it!

You will be joined by Will Pitt, Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins, Greg Palast, Uncle Walter and others of that caliber. Mopaul will be doing the weather.

All I need now is roughly eleven billion dollars and we're good to go!

:hi:
dbt

EXCELLENT post! More please?

[Minstrel Boy]

29. Cool, dbt. I'm looking for work!

Eleven billion dollars shouldn't be hard, if we all chip in 50 million or so.


:hi:

[cthrumatrix]

30. yes..please post more so we can forward it to the media and

others who might be interested...

Uncovering the filth is a huge task. After reading "Confessions of an Economic Hitmen" your view of the world changes.

[porkrind]

31. Kick! Excellent post. Thanks.

People, please nominate this for the front page.
:dem:

[Minstrel Boy]

32. Thanks. And another kick, because I think it's interesting how,

in the middle of its data recovery, Convar was purchased by a security firm even the government of France regards as a CIA front, which in turn was bought by a former WTC tenant whose data Convar would likely have been attempting to recover, and which has just made a nearly $1 billion settlement over criminal accounting practices.

Hey, call me crazy. :crazy: