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WILL THE REAL ECONOMIC HIT MEN PLEASE STAND UP? Meditations on 9/11 Truth by Catherine Austin Fitts © Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only. [Many people have asked me what I thought about the recently popularized book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and I have held my tongue because I just didn't have time to do the brilliant deconstruction of the book's "limited hangout" approach performed here by Catherine Austin Fitts. In this article the former Assistant Secretary of Housing and past managing director of Dillon Read brings us face to face with the horrors for which we all share a measure of responsibility. Those who would have us work through and affirm the current system don't want these horrors to be seen, because any recognition of them leads on to other realities that are darker still. Fitts also makes clear the point that I was making in Seattle which has been so widely misrepresented. There are no real avenues left for 911 activism in the traditional sense of the word. The election is over. All three 9/11 suits (Hilton, Mariani and the Saudi case) have been dismissed or morphed as I said they would be. Congress has shown and will show no courage. The 9/11 Commission (totally compromised) has closed its doors. The Justice Department (part of the 9/11 plot) will do nothing. The courts are compromised and the mainstream media (also part of the crime) has moved on. NY Attorney General Elliot Spitzer has yet to do anything with the 9/11 material he has received, remaining quiet in order to protect his bid for the NY state house. But there are new channels of real accountability that can change the world, if 911 activists can persuade activist communities to understand the realities of economic warfare and to begin to promote marketplace strategies. Real headway can be made if we withdraw our deposits, purchases, investments and attention from media, banks, companies and investors complicit in 911 and war profiteering and cover up. These marketplace strategies can dovetail with other innovative tactics, building financial constituencies to support the rule of law. What would Elliot Spitzer do if millions of New Yorkers threatened to withdraw all of their money from the large New York Federal Reserve banks unless he moved forward with an investigation? What would happen if hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers cancelled their subscriptions to the New York Times in protest over the lies of 911? There is still a great deal to learn from 9/11 that can proactively help individuals to read the real map of the world and make a difference in their own lives. This involves a fundamental change of approach: the old, futile course of action asks citizens to go hat in hand to government and corporate interests to make them change (an impossibility), while the new approach says that if the citizens themselves change enough within, that change can shift markets while there is still time to make some difference in the outcome for individual lives. In other words, one approach tries to convince us that the right path is to get someone else (with no interest in doing so) to save us and the other says that we must accept the responsibility for saving ourselves and gather and exercise the real power we have and have not yet used. Which makes more sense to you? - MCR] Economic Hit Men A "limited hangout" is a partial confession, a mea culpa, if you will, that leaves the essence of a crime or covert reality hidden. Because it includes some small part of the truth, the limited hangout is irresistibly attractive to dissidents and political critics whose thirst for such truth makes them jump at the dangled scraps. Once the system's watchdogs are busy chewing on the limited hangout, the guilty players can go about their illegal business for a new round of unaccountable, semi-secret mayhem.1 If you want to see an excellent limited hang out at work, pick up a copy of the John Perkins' bestselling Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. In his limited hangout confession, Perkins describes his career from 1971 to 1981 as a highly paid professional who helped defraud Third World countries by helping syndicates make uneconomic loans as a means to facilitate the eventual takeover of those economies by elite and corporate interests. Greg Palast, Anne Williamson and other first-rate investigative journalists have brilliantly documented instances of such economic warfare against sovereign governments and national economies - where nations are taken over with their own money, in much the same way as a corporate raider takes over a company through leveraged buy-out. I have documented a similar process in US communities and mortgage markets. In writing about this process, I use the concept of an "economic tapeworm" to explain the negative return on investment financial system that operates globally and relies on economic and military warfare to finance and subsidize itself.2 The phenomenon that Perkins writes about is well known. But his personal "how to" account of an economic hit pertains to an apparently cold case, far in the financial past. While this story is very instructive for those who have not yet dealt with professional fraudsters or been targeted by economic warfare3 (whether in the Third World or in the First World nations) it is even more instructive for its omissions - and for its timing as an apologia intended, we are led to believe, somehow to assuage guilt for harm done: it relates to events occurring twenty-five or thirty years ago, involving players who are, for the most part, dead or retired from the business of economic warfare and companies that have morphed into later incarnations. In the process of providing a colorful account of a 1970s whodunit (complete with low tech strategies devoid of the dazzling technology toolkit that is now an essential part of the economic hit man's weaponry of economic warfare), Perkins delivers to readers the "big lie": he reveals the secret that there is no greater conspiracy. This is simply globalization run amok, he would have us believe. Somehow, this particular conspiracy theory seems charmingly credible as part of a "confession." Perkins admits to what is known and then uses the credibility created by his "limited hangout" to further obscure the reality of who's who in the real governance of global investment and risk management. We are to presume that the investment networks in and around the Harvard Corporation, the City of London, the Vatican and investment managers and bankers for the proceeds of transnational organized crime are simply good-hearted fellows who let things get out of hand. Nowhere does Perkins introduce the notion that cartels in a "New World Order" (the phrase coined and promoted by George H. W. Bush) use covert manipulation of the global financial system to centralize and concentrate economic and political power. Assassinations by "jackals" aside, Perkins barely hints that for fifty years the US military-industrial complex has been developing and testing powerful black budget technology, satellite and other invisible weaponry and surveillance technology and insider-trading tools behind the veil of national security secrets. Indeed, it was the need for a means of financing black budget operations and weaponry outside the view and control of Congress and the appropriations process - rather than the mere pursuit of corporate profits - that provided the political air cover for Perkins to do what he did as his covert counterparts marketed drugs in American and Third World communities alike. It's an old rule of economics. Sources and uses need to be in one integrated financial statement to understand an enterprise. In Perkins' world, we are never quite clear who got what cash and in what amounts when all was said and done. Which means someone gets to keep the money and remain socially acceptable - and we remain clueless as to who was really running things two decades ago. Economic Warfare in the 21st Century The power of Perkins' book as a limited hangout can be understood by observing the sales, support and kudos in mainstream media it has achieved while the leading books on 9/114, arguably the most significant economic hit in US history,5 have had a much harder time garnering attention. The message seems to be that economic warfare is something that the corporate mainstream will acknowledge, but only so long as it is low tech, long ago, and far away. Understanding and facing the economic warfare responsible for slowly poisoning us and our families and wiping out our retirement savings is a complex and very scary undertaking in comparison to Perkins' concerned confessions. Perhaps we prefer to disassociate from our present circumstances, live in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance, and focus on the study of yesteryear. Complex and scary as it may seem, the growing body of evidence makes a compelling case that officials of the US government, its contractors and the military abetted the 9/11 attacks. With the help and complicity of the US Congress and corporate media, they are engaged in the most profitable war and enforcement profiteering in history. This is a terrifying picture to contemplate. Look how tough it has been for New Yorkers, the constituency most adversely affected by the 9/11 tragedy. A recent Zogby poll indicates that 49.3 percent of residents of New York City hold the opinion that officials "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act." Yet, despite this widespread conviction and the mounting evidence that sustains it, no serious support has developed for the November 2004 citizens' complaint requesting that Elliot Spitzer, the Attorney General of New York, finally open a criminal investigation into the tragedy. Although fifteen NYC legislators have also called for such an inquiry, there has as yet been no effort locally to hold the New York Senate and Congressional delegations accountable for failing to hold the executive branch responsible for its failure to perform, or for its potential complicity. While the New York firemen booing Hillary Clinton off the stage at the 911 Concert was a start, the sentiment expressed has not translated into political action or market action. How many New Yorkers have cut off their subscriptions to, ads in or investments in the stock of the New York Times when the Times helped to facilitate the 9/11 cover-up by failing to ask probative questions or hold officials accountable? The problem the average New Yorker has is the same that we all face - our complicity is deep. We have an entire economy and culture financially dependent upon too many things that harm people and the environment. This is not new. Only the