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| Donald Rumsfeld loves you. |
Shorting the Airlines
If somebody with advance knowledge of the impending attacks had decided to try to convert that knowledge into money, he might have used an old trick called "short selling" or simply "shorting". It's an agreement to sell a certain stock at a certain time for a certain price. It's called "short" because the seller doesn't own the stock yet; after he has sold it, he plans to buy it before he needs to deliver it to the original buyer.
People do this because they can turn big profits by selling when the price is high and buying later when the price is low. Therefore, if somebody had known what was going to happen, and that the prices of certain stocks were about to plummet, he could have capitalized on his knowledge by "shorting" American or United Airlines stock, for example. And for a while it appeared as if this had actually happened.
Following the Money
Fortunately, the independent investigators knew it was important to get to the bottom of this story, so they were determined to follow the money trail no matter where it led. Fortunately as well, they discovered that most of the short selling had been done by a single "institutional investor" with "no conceivable ties to al-Qaeda", which wrapped up the matter quite tidily.
We can all be thankful that they got this right because if they'd been confused enough to realize that this investor must have received inside information without being tied to al-Qaeda, things might have become a bit confusing.
Institutional Investors
If the Commission had made such a mistake, it might possibly have cast some doubt over the veracity of their report, which was already written before this information came to light and would have been very difficult to change at such a late date.
Furthermore, if it turned out that an institutional investor had tried to cash in on advance knowledge of a surprise attack, it could have hinted at hitherto unknown ties between institutional investors and international terrorism. Clearly this is all speculation, but if we had been led to suspect that such ties existed, we might have lost some faith in institutional investors, and as we all know, our collective faith in institutional investors is what makes modern American capitalism possible. [1]
The CIA Doesn't Have Any Money
Some treasonous lunatics have dared to suggest that the 9/11 Commission should have looked to see if the single "institutional investor" had any "conceivable ties" to the CIA!
But this irresponsible allegation could hardly be substantiated, since the chronically underfunded CIA doesn't have any money, and doesn't do anything expensive either, so it doesn't actually need any money. And since money is just about the only thing institutional investors ever think about, their areas of interest never overlap, so to speak.
No Need For Research
Furthermore, there was no need for the 9/11 Commission to research this question at all, since it is well known that the CIA has never had or needed any conceivable ties to any institutional investors.
This honorable tradition goes all the way back to the mid 1940s, when the Agency was created under the misdirection of then-President Harry Truman, with the assistance of Bill Donovan. "Wild Bill", as he was known, had performed so many amazing feats while leading the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the forerunner of the CIA) that he can truthfully be said to have won World War II all by himself, although he never took credit for it.
This modest hero had never been associated with any institutional investors, especially Brown Brothers Harriman of Wall Street. Harriman, by coincidence, who had founded his own bank before merging with Brown Brothers, served as U.S. Ambassador at large during World War II, which reminds us that there have never been any conceivable ties between any institutional investors and anyone in the State Department, either.
Truman and Donovan : Dulles and McCone
Apparently it was just a lucky break that led Truman and Donovan to forbid the CIA from establishing any conceivable ties to any institutional investors, especially shady institutional investors such as John A. McCone. McCone was exposed as a war profiteer in 1946 when the General Accounting Office found out that his California Shipbuilding Corporation had turned a $44,000,000 profit on an investment of only $100,000.
By 1963, having shown himself to be utterly unscrupulous and therefore perfect for the job, McCone found himself serving our nation honorably as Director of Central Intelligence. As we all remember, McCone's predecessor, Allen Dulles, had handled the delicate and demanding position flawlessly for nearly nine crucial years during the depths of the Cold War, only to be dismissed without cause by JFK, who knew nothing at all about the CIA, to tell you the truth.
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| JFK was the last President. |
JFK and Allen Dulles
The usual lunatics have suggested that JFK's assassination was arranged by the CIA, while the unusual lunatics have suggested that the CIA arranged JFK's assassination. One way or the other, Allen Dulles did indeed sit on the Warren Commission. [2]
And the Warren Commission, as we all know, played a crucial role in the development of our great democracy by "investigating" the death of our 35th President.
Some critics say it's unusual, or dodgy, or even outrageous, that one of the men investigating JFK's sudden and violent death had just been fired by the former President. But they're not looking at the big picture. They don't realize that JFK had started trying to move American foreign policy in a very dangerous (i.e. peaceful) direction. Neither do they realize that he had developed a keen nose for manure.
