Unholy Trinity / Part Two

January 22, 2012January 9, 2019

Excerpts from Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Published in 2004 / Chapter 3

The CIA Is Wall Street, And Drug Money Is King

by Michael C. Ruppert
[w/his permission]

Drugs

In late June of 1999, NYSE Chairman Dick Grasso traveled to Colombia and met with the leader of the FARC rebels controlling the southern third of the country. His trip was reported to the Associated Press, and, remarkably, the AP openly stated that Grasso had asked the Colombian rebels to invest their profits in Wall Street. The FARC make their money by taxing the cocaine trade. Catherine Austin Fitts described it as “the ultimate cold call.”

The amount of profit generated annually by the drug trade, if it is known with any accuracy, is probably one of the most closely guarded secrets in the world. There are two kinds of money generated by the drug trade. First there is the money generated at all the stages from growth or manufacture, to processing, to perhaps two or three stages of wholesaling, to retail street sales. Then there is all the money generated by funding law enforcement, court systems, prisons, and all the construction, cars, radios, boats, guns, and airplanes that go into that. It has been estimated that the cost of prison construction and operation alone is around $30 billion a year.

But all of that, as important as it is, is not what we are concerned with here. What we are concerned with is the cash generated from the growth or manufacture and sale of drugs – because that money is illegal. It needs to hide, and then it needs to be laundered before it can be used openly. It is not only cheap and secret capital; it is capital that must be put someplace legal before it can be used. The illegal-to-legal transition is where someone must know what is taking place. Ignorance there – especially when the laundering transactions are gigantic ones – is not a tenable position.

Among the many kinds of illegal activities in the world, the production and laundering of drug money is central because it establishes channels for the flow of other criminal profits. [Examples: here and here] In 2001, according to the International Monetary Fund, money laundering processed $1.5 trillion, a figure that exceeded the gross domestic products of all but the world’s five largest economies. In 2000 Le Monde Diplomatique, a respected French publication, estimated total annual criminal revenues at $1 trillion: “The drug trade accounts for as much as $500 bbn and at least $1 bbn in criminal money is laundered every day.” In 1997 the United Nations estimated that, as of 1996, the drug trade represented 8 percent of all world trading activity as measured in dollars. It estimated then that the narcotics industry accounted for $440 billion in revenues.

Looking at the cash flow in just one locality, PBS’s ”Frontline“ tried to make the numbers a little easier to grasp. “Imagine a typical weekend in New York City. Experts estimate that at least one percent of the population (80,000 plus) spends $200 on illicit drugs. That alone would amount to $16 million dollars a week or $832 million a year. And that’s just New York.”

Newer figures suggest that the drug trade generates $400-500 billion a year in cash. However, I once had a conversation with an expert on money laundering who held a very high-ranking position in a US government agency charged with monitoring global cash flows. On condition of anonymity, that expert told me, “It’s much higher than that. Every conference I go to is attended by the CIA, and we all round the figure off to around $700 billion.” Since the last real numbers I’ve been able to find date back a few years, and the drug trade is perpetually growing (along with the budgets to regulate it), I have settled on the figure of $600 billion a year for the purposes of my lectures and this book.

Six hundred billion dollars a year is too much money to hide under a pillow. [Note: Here’s a graphic for perspective.] In fact, that much cash turning up in one place could overwhelm the banking system of a small or medium-sized country. Of course the money is scattered all over the place, except in the cases of the major traffickers, and it has a way of moving by itself, electronically, always seeking the places where it will either earn the most profits or do the most good for its owners. Cash, either hard currency or the electronic kind, is a prized commodity on financial markets because it does things that other kinds of wealth cannot do – such as pay bill or investors. The money moves so quickly that, unless one were in control of the computer systems that handle it, or the software that manages it, it would be impossible to trace. (An excellent discussion of how illegal money moves according to a separate set of laws – having nothing to do with what we tend to think of as the law – is contained in Hot Money and the Politics of Debt, by R. T. Naylor.

Second, of all the illegal drugs, from heroin to steroids to ecstasy to cocaine to marijuana, it is heroin and cocaine that are by far the most profitable and which make up the lion’s share of that $600 billion figure. The markup for these drugs is substantially higher, especially when one considers the weight or volume involved per dollar of markup in price.