possibility that the war machine is blowing up thousands of middle class Americans in American office buildings in broad daylight is new. The fact that the Bushes and the Clintons are on the same team - and have been since their alleged Iran-Contra partnership in an airport operation in Mena, Arkansas involving the transshipment of cocaine destined for the streets of America - is not something that most Americans have yet incorporated into our political equation. The fact that current financial and commodity markets "clear" not through the operation of changes in price generated by the legitimate free market expression of supply and demand but rather by blowing up American office buildings and the people and legal documents in them is not something that most Americans saving for retirement or financing a home have incorporated as risks in developing an investment strategy. We cannot fathom that economic warfare is now conducted using high tech software weaponry to silently invade the privacy of our banking and purchasing relationships, our comings and goings, and the details of our work and home lives. Nor have we incorporated this realization into our decisions about who we share our lives with and what we say and do behind closed doors. The illumination of the truth of 9/11, however, could change most Americans' paradigms and transactions in powerful ways. It could certainly fuel an increase in demand for precious metals, alternative energy and local self-sufficiency. The Strong Dollar Policy In the mid-1990s, the Clinton Administration, led by an economic team comprised of Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Franklin Raines, instituted something called the "strong dollar policy." This policy was maintained by the Bush Administration, which held over in the first term many of the key players in policymaking positions, including George Tenet, Jerry Hawke (Comptroller of the Currency 1998 - 2004) and Charles Rossotti (45th Commissioner of the IRS). The smoothness of the transition between administrations ostensibly led by political parties in opposition to each other belies the ruse and underscores the strategic nature of the centralization of economic and politic power under way. While the game of trying to figure out what in the world the strong dollar policy really is has gotten increasingly Orwellian,6 the basics are pretty simple. We have kept the dollar's value high relative to other currencies - and far above what fundamental economics would warrant - by asking the consumer and taxpayer to shoulder extraordinary and rising levels of debt financed by increasing amounts of dirty money. This has enabled elites to move off shore and into private hands virtually all the real financial equity in the country. The US is not alone in experiencing "disappearing equity" - it is part of a global equity-centralizing and asset-control process. The strong dollar policy was characterized by a series of financial and market manipulations: Four Secretaries of the Treasury refused to produce audited financial statements and reported a total of $4 trillion in "undocumentable adjustments";7 The Clinton and Bush Administrations rejected policies that would build American productivity and employment8 in the face of the plan to move employment abroad while permitting the growth of debt and immigration quotas at home; The Clinton and Bush Administrations promoted federal credit policies that turned American homes into ATM machines and led to a mortgage market characterized by increasing levels of fraud; The Clinton and Bush Administrations in concert with the central banks (most notably the Federal Reserve) and bullion banks (including JP Morgan-Chase, Citibank and Goldman Sachs) manipulated the gold and silver markets to suppress the price of precious metals while large inventories were moved out of governments and central bank accounts worldwide and into private hands; US pension funds and 401k and IRA retirement savings accounts lost value by waves of accounting and other financial frauds at widely held corporations (such as Enron, Worldcom and Tyco); US Congress and regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted corporate controls, ostensibly to protect investors from further acts of corporate fraud, that operate as a subtle form of capital control, limiting the ability of entrepreneurs on Main Street to raise capital in financial markets; Military force was used to ensure that global investors would continue to purchase US Treasury and mortgage agency securities and the US dollar would prevail as the currency of international choice; The federal budget, federal credit, and federal contracting were operated to favor corporate profit making at the cost of small business and labor productivity; US Treasury and Federal Reserve market intervention was used to ensure low cost of capital for favored global corporations; and, The types and amounts of outstanding financial derivatives exploded, far beyond the ability of most public and private leaders to understand or explain. No one has made a count of the deaths that resulted worldwide from these various financial manipulations. The death toll from the pincer movement of military warfare and economic warfare is far greater than is generally understood. 