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| The young President had a mind of his own...
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The Top of the Heap
JFK's sudden turn towards peace and cooperation may have been appropriate for a nursery school, but it was clearly unacceptable as forgeign policy. At least that's how it appeared to some people. The people in question thought they owned our charismatic young leader, just because they had given some money to his old man.
Joesph P. Kennedy, JFK's father, had supported Hitler when he was Ambassador to the U.K. in the turbulent years before World War II. What a career!
By graduating from whiskey smuggling to the State Department, Joe Kennedy proved that anyone can rise to the top of the heap in the USA. And that's pro-American.
But JFK was definitely not pro-American, so he had to be contained, so to speak.
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| ... but not for very long. |
New Warmongers
This is probably why he was continually being surrounded by new warmongers who came out of the closet every time there was an opening anywhere, and he had no choice but to fire them all, one at a time or in groups.
Or at least he thought he had no choice. But this is only because he was much more scrupulous about foreign policy than he was with women to whom he was not married, and also because he was under the mistaken impression that the Wealth of Nations should be shared rather than hoarded.
Eight Out of Nine
Had JFK simply gone along with the militarized program, as all Presidents have done since his time, he wouldn't have needed to fire anybody, and he may have lived a long and happy life. Instead he let his conscience be his guide, and we all saw how well that worked out for him.
But the point we mustn't miss is that JFK was firing people all the time. It's no wonder that one of them ended up on the Warren Commission. The remarkable thing about the Warren Commission was that eight of its nine members had not been fired by JFK at all!
Only Once
We can be very thankful for that because had there been a significant anti-Kennedy faction on the Commission, there might have been some slight temptation to avoid certain witnesses or lines of questioning as a matter of "plausible deniability".
In other words, it would have been easier for the Warren Commission to say, "We found no evidence of a conspiracy" if they hadn't been looking for any such evidence than if they had.
We're fortunate that they didn't do this, or even consider it, and the main reason why they didn't do that was probably because Allen Dulles was the only member of the Warren Commission who had ever been fired by JFK, and JFK had only fired him once.
Exceptionally Humble
Allen Dulles didn't mind getting fired. It was only a volunteer position anyway and he would have preferred to be back home in his adorable little mansion, counting all his adorable little stacks of adorable little stock certificates.
The public humiliation that came with such a sudden and high-profile dismissal might have broken a man of lesser character. But it was no problem for Dulles. He was was getting sick of the public anyway, and he was already exceptionally humble, as are all the men and women who have ever mismanaged institutions in the public sector of the U.S. for private gain.
Not that he was one of them, of course. And we're lucky to be able to say this because in some other countries the men who run the intelligence services tend to get a bit haughty after a while.
Smashing Heads
If Allen Dulles had valued his position at the CIA for financial reasons, things might have turned out very differently indeed. But since there's no history, and no possibility, of CIA directors mingling with institutional investors, it's difficult to see how Allen Dulles could have made more money working for the CIA than he already had.
A few lunatics have suggested that Dulles wasn't in it for the money as much as the blood. These people think that fine upstanding men such as Allen and his brother, and a few others such as Edward Lansdale and some of his colleagues, were mostly interested in smashing as many foreign heads of state as possible.
Other observers, even more loony to be sure, disagree, claiming that these noble servants of America's destiny were just happy smashing as many heads as possible.
Wild Speculation Dismissed
But all this wild speculation has been dismissed on the strength of one simple argument, which runs: If there were any evidence to suggest that the CIA had been smashing heads in foreign countries, we would surely have seen it by now.
We haven't been looking, really, but the fact remains that we've found no evidence of any violent CIA activities in any foreign country, including Vietnam, where Ed Lansdale wasn't involved in any of them, or maybe just a few. Luckily this gives us even less to think about than we already had.
Utterly Meaningless
Of course we should be thankful that none of this has ever made any difference at all for the vast majority of the American people. It is often difficult to determine whether their apathy is mostly a result of their ignorance, or their ignorance is mostly the result of their apathy. But nobody cares, so it doesn't really matter whether anybody knows.
It's all the same to most of us, meaning we think it's utterly meaningless because we don't understand any of it, which is why we're not trying to learn more. And some people say this is a sign of laziness but it's actually a symptom of difficulty.
Complex concepts such as the idea that somebody might not be telling the whole truth are almost impossible to contemplate when you're not much smarter than a brick.