Almost all the world’s cocaine comes from Colombia, having been either grown or processed there. The heavy production of cocaine in the 1980’s from Bolivia, Peru, and in smaller quantities from other Andean nations was largely eradicated by the early 1990’s as most production moved north. However, it is important to understand that worldwide cocaine use has not seen a major drop since the 1980’s. After having peaked at around 600 metric tons in 1987-1988, recent estimates and statements by the Department of Justice have placed US cocaine consumption around 500 metric tons (a metric ton is 2,200 lbs) a year. That’s an interesting fact, since according to an interview I conducted with Dr. Sidney Cohen, a drug expert at UCLA, domestic cocaine consumption in 1979 was only around 80 metric tons.

Somewhere between 400 and 500 metric tons of heroin is consumed worldwide each year. According to DEA and Department of Justice intelligence reports, about 60 percent of the heroin consumed in the US also comes from Colombia. But almost all the heroin consumed elsewhere in the world comes from Afghanistan. Like the coca leaf, the opium poppy from which the heroin is made grows mainly in the mountains and prefers altitudes above 5,000 feet. But unlike coca, opium is grown in several different regions of the world: South America; the so-called Golden Triangle of Laos, Burma, and Thailand; and Afghanistan, Pakistan, and central Asia in an area called the Golden Crescent. From 1997 to 2000 and again in 2002, the world’s largest producer of opium was Afghanistan, responsible for about 70 percent of the world’s supply.

What happened in 2001? The Taliban banned opium production in the late summer of 2000 and destroyed almost all of the opium that still remained planted; this was completed and confirmed in January of 2001. According to the Independent, “The area of land given over to growing opium poppies in 2001 fell by 91 percent compared with the year before, according to the UN Drug Control Programme’s (UNDCP) annual survey of Afghanistan. Production of fresh opium, the raw material for heroin, went down by an unprecedented 94 percent, from 3,276 tonnes to 185 tonnes.”

Other sources placed the 2000 Afghan opium harvest (conducted from May to June, before the ban) at more than 3,600 metric tons. The planting season for opium in that region is November, and the harvest is in the spring. A kilogram (2.2 lbs) of Afghan heroin, refined at a 10:1 ratio from opium, was then fetching US$150,000 in Moscow.

It is interesting to note that in 1996, according to the DEA, “Worldwide opium production was 4,157 metric tons” (an increase of 20 percent in a single year). Contrast that with one report obtained from the UN Drug Control Program by the magazine High Times stating, “Production of raw opium in Afghanistan shot up from 2,600 tons in 1998 to a record 4,600 tons” in 2000.

What is so significant about this is that if Afghanistan was producing 70 percent of the world’s opium, and it produced a minimum of 3,600 tons in 2000, then global consumption increased from 4,100 tons to 5,100 tons (25 percent) in just four years. If, on the other hand, Afghanistan, as reported by the UN, produced 4,600 metric tons of opium in 2000 and retained a 70 percent market share, then world heroin use had risen 58 percent to 6,571 metric tons per year. Even Ken Lay of Enron would be jealous of that kind of growth.

It is not likely that opium use increased 60 percent worldwide in four years. Based on my years of experience, my estimate is that only 8-12 percent of the world’s population is predisposed to addiction. The other conclusion available is that world opium production was being deliberately concentrated in Afghanistan. But by whom and for what purpose?

Drug money – steroids of the financial world

Now, if you were a corporate executive needing to borrow money for an LBO or to finance a pipeline, you could go borrow the money legally at 9 percent, or you could borrow drug money, laundered once, looking to become legal, at 6 percent. The drug lord is only too happy to own the bonds of, for example, Halliburton or General Electric. But if you really wanted to make a killing, you would launder some drug money onto your bottom line and increase your net profits. You might do it by selling your products “off the books” and accepting cash for them. Then you would just inflate your net profits without any increased costs. Philip Morris has been charged with doing just that. Or, if you made vehicles, you could sell large quatities for a check from an offshore bank, no questions asked, to a guy in South America who wanted to open a Chevy dealership. GM has reportedly done that.

Enron’s crimes all centered around the illegal overstatement of net profits. They cooked their books using an accounting system called Pro-Forma that allowed them to borrow money with one subsidiary and then book the deposits as earnings. They even created phony companies that could do business, using paper or electronic transactions, with other Enron companies. This was the purpose of Enron’s so-called off-the-books partnerships known as Chewco, Raptor and LMJ.

Enron also manipulated energy prices through a variety of methods to create or worsen shortages, raise prices, and rob Californian’s blind. Enron engaged in a shockingly wide array of financial crimes, betraying their stockholders and employees.* But all the creativity of Enron executives Andy Fastow or Jeff Skillings or Ken Lay could never produce the pure financial power that drug money offers.

