Follow the Money? God forbid.
Why was the ca****ng out of billions of dollars just before the 9/11
attacks never investigated?
by Jim Hogue
Had an investigation been done into the crime of failing to file the
“currency transaction
re****ts” in August 2001, then we would know who made the cash withdrawals
in $100 bills
amounting to the $5 billion surge.
It's been over six years since 9/11, but U.S. regulatory entities have
been slow to follow
through with re****ts about the complex financial transactions that
occurred just prior to and
following the attacks. Such research could shed light on such questions as
who was behind
them—and who benefited—and could help lay to rest the rumors that have
been festering.
Warning bells about anomalies in the fiscal sector were sounded in the
summer of 2001, but not
heeded. Among those who has since raised questions was Bill Bergman. As a
financial market
analyst for the Federal Reserve, he was assigned in 2003 to review the
record of July and
August of 2001. He noticed an unusual surge in the currency component of
the M1 money supply
(cash circulating outside of banks) during that period. The surge totaled
over $5 billion above
the norm for a two-month increase. The increase in August alone was the
third largest single
monthly increase since 1947, even after a significantly above-average
month in July.
When reviewing the record of July and August of 2001, Bill Bergman noticed
a $5 billion surge
in the currency component of the M1 money supply—the third largest such
increase since 1947.
Bergman asked about this anomaly—and was removed from his investigative
duties.
Surges in the currency component of M1 are often the result of people
withdrawing their cash to
protect themselves lest some anticipated disaster (such as Y2K) befall the
economy. In January
of 1991 a surge was recorded (the then second-largest since ’47), which
could be attributed to
“war-time hoarding” before the Iraq I invasion, but could also be
attributed to financial
maneuverings and liquefying of assets relating to the BCCI enforcement
proceedings.
Bergman points out that the August 2001 withdrawals may have been, to a
large extent, caused by
the Argentinian banking crisis that was occurring at the time. However, he
raises the point
that no explanation has yet fully answered the im****tant question: Why was
the ca****ng out of
billions of dollars just before the 9/11 attacks never investigated? It’s
possible that the
answer to this question is also the answer to the other follow-the-money
questions surrounding
9/11; and despite an embarrassing heap of evidence, neither the press, nor
Congress, nor any
agency with investigative responsibility has done its job on our behalf.
On the contrary, their
inaction might reasonably be construed as a cover-up.
Bergman "followed the money," including developing a framework for working
with
money-laundering data and “suspicious activity” re****ts for monitoring and
investigating
terrorism. The questions he asked about what happened during the summer of
2001 should have led
to investigations, which should have resulted in the prosecution of those
with foreknowledge of
the attacks.
Those who follow the history of the 9/11 fact-finding movement know that
there is a
laundry-list of unanswered questions that are just as compelling as those
put forth by Bergman.
And there is also a laundry-list of whistle-blowers who have been fired
and subsequently
ignored. So it is not at all surprising that Bergman was removed from his
investigative duties,
and that his concerns were not publicly addressed.
Bergman's supervisor instructed him follow up on an unanswered question he
had raised
pertaining to an August 2, 2001 letter from the Board of Governors of the
Federal Reserve to
the 12 Reserve Banks. This letter urged scrutiny of suspicious activity
re****ts. Bergman
learned of the pervasiveness of the warnings of the 9/11 attacks, and
wondered how thoroughly
these warnings had permeated the financial system.
In this capacity as Federal Reserve investigative point-man, and with his
money-laundering
****tfolio being guided by his supervisor's directive, he asked the Board
why they had issued
their August 2, 2001 directive, and whether this related to any heightened
intelligence of a
terrorist threat. His position was then eliminated, and a crucial
investigation was terminated
before it could even begin.
Another 9/11 Commission Misrepresentation
Footnote 28 of the Staff Monograph on Terrorist Financing from the
official 9/11 Commission
Re****t states that the National Money-laundering Strategy Re****t for 2001
“didn’t mention
terrorist financing in any of its 50 pages.”
True? No. The NMLS Re****t mentions it 17 times. One gets the impression
that the commission
staff (under Philip Zelikow) was trying to paint the picture that there
wasn’t a lot of
co-operation between those involved in counterterrorism and the banking
regulators in 2001. Why
do they paint this picture, inasmuch as the contrary is the case? In fact,
anti-terrorism was
an im****tant element of the National Money Strategy, and it was included
and emphasized in its
Re****t annually. It may have been part of the reason why the August 2,
2001 letter urging
scrutiny of suspicious activity re****ts was issued in the first place.