9/11: Strong Dollar Policy Steroids? While floating the global dollar economy on a sea of debt and easy money worked well for the economic hit men and women through the end of the 1990s, by the summer of 2001 the game seemed to have run its course. Defense appropriations had stalled that summer. Members of the media were asking questions about $3.3 trillion missing from HUD and DOD. Shortly before 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld admitted that DOD could not account for trillions of taxpayer dollars. On September 9, 2001, From the Wilderness issued an economic alert warning that the global financial system ran the risk of meltdown.9 With the events of 9/11, however, the US government was able to garner support for the extraordinary financial market interventions necessary to continue the strong dollar policy and for keeping the lid on the various financial frauds and manipulations. America and the global financial system have stayed afloat for another three years. The answer to the question Cui Bono? ("Who benefits?") from the strong dollar policy suggests that allegations that members of the Bush Administration fully expected, welcomed and even facilitated 9/11 should be taken seriously. Trillions of dollars have been moved out of the US economy under the umbrella of the strong dollar policy - much of it in what appear to be criminal ways. The 9/11 tragedy conveniently necessitated a sudden, centralized control over government and theretofore private activities in the name of protecting national security interests and addressing the threat of terrorism. 9/11 diverted attention from and shut the door behind that money movement. It ushered in a wave of legislation rushed through Congress that would make it much more difficult for the American people to do anything about it. The events of 9/11 have acted as a "lock-down" on a financial coup d'état at the core of the "strong dollar policy." In the Machiavellian tradition, it turns out that the "strong dollar policy" is a policy that intentionally destroys the value of the dollar. Justifying the End of Markets and Democracy Traditionally, the faith of the US working class in democracy has been one of the most powerful supports for democracy worldwide. It is not enough to bankrupt the American middle class and the American government. The current effort to move to more centrally controlled governance also requires removing this faith that underpins support for global democracy. Part and parcel of doing so is establishing popular support for the notion that the economic supports for democracy - sound money, open and transparent markets and government, and access to equity - are somehow bad. An example of this is Marjorie Kelly's The Divine Right of Capital, which neglects to integrate the covert revenue streams into the equation and instead attempts to explain problems and resolutions in terms of overt cash flows only. According to Kelly, the editor of Business Ethics magazine, free markets, not organized crime and black budgets, are the problem. Hence, the problem is that shareholders want to make money, not that insiders rip off small investors of their savings and retirement investments using criminal means, protected, not obstructed, by governmental intervention. Kelly's bio mentions her speaking engagements at Harvard, without concern for Harvard's leadership in Enron, Harken, the rape of Russia, HUD corruption and other criminal frauds. In the latest escalation of the Orwellian nightmare, we have entire networks of good-hearted progressives and socially responsible investors promoting a framework of "problems-solutions" that provides the perfect intellectual camouflage for their opponents' control over national and international resources. Now that the so-called "New World Order" has stolen all of the money, those who are most appalled at this state of affairs unwittingly promote policies that will prevent the ordinary person from communicating with integrity or creating and accumulating wealth. Even worse, they crave the credibility conferred by the foundation, church and university investment syndicates most richly rewarded by economic and military warfare. Their behavior and the policies they promote --- if allowed to triumph --will ensure our descent into a 21st century war economy. Lest these words give offense, I would encourage you to read one of the most important and brilliant economic articles of 2004, "Shilling for a New World Order" by Anne Williamson.10 Understanding Mr. Shiller and the folks who finance and promote his effort tells us much about who profits from fascism. Shiller provides the philosophical prerequisites for ending democracy and markets for good and ensuring that no one can rise other than through serving the war economy. Getting to the truth of 9/11 offers an opportunity to ask and answer the unanswered questions of who is running our world, and to illuminate how the covert cash flows really work. Only with such a powerful understanding can we appreciate the intellectual poison in Shiller's proposals and find real solutions effective in decentralizing our financial systems. I am reminded of a wonderful and very intelligent staff member of the CIA who told me in 1997, "your problem is that you have not answered the question, where does evil come from?" Indeed, this is the unanswered question of our day; one that cannot be answered without a much richer and clear picture than we now have of the economic warfare raging throughout our world and the economic hit