Apparently Enron knew that. It ran about 2,000 subsidiary companies all over the world. About 700 of them were in the Cayman Islands. There is no oil or gas in the Caymen Islands. There is, however, a lot of drug money.

Everything else Enron did had to pass through other companies, leaving records behind. Drug money is much, much simpler. Enron’s trading company, Enron Online, was one of the largest money-moving operations in the world. It was just computers and wires in cities and to banks all over the globe. It was a bank. And it was there that the greatest criminal activity occurred. When Enron went bankrupt, the US government allowed Enron to sell Enron Online to the Union Bank of Switzerland. That meant that all the evidence of money laundering by Enron is now owned by a Swiss bank and out of reach for federal prosecutors. Neither the Congress nor any US enforcement agency did a thing to stop the sale or transfer of the records. The evidence walked.

For banks also, the drug money has a special allure. That is why major banks like Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan Chase all offer private client services for the very wealthy with very few questions asked. Yes, the US Treasury and the Department of Justice make a show of being tough under “Know Your Client” regulations. But the truth is that the money does pretty much whatever it wants to. And for a bank, every dollar that it has on deposit allows it to lend between 9 and 15 or so dollars based upon the requirements set for it by the Federal Reserve System.

For a bank, a loan is the same thing an order is for a manufacturer. Loans show up on a bank’s books as assets, and that’s the part of what helps determine a bank’s stock value. Of course, if a bank takes an extra fee, no questions asked, as Citigroup did from Raul Salinas de Gortari, brother of the former Mexican president, for laundering $100 million in drug profits, who’s to say how that money gets reported when it comes to net profits?

[*G ~ for more on Enron’s energy manipulation and price gouging scheme – I recommend the Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, it is also a PBS, Independent Lens documentary.]

Birds do it, bees do it – even GE does it

In 2000 the Department of Justice held a drug money laundering conference and invited some of the biggest names on Wall Street. The names were not chosen by accident. Their products had been tracked and linked to money laundering operations in Colombia. It had been noticed how much drug money was going into the bottom lines of certain major corporations. The companies asked to attend the conference were Hewlett Packard, Ford, Sony, General Motors, Whirlpool, General Electric, and Philip Morris.

These companies, according to PBS and the Justice Department, were merely innocent victims of the trade. It’s hard to understand how you are being victimized if your sales are great and people are paying with cash. But the case of Philip Morris perhaps exemplifies general corporate attitudes about drug money. Philip Morris had been sued by the government of Colombia for smuggling Marlboro cigarettes into that country (bypassing the tax man) and readily accepting large amounts of drug cash from traffickers, then smuggling the cash back into the United States.

Just recently the tobacco giant RJ Reynolds (Nabisco) had been sued by the entire European Union for large-scale smuggling and money laundering. The competitive edge provided by handling drug money is an instrumental factor in who can compete in a globalized, new-world, corporate order.

A final note before moving on: As Enron (an energy trading company) was failing, the energy giant Dynegy put up $1.5 billion in cash as a part of a plan to bail Enron out. Enron got the money and Dynegy wound up getting nothing. What is significant is that Chevron, which had vast investments in central Asian oil fields, had been a part owner of Dynegy since 1996. In 2001 Chevron added to its investment by giving Dynegy $1.5 billion just before Dynegy gave $1.5 billion to Enron. So Chevron was either directly or indirectly bailing out Enron, without getting tarred by the unfolding scandal.

This takes on added significance given Enron’s drug money laundering connections and the fact that Enron, along with other energy companies like Halliburton, had deep financial connections in the region that were tied both to the successful development of central Asian oil and gas and had ready access to drug cash.