United Fruit
It goes without saying that Allen Dulles never had anything to do with any institutional investors, and neither did his brother, John Foster Dulles, who coincidentally happened to be serving as Secretary of State while Allen was running the CIA.
Neither of the Dulles brothers nor any member of their family had any conceivable ties to the United Fruit Company, which explains why neither the State Department nor the CIA had any conceivable involvement in the 1954 coup in Guatemala which overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz.
It's too bad that so few Americans know anything about this noble episode in our national history, but if you're still reading, we're making up for a bit of that misfortune. And we're lucky that this is happening because most of the people who came to this website left in disgust a long time ago.
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| I'm Chiquita Banana and I'm here to say United Fruit's not connected to the CIA |
The New Guatemalan Government
Fortunately, the new Guatemalan government empowered by the mysterious regime change terminated some badly needed social programs, such as the "literacy program" begun under Arbenz.
Under the so-called "literacy laws", anyone who couldn't read and write was required to learn how to do so, and anyone who could read and write was required to vote whenever elections came around.
Intolerable
Arbenz had been trying to flatten the learning curve for the illiterate peasants who lived mostly on barren land in the highlands, far away from the lush soil along the coastlines, which of course was all owned by United Fruit.
So he set up a team of mobile reading teachers, who traveled to remote villages with books and records, teaching the people to read, and therefore enabling them to vote.
For obvious reasons, this program was intolerable and had to be stopped before the radical idea could spread to other countries in the region, which could have caused enormous problems.
Freedom and Independence
We know that the more information people are able to process, the more difficult they are to control. And bringing freedom and independence to the illiterate peasants of impoverished foreign countries is all America ever wants to do, really.
So the CIA had no reason to back the coup, especially because nobody running the Agency at the time stood to benefit in any way.
But fortunately, by nipping the national literacy program in the bud, the new regime had made the illiterate peasants even more free and independent than they had ever been.
A Political Tangent
This is where the story starts to get a little bit political. Loony lefties sometimes complain that the literacy program would have helped the country lift itself out of poverty if it had been allowed to continue.
They fail to recognize the flaw in their argument, which is immediately apparent to all thinking people: This draconian measure had abrogated the peasants' God-given right to remain ignorant and politically powerless if they chose to do so.
Ignorant and Politically Powerless
In an actual free country, and I'm sure we all appreciate this, all citizens have unlimited freedom to be ignorant and politically powerless if they so choose.
Many of us have indeed chosen that path, and it has worked very out well for most of us. Certainly I can't speak for all of us, but it's done wonders for me.
I don't mean to get too personal in the middle of a serious history lesson, but I just can't imagine how my life might have turned out, had I been required to learn how to read and write.
But luckily this was only a meaningless tangent. The problem wasn't about literacy after all.
The Real Problem
The real problem, as we found out later, was about land. The Arbenz government, flush with electoral success and unaware of the constraints under which it was working, unilaterally declared that it had the right to buy any land which was owned by foreign investors but not being used.
This innocent-sounding announcement was actually an outrageous shot across the bow of United Fruit, an enormous philanthropic corporation which had served the people of Guatemala for many decades by growing bananas there and shipping them to the U.S. where they were sold to innocent consumers who had no idea that they were supporting an international criminal enterprise every morning by throwing a few small pieces of tropical fruit in with their corn flakes.
Paying by the Book
It might not have come to a crisis, but Arbenz violated all acceptable principles of business ethics by paying United Fruit the "book value" of the land that was expropriated. In this context, "book value" means "the value at which the land was assessed for tax purposes".
And of course the arrangement was entirely unacceptable to the institutional investors running United Fruit because they had been allowed to assess the land themselves, and somebody had made an honest but significant clerical error, after which their land had been registered on the tax rolls at only a small fraction of its market value.
An Honest Error
Of course I'm speculating a little bit here. I don't know for certain that it was an honest clerical error but think it must have been because surely no institutional investor would engage in any deliberate deception, especially if such deception could reduce the investor's tax burden. So we can't say for sure. It could have been an honest error of some other type, an honest non-clerical error, so to speak.
Pennies on the Dollar
By paying only pennies on the dollar for land the United Fruit Company had stolen fair and square many decades earlier, the Arbenz government showed the whole world how deceitful it could be.
And Americans have never tolerated deceitful foreign governments, in Latin America or elsewhere.
So when the coup took place, a few exceptionally ignorant and foul-smelling deviants had the nerve to suggest that the CIA might have been behind it.
