*ZGram - 10/18/2001 - "Follow the money!"

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

October 18, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

The story below has spooked around on the internet for quite some time, and
I finally decided to ship it to my readers.  Read and make up your own mind:

[START]

Mystery of terror 'insider  dealers' by Chris Blackhurst

14 October  2001

Share speculators have failed to collect $2.5m (=A31.7m) in  profits made
from the fall in the share price of United Airlines after the 11  September
World Trade Centre attacks. The fact that the money is unclaimed more  than
a month later has re-awakened investigators' interest in a story dismissed
as coincidence.


It may be that investors who were able to predict the  share price crash so
skilfully are reluctant to be seen profiting from tragedy.  But
investigators now wonder whether there is a more sinister  explanation.


The authorities are examining the possibility that if they  knew what was
coming, traders were intent on taking their profits immediately,  before
regulators had woken up to any possible scam. But investors failed to
foresee that the first response of the US stock markets to the disaster was
to  suspend all trading for four days, thereby denying them the chance of
cashing in  their profits.


=46urther details of the futures trades that netted such  huge gains in the
wake of the hijackings have been disclosed. To the  embarrassment of
investigators, it has also emerged that the firm used to buy  many of the
"put" options - where a trader, in effect, bets on a share price  fall - on
United Airlines stock was headed until 1998 by "Buzzy" Krongard, now
executive director of the CIA.


Until 1997, Mr Krongard was chairman of  Alex Brown Inc, America's oldest
investment banking firm. Alex Brown was  acquired by Bankers Trust, which
in turn 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.


Between 6 and 7  September, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw
purchases of 4,744 "put"  option contracts 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 $5m  (=A33.3m) once the carrier's share price
dived after 11 September. 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.


It was not just airlines that were targeted by remarkably canny  investors.
One of the biggest occupants of the World Trade Centre was Morgan  Stanley,
the investment bank. In the first week of September, an average of 27  put
option contracts was bought each day in its shares. The total for the three
days before the attacks was 2,157. Merrill Lynch, another WTC tenant, saw
12,215  put options bought in the four days before the attacks, when the
previous days  had seen averages of 252 contracts a day.

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=3D99402

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Thought for the Day:

"The people who bring us the unbelievable holocaust also bring us the
unbelievable Bin Laden."

(Letter to the Zundelsite)