Enron had the contracts and the feasibility studies for much of the pipeline construction that was desperately needed in the region, and it also had a $3 billion investment in a new “white elephant” natural gas-powered electrical-generating station in Dabhol, India, that had only one problem: it couldn’t get access to cheap natural gas without a pipeline across Afghanistan. One former oil industry corporate attorney summed it up best when he said, “When big oil eats, everybody eats. When big oil doesn’t eat, nobody eats.”

~~~~~~~~~

NEXT : Part Three of Unholy Trinity / The Smoking Guns

Read Unholy Trinity, Part One

Read the full story – get a copy of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil now.

My thanks to Michael Ruppert for allowing me to share this historically important work.
A membership to Collapsenet can save lives.

*Sources and footnotes are in the back of the book – it is close to 700 pages long and there are over 6,000 footnotes. Since the publication of this book in 2004, not one word, footnote or statement has been challenged, asked to be redacted, and Mike has never been sued.

Mr. Ruppert is the publisher and editor of From The Wilderness, a newsletter read by more than 16,000 subscribers in 40 countries. (Archives are still accessible for research.) A former Los Angeles Police Department narcotics investigator, he is widely known for his groundbreaking stories on US involvement in the drug trade, Peak Oil and 9/11.

Unholy Trinity / Part One

January 21, 2012January 9, 2019

Excerpts from Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Published in 2004 / Chapter 3

The CIA Is Wall Street, And Drug Money Is King

by Michael C. Ruppert
[w/his permission]

The CIA is Wall Street

The CIA is Wall Street. Wall Street is CIA. This is perhaps one of the easiest landmarks to establish on our map. We do it by looking at key players in the CIA’s history and their relationships to America’s financial engine.

Clark Clifford: The National Security Act of 1947 was written by Clark Clifford, a Democratic Party powerhouse, former secretary of defense, and one-time advisor to President Harry Truman. In the 1980’s, as chairman of First American Bancshares, Clifford was instrumental in getting the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI (founded by a Pakistani national) a license to operate on American shores. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and banker. BCCI and its particular web of characters have been a virtual cut-and-paste overlay linking up Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and terrorist financing. [3] It was Clark Clifford who was retained by former CIA Director Richard Helms when the latter was indicted and prosecuted for lying to Congress in 1976. [4]

Clifford and his banking partner Robert Altman were eventually indicted on criminal charges for their role in illegally helping BCCI purchase an American bank, First American Bancshares. At the time BCCI had been connected to both drug money laundering and financial support for Afghan rebels supported by the CIA through its director Bill Casey. [5]

John Foster and Allen Dulles: These two brothers “designed” the CIA for Clifford. Both were active in intelligence operations during World War II. Allen Dulles had been America’s top Office of Strategic Services (OSS) spy in Switzerland, where he met frequently with Nazi leaders and looked after US investments in Germany. He also held an executive position with Standard Oil. John Foster went on to become secretary of state under Dwight Eisenhower, and Allan served as CIA director under Ike, only to be fired by JFK after the abortive 1961 US-led covert invasion of Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs. Their professions: partners in the most powerful – to this day – Wall Street law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell.

Enron is only one of Sullivan and Cromwell’s current clients, and it employed a dozen “former” CIA officers before its fall from grace.[6] Other prominent Sullivan and Cromwell clients are AIG, Global Crossing, ImClone, Martha Stewart, and the Harvard Endowment.

After the assassination of JFK in 1963, Allen Dulles became the staff director and lead investigator of the Warren Commission, which asserted that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin who had fired a bullet that had caused JFK’s throat wound, hung suspended in mid-air for several seconds, changed direction twice, then wounded Texas Governor John Connally in the chest, wrist, and thigh only to fall out of his body in nearly pristine condition on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital in Dallas about 30 minutes later. When asked about how he could have offered the Warren Report, full of inconsistencies, to the American people with a straight face, Dulles is reported to have said, “The American people don’t read.”

Bill Casey: Reagan’s CIA director and the OSS veteran who served as chief covert wrangler during the Iran-Contra years was, under Richard Nixon, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and stock trader.

In 1984 ABC News was devoting serious attention to the CIA scandal in Hawaii connected to the investment firm BBRDW (Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham, and Wong). The BBRDW story was lifting a veil connected to money laundering, drugs, and the failed CIA drug bank named Nugan-Hand. Bill Casey and the CIA’s general counsel Stanley Sporkin put extreme pressure on both the network and anchor Peter Jennings to stop their coverage. During the semi-public battle, ABC’s stock dropped from $67 to $59 a share, and by December, the firm Capital Cities was trying to buy the network. Capital Cities successfully completed the buyout of ABC in March of 1985, after which the CIA conveniently dropped a suit against the network.[7]

