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A Scoop Mapping The Real Deal Column
Will The Real Economic Hit Men
Please Stand Up?
Meditations on 9/11 Truth
(c) From The Wilderness Publications
See also… Solari Teleseminars
http://www.solari.com/outreach/telesem/
[ INTRODUCTION FROM FTW EDITOR MIKE RUPPERT: 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 warfare [3] (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 9/11[4] , 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 employment[8] 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."
FOOTNOTES:
1 See Jamey Hecht, "Failure and Crime Are Not the Same: 9/11's Limited Hangouts,"
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," http://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
*************
Catherine Austin Fitts is the President of Solari, Inc. http://www.solari.com/. Ms. Fitts is the former Assistant Secretary of Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner during the first Bush
Administration, a former managing director and member of the board of directors of Dillon Read & Co. Inc. and President of The Hamilton Securities Group, Inc. She writes a column for Scoop Mapping The Real Deal. And is one of the co-founders of http://www.unansweredquestions.org/
© Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/. All Rights Reserved. This story may NOT be posted on any Internet web site without express written permission. Contact
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