In turn, the billions in currency ****pments of July and August 2001 are
completely omitted in
the 9/11 Commission Re****t. I make bold to point out that the official
story-line is that the
attacks were accomplished by "the evil-doers" on a shoe-string budget with
little money
changing hands. Therefore, according to Zelikow et al., it is pointless to
look at large flows
of money in an investigation of the attacks. That makes perfect
sense—unless you happen to have
a brain.
To state the obvious, there are two reasons why Zelikow et al. made the
false statement
regarding there having been no references to terrorism in the National
Money-laundering
Strategy Re****t. One reason could be to justify and encourage more
scrutiny (legal or
otherwise) of small transactions generally, e.g. via USAPA, and the other
could be to establish
(read: invent) a reason for missing the evidence pertaining to the
attacks. ('Transactions too
small. No one could find.') And since the real money trail points to
foreknowledge within the
financial community at large, and, possibly, the Federal Reserve
specifically, the "low-budget
terrorism" story-line that the 9/11 Commission had established needed to
be protected.
If such a lack of attentiveness to a financial transaction of $5 billion
goes unnoticed in
August 2001, then a reason had to be established for this lack of
attention. And Bergman’s
attentiveness to the Board of Governor’s August 2 letter was the fly in
the ointment, as this
letter proves that the Board was indeed attentive to suspicious
transactions, even very, very
large ones. Bergman’s question of “Why” is therefore key to yet another
avenue of inquiry.
All the News that’s Permissible to Print
Note that a few dollars sent to an Islamic charity could warrant arrests,
investigations,
front-page stories, and, sometimes, torture and many years in jail. That's
Propaganda 101:
'Large amounts of money do not fund major acts of terrorism. Small amounts
do. Small amounts
covered the 9/11 tab, therefore large amounts didn’t.' The news coverage,
creating high-profile
prosecutions for relatively small transactions, reinforces this scenario.
With this in mind, we suggest that the reader follow the story of Mark
Siljander (major
coverage) on the one hand, and also follow the Times UK re****ts from Sibel
Edmonds (verboten in
the US mainstream press) on the other hand. Edmonds told me recently of
the major foreign media
outlets that had offered to re****t her story. Not one major outlet did so
in the US. R.T.
Naylor suggests, in his wonderful book Satanic Purses, that any major
terrorist event that
involves a lot of money is 'state terrorism,' and this is independently
confirmed by Sibel
Edmonds’ statements as to the enormous sums changing hands at the time of
the 9/11 attacks. I
suggest that her testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee (Leahy and
Grassley) gave the
lie to the official financial myth of 9/11. If Bergman had been allowed to
continue his
investigation, I suggest that he would have uncovered the same thing. Note
that the drug money
and other illicit transactions described by Edmonds occurred during the
same time period, and
the amounts in the billions are comparable.
The Law
To members of the constabulary: the operable statutes are 1) The 1970 Bank
Secrecy Act that
imposed new financial re****ting requirements to facilitate the tracing of
questionable
transactions and 2) the 1986 Money Laundering Control Act that
criminalized the act of
money-laundering. Also operable, and of particular relevance in a
historical context, is the
1917 Trading With the Enemy Act that was relied upon in October of 1942 to
seize the assets of
“Hitler’s Bankers in America,” Union Banking, (involving bank vice
president Prescott Bush
under his father-in-law and bank president, George Walker).
The law is not always followed, and the required “currency transaction
re****ts” are sometimes
not filed. The 9/11 Commission Re****t and the National Money-laundering
Strategy Re****t for
2001 did not identify those who are involved with large cash transactions.
Had the paperwork
been done in August of 2001, or an investigation done into the crime of
failing to file the
“currency transaction re****ts,” then we would know who made the cash
withdrawals in $100 bills
amounting to the $5 billion surge.
Information about what transpired took years to develop after the fact.
For example, the
Federal Reserve fined United Bank of Switzerland and Riggs Bank in 2004.
Mr. Bergman states that he doesn’t want to be a dog barking up the wrong
tree, but the
authorities, apparently under orders from our top officials, are
preventing a standard
investigation and the most obvious prosecutorial methodology from going
forth.
Congress could step in; a prosecutor could step up. But don’t hold your
breath.
Jim Hogue, a former teacher, is now an actor who tours his performance of
Ethan Allen. He also
operates a small farm in Calais, VT. His seminal articles about Sibel
Edmonds and CIA
Whistleblower “Miss Moneypenny” may be found in this newspaper's archives.
Bill Bergman currently works in Chicago as an equity analyst for a private
sector firm. From
1998 to 2004 he was a senior financial market analyst for the Federal
Reserve Bank of Chicago,
where his areas of expertise included Insolvency Issues in Derivatives
Markets, Money
Laundering, and Ethics and Payment System Policy. He holds an M.B.A. in
Finance and an M.A. in
Public Policy from the University of Chicago.
Source URL: http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2008/012908Hogue.shtml
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