Bill Casey had helped to found Capital Cities and had served on both as its lawyer and as a member of its board of directors in the years between his service as SEC chairman for Nixon and as director of Central Intelligence for Reagan. ABC became known thereafter as “the CIA network.”

Other sources, including the family of the late Colonel Albert Vincent Carone – about whom I have written extensively – confirm that Casey was a lifelong resident of Long Island and that Carone, a “made” member of the Genovese crime family, retired NYPD detective, and CIA operative, routinely exchanged insider trading information with Casey. Multiple witnesses have confirmed that Casey attended the christening of Carone’s grandson.

Stanley Sporkin: Sporkin served as the CIA’s general counsel under Casey. But he had previously served for more than 20 years at the Securities and Exchange Commission, rising to the post of general counsel. Casey’s right-hand-man, he was one of the first people Casey brought with him to the CIA in 1981. Almost all of Sporkin’s tenure at the SEC was spent in the enforcement division, charged with prosecuting corporate and stock fraud.

During the Iran-Contra investigations it was revealed that Sporkin had routine contact with Lt. Col. Oliver North, who was later convicted on several felony counts including lying to Congress.[8] At times the e-mails between the two men, alluding to the 1920’s comedy team Laurel and Hardy, read “To Stanley from Ollie.”

After retiring as CIA general counsel in 1986, Sporkin was soon appointed as US district court judge in Washington, DC, where he presided over some of the most important trials (including Microsoft’s) in the country. He resigned from the bench in January of 2000 and joined the Wall Street law firm of Weill, Gotschall, and Manges, self-described as specializing in “Wall Street Management and Capital.” Weill, Gotschall, and Manges is currently serving as Enron’s bankruptcy counsel. Although Sporkin received praise for many of his decisions from anti-corporate critics such as Ralph Nadar, he presided over a number of more nefarious cases, including that of former Federal Housing Commissioner Catherine Austin Fitts, whose firm Hamilton Securites had been targeted for malicious and unfounded harassment after uncovering evidence of covert operations that tied the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to drug operations, slush funds, “friendly” Wall Street interests and political corruption.

A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard: until he joined the CIA in 1998, Krongard was the CEO of the investment bank Alex Brown. In 1997 he sold his interest in Alex Brown to Banker’s Trust, where he served as vice chairman until “joining” the CIA. A close friend of CIA Director George Tenet, the colorful, cigar-smoking former Marine specialized in private banking operations serving extremely wealthy clients. It has been heavily documented by official US government investigations into money laundering that private banking services are frequently used for the laundering of drug money and the proceeds of corporate crime.[10] Private banking services were especially criticized in investigations of money laundering connected to the looting of Russia throughout the 1990’s.[11]

John Deutch: Deutch retired from CIA as its director in December of 1996. He immediately accepted an offer to join the board of directors of the nation’s second largest bank, Citigroup, which has been repeatedly involved in the documented laundering of drug money. This includes Citigroup’s 2001 purchase of a Mexican bank known to launder drug money, Banamex.[12] Deutch narrowly escaped criminal prosecution after it was learned that he had kept a large number of classified CIA documents on non-secure personal computers at his private residence.[13]

[G ~ if John Deutch, CIA and Michael Ruppert sound familiar in a sentence it is likely due to this gem of a clip from Youtube where Mike stood up and told the truth like a warrior.]

Maurice “Hank” Greenberg: The CEO of American International Group (AIG) insurance and manager of the third largest pool of investment capital in the world was floated as a possible CIA director by Bill Clinton in 1995.[14] From The Wilderness exposed Greenberg’s and AIG’s long connection to CIA drug trafficking and covert operations in a two-part series that was interrupted by the attacks of September 11. Under Greenberg’s stewardship, an AIG subsidiary severely bent several laws in conjunction with the Arkansas Development Financial Authority (ADFA) to establish what many have alleged was a first-class money laundering operation for drug funds arising from CIA-connected cocaine smuggling into Mena, Arkansas, in the 1980’s.

In that series From The Wilderness reported that AIG employed in its San Francisco legal offices the wife of Medellin Cartel co-founder Carlos Lehder. I actually went to San Francisco and had lunch with her in the summer of 2001. Our investigations later disclosed that AIG had been tied to US covert operations going back to World War II and conclusively linked to the heroine trade.[15] We also reported that AIG owned and operated the largest private fleet of full-sized airliners and cargo planes on the planet.[16]

I was not surprised when Greenburg – a staunch supporter of Israel – was chosen by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2001 to lead an investigation of terrorist financing. The CFR report, not surprisingly, was extremely critical of Saudi Arabia.[17]

Professor Dale Scott of the University of California at Berkeley, author of many historically crucial books on covert operations and deep politics, observed in the early 1970’s that six of the first seven CIA deputy directors “under Walter Bedell Smith and Truman, came from New York legal and financial circles.”[18] The headquarters of the CIA’s World War II predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, was in the New York financial district..