men and women leading it. There is Hope - Two Stories Story #1 In November 2004 I was at a precious metals investment conference and had the opportunity to ask one of the speakers, the former head of a US intelligence agency, why the Air Force "stood down four times on 9/11." His answer surprised me. One of his major points during the speech had been the importance of cooperation among all parts of military, intelligence and enforcement on events like 9/11. He answered in a tone of anger saying something like, "I wouldn't know, dear. I ran the (intelligence agency), not the Air Force. You would have to ask the Air Force." Throughout the years of the strong dollar policy, precious metals investors have held out hope that the price of gold and silver will rise based on economic fundamentals. However, when supply and demand forces can be artificially balanced through covert operations and black budget market manipulations financed by warfare and organized crime, the price can stay managed forever - as long as there are sufficient energy resources to do so. This is a much darker and more subtle form of confiscation than was previously thought possible. I saw and heard a dawning realization in that audience that precious metal investors were being "had." As global investors come to understand the truth of 9/11, a lot of resources can shift in very decentralizing ways. I presume that the speaker's fear before such an audience indicated that he understood this too. He appreciates that the economic hit men's control of global markets is much more vulnerable to the viral spread of truth than it seems. Indeed, the following week, the speaker made a public statement that the Internet needed increased controls. It would seem the truth of 911 is quite powerful. Story #2 Two weeks ago I visited a friend who has absolutely no interest in politics. He is well into his seventies. He understands the extent and seriousness of the corruption. Given his age, he has concluded that the only thing he can do to help is live an upright life and pray. His response to the truth of 9/11 is to withdraw from current events and contribute spiritually. He mentioned that a group of his friends had suggested that a recent event had been determined by covert means in complete contradiction to accounts put forth by the mainstream media. He spoke about our current leadership with sadness. It was clear from his manner that he no longer takes them seriously. They have lost what the Chinese call "the mandate of heaven." They are thugs - to be avoided in public and laughed at in private. While this may sound like a small thing, I saw something I have seen many times since the Presidential election. Many Americans are quietly and invisibly withdrawing our mandate from the current leadership - not from America as a country, or from the notion of a democratic American government or from the American people. We understand that our enemy is not these things. This silent withdrawal in the hearts and minds of millions and the use of spiritual warfare to effectively counter those behind economic and military warfare has the power to shift power to more legitimate leadership. Enough hearts and minds on Main Street are silently withdrawing our support to begin real cultural and economic change. Imagine if the truth of 9/11 could illuminate the real economic hit men and women of our day and age and - unleashed from the paralysis of not understanding the covert flows around us and who we can trust - help us transform our situation in a wealth creating way? As Percy Bysshe Shelley once said, "Ye are many. They are few." 1 See Jamey Hecht, "Failure and Crime Are Not the Same: 9/11's Limited Hangouts," http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/112203_failure_crime.html. 2 See Catherine Austin Fitts, "The Myth of the Rule of Law," http://www.solari.com/gideon/q301.pdf; "The Negative Return on Investment Economy," http://www.solariactionnetwork.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=3771#3771 and "The American Tapeworm," http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0304/S00228.htm. 3 For a description of an "economic hit" of which my company was a target, see the "Litigation," available online at http://www.solari.com/gideon. 4 For a list of recommended books on 9/11, including The New Pearl Harbor and 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions by David Ray Griffin, Crossing the Rubicon by Mike Ruppert, The Complete 9/11 Timeline by Paul Thompson, Inside Job by Jim Marrs and others, see http://www.911truth.org. 5 Catherine Austin Fitts, "9/11 Profiteering," www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0403/S00244.htm. 6 Kelly Patricia O'Meara, "Strong Dollar Hides Weak Policy," http://www.gata.org/StrongDollar.htm. 7 Kelly Patricia O'Meara, "Missing Money Articles," http://www.solari.com/learn/articles_missingmoney.htm; "Treasury Checks and Unbalances," http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/04/27/National/ Treasury.Checks.And.Unbalances-658744.shtml 8 Catherine Austin Fitts, "The Story of Edgewood Technology Services," http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0207/S00101.htm. 9 Mike Ruppert, "Global Economic Collapse Likely," http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/11_09_01_Derivatives.html 10 http://www.sandersresearch.com/Sanders/NewsManager/ShowNewsGen.aspx? NewsID=662