9/11 And Gold, Money And Power

 | Aug 20, 2012 05:40AM ET

With the rise of central banking, gold as money began a three century decline. Gold as power, however, continued on as usual.

In 1971, when the US cut the ties between money and gold, gold as money ceased to exist. Gold as power, however, continued. But because gold is power there is little real information on the connection between the two; and that information is often misleading as the powerful prefer secrecy and the true movements of gold are no exception.

I would like to share some information I discovered about the world of gold and power that will shed light on some very critical issues; and, because of power’s purposefully hidden path, the truth here can only be approached obliquely.

What I offer is a name. The name is Bruce Rappaport. Twenty-five years ago, in extenuating circumstances I had met Howard Hughes’ private banker, Dr. Norman Bernard Thirion. Prior to working for Hughes, Dr. Thirion had worked for Daniel K. Ludwig, a man even wealthier and more secretive than Hughes.

Because of the unique circumstances under which we met, Thirion told me about events he had told few others, events that led to, among others, the name of Bruce Rappaport. The events centered on the embezzlement by the Reagan White House of funds Thirion had solicited from the Saudi royal family.

The funds, $500 million, intended to aid the Afghan freedom fighters never reached them. Instead they were later discovered in a secret CIA Swiss bank account co-mingled with proceeds from the Iran-Contra arms scandal, another illegal Reagan operation. The bank account was controlled by an Israeli-Swiss banker, Bruce Rappaport, later connected to the events surrounding 9/11.

It was because of what Howard Hughes’ private banker told me in 1987 that I recognized Rappaport’s name when it came to my attention last year in 2011, this time in connection with 9/11 and events far from Norman Thirion and the Reagan White House; events that will reveal the continuing connection between gold, money and power.

SECRET LIES AND HIDDEN TRUTHS

The name of Bruce Rappaport brings together events, nations and individuals tangled in interlocking webs of deceit and deception. The covert life of Bruce Rappaport is similar to a USB hub that connects crime, power, politics and money; and it was Rappaport’s relationship with William Casey—Nixon’s Chairman of the SEC, Reagan‘s Director of the CIA and Rappaport’s golfing buddy—that gave Rappaport his lubed entry into the international sewers of power and money.

On August 22, 1999, an article in the New York Times, Russian Money-Laundering Investigation finds a Familiar Swiss Banker in the Middle, focused on Russian money-laundering being carried out at Rappaport’s bank, the Bank of New York.

The New York Times’ article on Bruce Rappaport, i.e. the "familiar Swiss banker," and his bank, the Bank of New York, did not, however, mention Rappaport’s close ties to Israel, the Reagan administration and to US intelligence.

Regarding these omissions by the New York Times, Robert Parry wrote:

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the article sketched Rappaport's biography from his birth in Haifa, now part of Israel, through his founding of Inter-Maritime Bank in Geneva to his acquisition of the Bank of New York but left out was an important piece of the mystery: Rappaport's close relationship to Israel's Labor Party, the Reagan administration and U.S. intelligence… Rappaport had been linked to some of the Reagan administration's most controversial actions…

These included: the Iran-contra affair; an Israeli bribery case that involved a U.S.-backed oil pipeline in Iraq; the scandal over the Bank of Credit and Commerce International; a curious shipment of weapons through a melon farm in Antigua to Colombian cocaine kingpins; and the October Surprise mystery, the allegations that the 1980 Reagan campaign sabotaged Carter's negotiations to free 52 American hostages held in Iran.

WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW EXPLAINS WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND

On September 24, 2011, the name, Bruce Rappaport, was mentioned on the website Veterans Today. Bruce Rappaport and Lee Wanta, a former US intelligence operative, who, like Rappaport, was involved with Reagan’s illegal Iran-contra activities, had also been active in US covert efforts to destabilize the Russian economy.

Wanta’s story along with Bruce Rappaport’s offers a telling glimpse into the secretive world of power, politics, money and gold. The story in Veterans Today, titled “Classified: The Wanta Chronicles, the Covert Economic War” connects Lee Wanta and Bruce Rappaport to:

.. a vast international criminal conspiracy at the heart of the American government ... [beginning] with the criminal prosecution of former Reagan intelligence coordinator, Lee Wanta…Charges allege that the 9/11 attacks were planned and executed in order to cover financial crimes.

The financial crimes and events that revolved around US efforts to destabilize the Russian ruble are myriad and complex; and include far more than the activities of Rappaport and Wanta.

