{"id":10481,"date":"2016-02-14T18:25:52","date_gmt":"2016-02-14T05:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/?p=10481"},"modified":"2019-11-10T17:29:18","modified_gmt":"2019-11-10T04:29:18","slug":"911-insider-trading-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/conspiracies\/911-insider-trading-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"9\/11 Insider Trading Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

9\/11 Insider Trading<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

On September 12, 2001, before the dust had even settled on Ground Zero, the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into a chilling proposition: that an unknown group of traders with advance knowledge of the 9\/11 plot had made millions betting against the companies involved in the attacks.<\/p>\n

As Antonio Mora of ABC News explained<\/a> on September 20, 2001:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat many Wall Street analysts believe is that the terrorists made bets that a number of stocks would see their prices fall. They did so by buying what they call \u2018puts.\u2019 If you bet right the rewards can be huge. The risks are also huge unless you know something bad is going to happen to the company you\u2019re betting against.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne example, United Airlines. The Thursday before the attack more than two thousand contracts betting that the stock would go down were purchased. Ninety times more in one day than in three weeks. When the markets reopened, United\u2019s stock dropped, the price of the contracts soared and someone may have made a lot of money, fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"911airlinestock\"<\/a>Although the put options on American and United Airlines are usually cited in reference to the 9\/11 insider trading, these trades only represent a fraction of the suspicious trades leading up to the attack. Between August 20th and September 10th, abnormally large spikes in put option activity appeared in trades involving dozens of different companies whose stocks plunged after the attack including Boeing, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Munich Re and the AXA Group.<\/p>\n

Traders weren\u2019t just betting against the companies whose stocks dove after 9\/11, however. There was also a six-fold increase in call options on the stock of defence contractor Raytheon on the day before 9\/11. The options allowed the traders to buy Raytheon stock at $25. Within a week of the attack, as the American military began deploying the Raytheon-supplied Tomohawk missiles they would eventually use in the invasion of Afghanistan, the company\u2019s share price had shot up 37% to over $34.<\/p>\n

The SEC weren\u2019t the only ones interested in this particular 9\/11 money trail, either. Investigations into potential insider trading before the attacks were opened by authorities around the globe, from Belgium to France to Germany to Switzerland to Japan. It wasn\u2019t long before this global financial manhunt started yielding clues on the trail of the terror traders.<\/p>\n

On September 17th Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Martino, addressing Italian Consob\u2019s own investigation into potential 9\/11 trading, said<\/a>: \u201cI think that there are terrorist states and organizations behind speculation on the international markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

By September 24th the Belgian Finance Minister, Didier Reynders, was confident enough to publicly announce<\/a> Belgium\u2019s \u201cstrong suspicions that British markets may have been used for transactions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"insider_trading_091204_mn\"<\/a>The president of Germany\u2019s central bank, Ernst Welteke, was the most adamant<\/a>: \u201cWhat we found makes us sure that people connected to the terrorists must have been trying to profit from this tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

These foreign leaders were not alone in their conviction that insider trading had taken place. University of Chicago finance professor George Constantinides, Columbia University law professor John Coffee, Duke University law professor James Cox and other academics as well as well-known options traders like Jon Najarian all expressed<\/a> their belief that investors had traded on advance knowledge of the attacks.<\/p>\n

The scale of the SEC investigation was unprecedented. Examining over 9.5 million securities transactions, including stocks and options in 103 different companies trading in 7 markets, 32 exchange traded funds, and stock indices. The probe drew on the assistance of the legal and compliance staff of the 20 largest trading firms and the regulatory authorities in ten foreign governments. The Commission coordinated its investigation with the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Department of the Treasury.<\/p>\n

The result of this investigation<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not developed any evidence suggesting that those who had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks traded on the basis of that information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although this sounds like the investigation did not find evidence of insider trading, a second look reveals the trick; they are not saying that there was no insider trading, only that there is no evidence that \u201cthose who had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks\u201d participated in such trading. But this begs the question: who had that advance knowledge, and how did the SEC determine this?<\/p>\n

\"911commevidence\"<\/a>The 9\/11 Commission Report<\/a> begs the question even more blatantly in their treatment of the anomalous put option activity on United Airlines stock on September 6: 95% of the puts were placed by \u201ca single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda.\u201d Again, it is taken as a foregone conclusion that a lack of ties to \u201cal Qaeda\u201d means there could not have been advance knowledge of the attack, even if evidence of insider trading took place.<\/p>\n

To be sure, insider trading almost certainly did take place in the weeks before 9\/11. Although some have used the commission report to conclude that the story was debunked, the intervening years have seen the release of not one, not two, but three separate scientific papers concluding with high probability that the anomalous trading was the result of advance knowledge.<\/p>\n