~~~~~~~

Now take a look at this recent story that broke and try to keep a straight face:
Pentagon outsources War on Drugs to Blackwater

It gets worse…

NEXT : Part Two of Unholy Trinity

Jump to Part Three of Unholy Trinity

[Source info below this message]

If you want to read the full story – pick up a copy of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
now.

It may be the only book you need to read to understand the Matrix.

To understand it is the only way to learn how to unplug from it.

My thanks to Michael Ruppert and staff at Collapsenet.com for allowing me to share this historically important work. From The Wilderness archives are still accessible for your research. Consider a membership to Collapsenet to further this important work that can save lives.

Sources:

[3] Cf. Jean-Charles Brisard, “The Economic Network of the Bin Laden Family,” Appendix VII in Brisard and Dasquie, Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden, Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002, pp. 181-222.

[4] Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin, False Profits: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Corrupt Financial Empire, Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

[5] Ibid. See also Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Lawrence Hill Books, 1991, pp. 445-460.

[6] Carl Limbacher, et al., “Enron at the CIA,” NewsMax.com, July 30, 2002

[7] Rodney Stich and T. Conan Russel, Disavow: A CIA Saga of Betrayal, Diablo Western Press, 1995, pp. 268-269.

[8] “While working on the Finding, North had been advised by Stanley Sporkin, the general counsel of the CIA, that a Finding must specifically enumerate each purpose to be accomplished by a particular action.“ “Cf. Final Report of the Independent Council for Iran/Contra Matters,” Lawrence E. Walsh, Independent Council, August 4, 1993, Washington, DC, “Volume I: Investigations and Prosecutions, Part III: The Operational Conspiracy: A Legal Analysis”, www.afn.org/~dks/i-c/pIII-legal-analysis.html

[9] Not appearing in this excerpt

[10] “A former Bank of New York executive and her husband admitted today that they helped launde $7 billion for Russian banks by accessing electronic banking software used by the bank’s customers.“ See Carol Huang, “Bank Exec, Husband Admits Laundering Billions; Moved $7 Billion for Russians Through Bank of New York,” APBNews.com, February 16, 2000. Cf. also James Petras, “‘Dirty Money Foundation of U.S. Growth and Empire,” FTW, Vol. IV, no. 3, May 31, 2001, pp. 3-5

[11] Ibid.

[12] “All Hell Breaks Loose: Citigroup, the Largest Drug Money Laundering Bank in America Buys Mexican Drug Laundering Bank Banamex,“ FTW, Vol. IV, no. 3, May 31, 2001 (cover story).

[13] “A CIA investigation earlier this year showed Deutch, like [Wen Ho] Lee, improperly transferred documents containing national security secrets. But Deutch was not jailed.” Cf. Andrew Chang, “The Next Ordeal: Wen Ho Lee is Free From Jail – but Not Problems,” ABCNews, Sept. 14, 2000

[14] U.S. News & World Report, February 20, 1995, “Washington Whispers,” p. 23.

[15] Hostages, Part II – A.I.G., From The Wilderness, Vol. IV, no. 5, August 14, 2001.

[16] Ibid.; see also AIG Financial Report, www.aigcorporate.com/corpsite/about/content/realfinancial.htm [may have changed since 04]

[17] Douglas Farrah, “Report Decries Saudi Laxity; US Must Act to Dry Up Al Qaeda Funds, Policy Group Says,” Washington Post, October 17, 2002

[18] Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy: The Secret Road to the Second Indochina War, Bobbs-Merrill, 1972, p. 193.

[Note that some of these sources dating back are difficult to find on the web – some are still archived.]

Media Culture 10 Years Later / How Much Will It Cost To Buy You Out?

September 11, 2011April 13, 2025

by Gabrielle Price
(Originally published 9/11/2005 | updated, 9/10/2011)

“The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what’s coming now. The party’s over, folks… [Censorship of the news] is a given in wartime, along with massive campaigns of deliberately-planted “Dis-information”. That is routine behavior in Wartime – for all countries and all combatants – and it makes life difficult for people who value real news.“ ~ Hunter S. Thompson / “When War Drums Roll” 2001

The date that lives in everyone’s memory and the beginning of a road traveled by many. Some have seen the signs, taken the detours and some are still blindly on this road. I traveled down it entirely too long.

I do not wish to take away from the tragedy of that day, or forget those who lost so much (and made me realize what I had). I also do not wish to turn this into a 9/11 Truth discussion. There are many things that happened that do not make much sense to me and an independent investigation is warranted, in my opinion. But this isn’t what this post is about. This is about buying into the fear that was sold at every turn by an administration and the media after this tragic day.