They not only explain the events surrounding 9/11, they also reveal the source of funding for America’s covert activities after WWII, thousands of tons of gold stolen from China by the Japanese—and later again stolen by the US.

CHINA’S STOLEN GOLD

Professor Chalmers Johnson’s review of Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave tells of the widespread looting of China’s riches by Japanese forces before their defeat in WWII.

“Yamashita’s gold” describes the vast wealth looted from China then hidden by General Yamashita. Countless tons of gold, precious stones and stolen treasures were secretly buried by General Yamashita in the Philippines prior to Japan’s surrender. Ferdinand Marcos, later president of the Philippines, also had found “Yamashita’s gold.”

The Americans moved quickly to suppress any knowledge of this vast hoard of gold; and, rather than returning it to its rightful owners, Chalmers Johnson writes, … it was decided at the highest levels, presumably by Truman, to keep these discoveries secret and to funnel the money into various off-the-books slush funds to finance the clandestine activities of the CIA.

Among these clandestine activities was the destabilization of Russia’s ruble in which Rappaport and Wanta were involved, in which $240 billion of 10-year securities were issued on September 10, 1991 to buy up Russia’s industrial base; and it was to destroy evidence of these covert securities and their source that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked on September 11, 2001.

According to Veterans Today, the primary targets on 9/11 in the World Trade Center were Cantor Fitzgerald and Eurobrokers, major dealers in US securities. The primary target at the Pentagon was the Office of Naval Intelligence which had been investigating the covert securities.

41% of the fatalities in the Twin Towers came from two companies that managed U.S. government securities: Cantor Fitzgerald and Eurobrokers. 31% of the 125 fatalities in the Pentagon were from the Naval Command Center that housed the Office of Naval Intelligence.

… The covert securities, used to accomplish the original national security objective had ended up in the vaults of the brokers in the World Trade Center, [and] were destroyed on September 11, 2001, the day before they came due for settlement and clearing.

THE COVERUP

The Veterans Today article notes:

The federal agency mostly involved in investigating those transactions was the Office of Naval Intelligence. On September 11 those same three organizations: the two largest government securities brokers and the Office of Naval Intelligence in the US took near direct hits.

What happened inside the buildings of the World Trade on September 11 is difficult, but not impossible to discern. The government has put a seal on the testimony gathered by the investigating 911 Commission, and instructed government employees to not speak on the matter or suffer severe penalties, but there are a number of personal testimonies posted on the internet as to what happened in those buildings that day.

Careful reconstruction from those testimonies indicates the deliberate destruction of evidence not only by a targeted assault on the buildings, but also by targeted fires and explosions. In the event that either the hijacking failed, or the buildings were not brought down, the evidence would be destroyed by fires.

Even more revealing would be the actions of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Securities and Exchange Commission on that day, and in the immediate aftermath. As one of many coincidences on September 11, the Federal Reserve Bank was operating its information system from its remote back-up site rather than its downtown headquarters.

The SEC and Federal Reserve system remained unfazed by the attack on September 11. All of their systems continued to operate. The two major security trading firms had their trade data backed up on remote systems.
Nevertheless, the Commission for the first time invoked its emergency powers under Securities Exchange Act Section 12(k) and issued several orders to ease certain regulatory restrictions temporarily.

On the first day of the crisis, the SEC lifted “Rule 15c3-3 -Customer Protection–Reserves and Custody of Securities,” which set trading rules for certain processes. Simply [the] GSCC [Government Securities Clearing Corporation] was allowed to substitute securities for the physical securities destroyed during the attack.

Subsequent to that ruling, the GSCC issued another memo expanding blind broker settlements. A “blind broker” is a mechanism for inter-dealer transactions that maintains the anonymity of both parties to the trade. The broker serves as the agent to the principals’ transactions.

Thus the Federal Reserve and its GSCC had created a settlement environment totally void of controls and reporting – where it could substitute valid, new government securities for the mature, illegal securities, and not have to record where the bad securities came from, or where the new securities went – all because the paper for the primary brokers for US securities had been eliminated.

This act, alone, however was inadequate to resolve the problem, because the Federal Reserve did not have enough “takers” of the new 10 year notes. Rather than simply having to match buy and sell orders, which was the essence of resolving the “fail” problem [fails occur when securities are not delivered and paid for on the date scheduled by the buyer and seller], it appears the Fed was doing more than just matching and balancing – it was pushing new notes on the market with a special auction.