In \u201cUnusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001<\/a>\u201d University of Chicago professor Allen Poteshman concluded: \u201cExamination of the option trading leading up to September 11 reveals
\nthat there was an unusually high level of put buying. This finding is consistent with informed investors having traded options in advance of the attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cDetecting Abnormal Trading Activities in Option Markets<\/a>\u201d researchers at the University of Zurich used econometric methods to confirm unusual put option activity on the stocks of key airlines, banks and re-insurers in the weeks prior to 9\/11.<\/p>\n

And in \u201cWas There Abnormal Trading in the S&P 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacks?<\/a>\u201d a team of researchers concluded that abnormal activity in the S&P index options market around the time of the attack \u201cis consistent with insiders anticipating the 9-11 attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only question, then, is who was profiting from these trades and why was no one ever indicted for their participation in them?<\/p>\n

One lead is pursued by researcher and author Kevin Ryan. In \u201cEvidence for Informed Trading on the Attacks of September 11<\/a>\u201d he examines an FBI briefing document<\/a> from 2003 that was declassified in 2009. It describes the results of FBI investigations into two of the pre-9\/11 trades that the Bureau had identified as suspicious, including the purchase of 56,000 shares of Stratesec in the days prior to 9\/11. Stratesec provided security systems to airports (including, ironically, Dulles Airport, as well as the World Trade Center and United Airlines), and saw its share price almost double when the markets re-opened on September 17th, 2001.<\/p>\n

\"George<\/a>The trades traced back to a couple whose names are redacted from the memo, but are easily identifiable from the unredacted information: Mr. and Mrs. Wirt D. Walker III, a distant relative of the Bush family and business partner of Marvin Bush<\/a>, the president\u2019s brother. The document notes that the pair were never even interviewed as part of the investigation because it had \u201crevealed no ties to terrorism or other negative information.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to begging the question, this characterization is provably false. As Ryan notes:<\/p>\n

\u201cWirt Walker was connected to people who had connections to al Qaeda. For example, Stratesec director James Abrahamson was the business partner of Mansoor Ijaz, who claimed on several occasions to be able to contact Osama bin Laden. Additionally, Walker hired a number of Stratesec employees away from a subsidiary of The Carlyle Group called BDM International, which ran secret (black) projects for government agencies. The Carlyle Group was partly financed by members of the bin Laden family.\u201d<\/p>\n

More importantly, and not coincidentally, Walker has multiple connections to the Central Intelligence Agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Walker ran a number of suspicious companies that went bankrupt, including Stratesec, some of which were underwritten by a company run by a first cousin of former CIA director (and President) George H.W. Bush. Additionally, Walker was the child of a CIA employee and his first job was at an investment firm run by former US intelligence guru, James \u2018Russ\u2019 Forgan, where he worked with another former CIA director, William Casey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was this why the FBI thought better of questioning him over his highly profitable purchase of Stratesec shares right before 9\/11?<\/p>\n

\"cia911\"<\/a>The CIA figures prominently in another line of investigation. One suspicious United Airlines put option purchase that was investigated by the FBI involved a 2,500 contract order for puts in the days before 9\/11. Instead of processing the purchase through United Airlines\u2019 home exchange, the Chicago Board of Options Exchange, the order was split into five 500 contract chunks and run through five different option exhchanges simultaneously. The unusual order was brokered by Deutsch Bank Alex. Brown, a firm that until 1998 was chaired by A.B. \u201cBuzzy\u201d Krongard, a former consultant to CIA director James Woolsey who at the time of 9\/11 was himself the Executive Director of the CIA.<\/p>\n

According to researcher Michael Ruppert, Krongard\u2019s job at the brokerage<\/a> \u201cwas to oversee \u2018private client relations.\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most frank admission of insider trading is notable for three things: it was recorded on video, it has never been investigated by any agency or law enforcement official, and it was made by former CIA agent and frequent foreign policy commentator Robert Baer, the real-life inspiration<\/a> for the character portrayed by George Clooney in \u201cSyriana.\u201d Talking to citizen journalists after a speaking event in Los Angeles in 2008, Baer was recorded on video<\/a> making a startling assertion about 9\/11 insider trading: \u201cI know the guy who went into his broker in San Diego and said \u2018cash me out, it\u2019s going down tomorrow.’\u201d Questioned about the story, he added: \u201cHis brother worked at the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n

This truly remarkable statement bears further scrutiny. If Baer is to be believed, a former CIA agent has first-hand knowledge that a White House insider had foreknowledge of the attacks, and to this day not only has Baer never revealed the identity of this person, but no one has questioned him about his statement or even attempted to pursue this lead.<\/p>\n