This was a life altering event…an event that brought out the best of us as citizens; the best in people all over the globe when we were experiencing the unimaginable. What is more unimaginable to me is how people have behaved toward each other since; as if that day never occurred. There is a time to grieve and move on, yes. For the families, it is their time to remember in their own way, heal in their own time. I don’t think there is any harm in having public ceremonies but I’m not sure that they need national coverage now. I think we should all remember in our own way. It is as much part of your history as this country’s history as it is etched in the history of humanity. Like asking your parents or grandparents where they were the day Kennedy was shot…it changed things for them. It changed a nation. This day is the same, on a global stage…and the history books may not tell the story the way you will ultimately remember it. (At least, American history books…)

My story begins with a trip in the way-back machine. Many events had occurred in my life before that historic Tuesday morning and in many ways, were still unfolding in small increments. Each day was a new challenge and I was trying my best to believe that each day was a gift. Many of life’s changes are painful – when you’re in them, they can seem excruciating. You can’t stop them from coming – but the pain eventually is forgotten and the lessons learned are carried forward into the next inevitable change.

It is the only constant – so you learn to realize you have two choices. Crawl in a hole and quit or stand up and meet them. [Often, the biggest challenge is to meet them gracefully.]

My best and dearest friend passed away in 1997 from suicide and dealing with that in itself took its toll over subsequent years, especially with life changes to come. The betrayal of a husband, once a friend who then became a stranger to me and others who knew him. This separation directly effected my plan to take care of my grandmother and I had to move out of her house…in so doing, losing the opportunity to buy the house (the family home), the house she wished us to have. I could not have accomplished this purchase on my own, so I had to leave that dream behind. This broke my heart more than the spouse ever did. My grandmother passed soon after I moved out on my own…starting again as a single mom at 33.

Needless to say, I had a lot on my plate and it was a challenge to keep ahead of the curve and keep sanity at the same time. Friends helped as much as they could; family as well. Still, when you are dealing with so much, you tend to lay low and lick your wounds to recoup for another day…or for the next chapter of your life to begin. Without my best friend and my significant other lost to me, recouping was a daunting task. I cried many tears on many nights…

Initially, living on my own with my daughter was doable on my ‘part time/close to full time as you can get’ hours at a nonprofit. We didn’t spend a lot on frivolities but we managed to entertain ourselves on a budget. There was always food on the table and bills were met every month, for a time. We had our reading nights, video game nights and my piecemeal PC, as nickel and dime as it was, kept us entertained. And of course, ultimately, we had each other. Television consisted of maybe 5 channels, the bunny ears leaving arched scratches on the walls for the span of our 6 year stay there. It offered very few choices.

No high speed internet (remember dial-up? *shudder*) and no cable. It took me a few years to break down and get a DVD player because I dragged heels on paying to repurchase on DVD, movies that I already owned on VHS. The only other toy in our sanctuary was my first digital camera and scanner, a gift from my parents for my birthday – which rekindled my affair with photography. Back then, it nourished my soul when it was most needed…and it gave me a voice I’d forgotten I had.

Time passed slowly and wounds healed at the same pace. I found that I had opportunities to travel after a year of saving a little aside and I gave myself permission to go to places that I’d always wanted to see. I went to DC for the first time in the summer of 2001…

I can’t tell you how inspired I was to be in such a place. I was spellbound by the history seeping out of the buildings and parks on the mall to the alleys of Georgetown. I was overwhelmed when I visited the Library of Congress and fell in love at the National Gallery. So much so that I spent two of my four days within its walls.

I was drunk and dizzy with visions of Monet and Rembrandt. I was stunned to be allowed so close to these works, as much as a nose length away so that I could see the brushstrokes. Every room I went into, I saw another painting that I had only known from a photo in a book. Monet’s Lilies, big as life in front of me and I was awestruck. Out another passage and down the hall and there she was…

‘Flaming June’ Frederic Leighton c.1895 Oil on canvas

Flaming June, one of my favorite paintings by Frederic Leighton. She was visiting the National Gallery at the same time. You literally could have mopped me off the floor…I couldn’t stop the tears welling up, I was so moved. A female security guard walking past me asked, “Your first time here?” All I could do was smile and nod.