No Evidence
But after years of indefatigable research by thoroughly controlled pseudo-investigators, no evidence has ever been found indicating CIA complicity in the Guatemalan tragedy, which is kind of strange when you think about it.
And we're fortunate that most Americans don't think about it very much.
So Much Stock
Unfortunately, the new Guatemalan government gave the United Fruit Company control of everything it needed to generate massive profits. But fortunately, none of the massive profits ever made their way into the pockets of the Dulles brothers, who, as far as we can tell, had no conceivable ties to the United Fruit Company despite the fact that their family owned so much stock in the company.
And the reason for this is probably because the stock that wasn't owned by the brothers hadn't been hidden away in a secret trust fund that didn't exist.
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| United Fruit doesn't trust the CIA anymore.
Now they hire their own terrorists to guard their gold mine. |
It's Crazy How Things Work Out
It's crazy how things work out sometimes when pure-hearted philanthropists trying to serve their country suddenly find themselves getting extremely wealthy.
It's a good thing that neither the Dulles brothers nor anyone else in the U.S. enjoyed any profits from United Fruit's lucky break, so the long-standing separation of powers between the CIA and its Wall Street backers was never seriously threatened.
But alas, this is only history. Aside from demonstrating the unbroken institutional purity of the CIA, it's quite irrelevant to our main story because
The Dancing Israelis
There were some very disturbing reports on the morning of 9/11.
Five young men had been seen excitedly photographing the Twin Towers from the top of a nearby building, just before the hijackers arrived, and then even more excitedly afterward, giving one another high-fives and taking selfies with the burning towers in the background.
These five men turned out to be Israeli nationals and they have been dubbed "the Dancing Israelis".
Tasked to Document the Event
There's more to the story than I can relate here, but the gist of it is: They were arrested and their cell phones were found to contain the selfies they had allegedly been taking.
And they were held for about 10 weeks, during which time they failed multiple lie detector tests.
But after a bit of diplomatic pressure was applied, they were released and went back to Israel, where it turned out that a couple of them were connected with Israeli intelligence.
Then they appeared on Israeli television and one of them explained that they were in NYC that morning because they had been "tasked to document the event".
Jet Lag and Confusion
On the lunatic fringe a handful of rabble-rousers claimed to see something untoward in this situation, but they were over-reacting, as usual.
Given that Israel is America's most important ally in the Middle East, it's just inconceivable that any Israeli citizen, far less an intelligence agent, would want to see America harmed in any way.
It's far more likely that they were suffering jet lag and had become disoriented, that they thought the hijacked planes had missed the towers, and that they were celebrating because they erroneously thought no damage had been done.
None Of It Was True Anyway
Even if that wasn't the case, continuing to badger these fine young men would have been cruel and unusual. And what good could it have done?
Above all, we're fortunate that no further time or energy was wasted on such a weak story because none of it was true anyway. It turned out to be a massive hoax, and that's why the series made by Carl Cameron of Fox News, in which he documented all this and much more, has virtually disappeared from the record.
All in all, it's "very good" that it was all a hoax because had there been any truth to the story, it could have caused a serious problem for Israeli intelligence.
The Strangest Aspect
The strangest aspect of this very strange story may lie in the fact that the most comprehensive early coverage of the misadventures of the Dancing Israelis came into the public record thanks to The Forward, a Jewish newspaper serving the New York / New Jersey area.
It hurts my frozen brain to wonder whether the editors of The Forward were ignorant of the implications of this news and published stories about it accidentally because it's also possible that they might have known exactly what it all meant and published those stories deliberately.
ooh, it really makes me wonder
The latter possibility might be plausible if we had any reason to believe that Israeli nationals can get away with almost anything simply by hiding behind the shield of anti-Semitism, and/or that Israeli intelligence agents might sometimes enjoy messing with our frozen brains.
Listen: Peter Hammill / Van der Graaf Generator:
Sci-Finance
Sometime in the future you may realise that the day
you made your decision to follow money as a goal
was your darkest dawn, and that, since then, you have
venerated figures as deities and, for you,
people are just pawns.
But that includes you.
You're just an asset like the rest.
Notes:
1: The same faith in institutional investors is what makes modern
American capitalism the greatest threat to democracy that
money can buy. Or at least our ancestors used to think so
when they lived in a democracy. ↑
2: Allen Dulles "sat" on the Warren Commission in the same way
that a victorious wrestler "sits" on his opponent. Neither
the defeated opponent nor the Warren Commission could move
while being sat upon, which was precisely the motivation
for all the sitting. ↑