So how is it possible that the SEC overlooked, ignored, or simply chose not to pursue such leads in their investigation? The only possible answer, of course, is that the investigation was deliberately steered away from such persons of interest and any connections that would lead back to foreknowledge by government agencies, federal agents, or their associates in the business world.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately we will likely never see documentary evidence of that from the Commission itself. One researcher requesting access under the Freedom of Information Act to the documentary evidence that the 9\/11 Commission used to conclude there had been no insider trading received a response<\/a> that stated \u201cthat the potentially responsive records have been destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Delete-Button-Key-Actos\"<\/a>Instead, we are left with sources that refuse to be identified saying that CBOE records of pre-9\/11 options trading have been destroyed<\/a> and second-hand accounts of traders who had heard talk of an event in advance of 9\/11.<\/p>\n

In a round-about way, perhaps the 9\/11 Commission reveals more than it lets on when it tries to dismiss key insider trades with the pithy observation that the traders had no conceivable ties to Al Qaeda. If those with foreknowledge of the attacks weren\u2019t connected to Al Qaeda, what does that say about the identity of the real 9\/11 perpetrators?<\/p>\n

\n

By James Corbett<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

9\/11 Insider Trading On September 12, 2001, before the dust had even settled on Ground Zero, the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into a chilling proposition: that an unknown group of traders with advance knowledge of the 9\/11 plot had made millions betting against the companies involved in the attacks. As Antonio Mora […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1646,"url":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/conspiracies\/9-11\/","url_meta":{"origin":10481,"position":0},"title":"911","date":"February 25, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"911 WAS ONE HELL OF A GOOD SCAM Today\u2019s \u201cconspiracy\u201d is tomorrow's common knowledge, and while most people now grasp that 911 was a false flag, back in 2002 many didn\u2019t, and some of them got quite worked up about it. In 2001 I was doing a bit of share\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AMERICA"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/COUP.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":22122,"url":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/steemit\/five-things-i-quit-doing-when-i-switched-to-blurt\/","url_meta":{"origin":10481,"position":1},"title":"FIVE THINGS I QUIT DOING WHEN I SWITCHED TO BLURT","date":"May 1, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"This year would have been my second anniversary on Hive in March. Except that I quit using it because I was sick of being downvoted all the time. We can choose to jump about in dog shit and then complain that our shoes stink, or we can look at stuff\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ART BY FROT"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/1916f5727b5527714c3c9d31b4de3e5.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7122,"url":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/frot-design\/back-in-2003-before-facebook-actual-feedback\/","url_meta":{"origin":10481,"position":2},"title":"BACK IN 2003, BEFORE FACEBOOK, ACTUAL FEEDBACK!","date":"May 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"BACK IN 2003, BEFORE FACEBOOK, OUR SITES USED TO GET ACTUAL FEEDBACK! It's hard to believe that way back in 2003 we were getting bollocks from clueless government puppets about APRICOT KERNALS... Thanks to WAYBACK MACHINE for the memories Apricots - email 19\/03\/03: Dear Sifter, Thank you for the chance\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "CONSPIRACIES"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/web.archive.org\/web\/20030418020454\/http:\/\/homepages.paradise.net.nz\/wheels\/sift\/Images\/sifting.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":22172,"url":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/art-by-frot\/what-is-blurt-like-and-should-i-get-on-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":10481,"position":3},"title":"What is Blurt like and should I get on it?","date":"June 11, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Should I get my arse on Blurt?\" a friend from Steemit just asked me. This was my reply: Blurt - I like it - it really has a friendly vibe I haven't seen on the other platforms - no down voting and no nasty comments - I haven't posted much\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ART BY FROT"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/image3A134600_mirror-03.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1624,"url":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/conspiracies\/conspiracies\/","url_meta":{"origin":10481,"position":4},"title":"CONSPIRACIES","date":"July 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY In the mainstream media, conspiracy theorists are the new communists, and an easy way to dismiss someone\u2019s opinion without addressing any of the points they raise, is to call them a \u201cconspiracy theorist\u201d I\u2019ve been called a conspiracy theorist many times. Over time a pattern that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "CONSPIRACIES"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.frot.co.nz\/sift\/images_conspiracy\/11009105_10206168899811390_8884243731321945115_n.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":19468,"url":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/conspiracies\/there-are-so-many-flavours-of-red-pill-now-that-the-sheeple-are-getting-confused-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":10481,"position":5},"title":"There are so many flavours of red pill now that the sheeple are getting confused","date":"February 1, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"In these deranged times of plandemics and masktards it's easy to forget that sheeple have always been gullible morons and this latest crap is not really all that new. What is different is that this time there are so many red pills flying about that even sheeple are going to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "CONSPIRACIES"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/o1AJ9qDyyJNSg3j52kokyfvD831NZY8XJqsRqy1DQoUf3if9x.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10481"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}