When I returned home from that trip, I was different. I felt renewed, inspired and humbled. It was a giant exhalation and release of old for new. I had taken over 300 pictures in 4 days and I found myself researching DC every time I was online. I knew I would go back and didn’t want to wait too long to return. I also found myself watching more news. I was an ‘election result’ junkie before then and watched the nightly news on a regular basis. I enjoyed catching glimpses of the monuments and the lights on the reflecting pool. In my mind, this place belonged to me, just as it belongs to all of us. Perhaps that sounds naive and in hindsight, I know there was a level of innocence there. Not all of that has been lost…it’s just different.

“Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I remember September 11th, 2001, a Tuesday morning; like it was yesterday.

I was off work and my then boyfriend had stayed over. We were having coffee and doing the crossword while watching the Today show. Early reports about the first plane; possible pilot heart attack, small aircraft…all speculative. I returned from the kitchen after starting another pot of coffee and saw the second plane hit. Matt Lauer spoke what was in my thought bubble, “That was intentional.”

I forgot everything in that moment. I forgot the coffee, the crossword, the bills, the plans I’d made that day. I was hardly aware that my boyfriend was sitting next to me. I forgot that I was pissed off about not getting my ‘child tax credit’, I forgot that I was angry that Bush was elected. I forgot everything unimportant in the moments following when I witnessed the horror of the first tower falling. What I did remember was everything that was most important to me…and I remember sobbing uncontrollably.

After I regained composure, I called my daughter’s school to find out what was happening there. She was the only person on the planet that I wanted to see and to be with in that moment. The school was on lock down and they were waiting to see what plan, if any, would be put in action to get the students home. I was not able to pick her up and I was imagining the panic of the other parents at home, and at work, wondering the same thing. I called as many people as I could think to call, just to hear their voices and know they were okay. I didn’t leave the television or that front room for the majority of that day. (It is quite possible that I didn’t leave the apartment much that week unless it was for work or necessity.)

That day, I told my boyfriend I loved him. It came out naturally. It did not occur to me that anything I said that day would be considered inappropriate…it just mattered to me that he knew. It didn’t matter whether he said it in return or not, I wanted to say what I felt because for the second time in my life, since my best friend had passed, I realized with a jolt – life really is too fucking short not to say what you feel.

It is hard for me to look back on that day now without being angry. I have to admit a thought that entered my mind then, that if anyone should be in charge of this country at this moment in time, I was glad it was George W. I remember thinking, naively, he would take care of who did this…he would take care of business. Little did I know at the time – that was all he would take care of. In the year following this tragedy, more stories unfolded about the people who lost their lives, the people who saved lives and those who survived. Unfortunately, there were other ‘stories’ that I bought into…a lot of us did.

I wasted precious time in my life being afraid because I bought the fear the government was selling and the media was distributing. I was vulnerable before that day…and after being gripped by tragedy beyond my own…I again became vulnerable to the machine of fear.

A machine that was just ramping up and getting started…its sights set on bulldozing ideas and reason.

Update:

10 years later. I thought I would see a day where I would no longer be haunted by that fear. It has morphed into an urgency – one that can only be managed by writing and sharing information. My concerns now are not what they tell us we should be concerned about, but the things they do not tell us and should. What has been seen cannot be unseen.

I don’t recognize my country anymore than I used to recognize journalism and hold it in high regard. Perhaps it was naive to think I recognized either. Over these 10 years, I have coveted Hunter S. Thompson’s work and have been told on more than one occasion that my style of political writing was comparable. Which humbles (and tickles) me because his humor was a powerful salve throughout the Bush years…and still is today.

I often wonder what Hunter S. Thompson would have to say if he were with us but I’ve come to understand why he is not here. In my mind, he did not die a coward’s death – he bravely gave us his best during the worst moments in political history this country had ever witnessed.

Worst until now.

It was better to see Doc go out like a samurai rather than die of a broken heart. But there is a part of me that imagined him taking some of the greed heads along in a final blaze of inebriated glory. Then again, those who know his work (on both sides of the political aisle) know that he had more class than that – even at his worst, he was better than politics and journalism now touts as it’s best.

“Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.” – Hunter S. Thompson

The Doc was right. But after ten years, that’s about the only tide I’m beginning to see turn for the better. The ship of professional journalism is being scuttled alongside the Titanic failure of government. For many witnessing it, there’s nothing left but to build grassroots media and political movements or sink quietly into the watery grave of fascism.

In honor of the good Colonel Thompson, I say let’s build and man the lifeboats…with Jolly Rogers flying…and let the good times roll.