Article on foreignpolicyjournal.com
Executives warned:
“According to an inside source, one of the senior executives of the corporation told him beforehand that “something big” was going to occur and so other corporate executives would be travelling out of New York.”
Put options on airline stocks:
“For instance, purchases were made on 4,744 put options for United Airlines between September 6 and 7. On September 10, purchases were placed on 4,516 put options for American Airlines. United and American were the two airlines that had planes hijacked and destroyed in the attacks. There was no similarly unusual trading in other airlines. Other companies directly affected also experienced a spike in the purchase of put options, such as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Merril Lynch, both of which had offices in the World Trade Center. Numerous countries around the world, including the U.S., Japan, Germany, the U.K., France, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Spain, opened investigations into what had apparently been insider trading based on foreknowledge of the attacks. . . . According to the 9/11 Commission Report, which echoed the conclusion of the FBI, 95 percent of the purchases on United and American Airlines shares on September 6 and 10, respectively, were made by a single U.S. based institutional investor.”
The Israeli Spy Ring:
“[Author Robert Baer] was referring to the case of the five Israelis who were witnessed on 9/11 celebrating beside their white van at the sight of the smoking towers from a parking lot in New Jersey. They were later arrested and detained. Upon arrest, the driver of the van told the arresting officers, “We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.” The van was registered to an Israeli-owned company called Urban Moving Systems, whose owner immediately closed shop and fled to Israel. At least two of the five Israelis witnessed videotaping and celebrating the attacks were learned to be operatives of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. In other reporting that may or may not have been related to the five Israelis with the white van, it became known publicly that an enormous Israeli spy ring had been uncovered operating within the United States. Reports of investigations into Israeli spying within the U.S. had emerged early in 2001. After 9/11, Fox News reported that according to investigators the Israeli intelligence operatives of a large spy ring may have gathered information in advance about the attacks of 9/11, but that the evidence for this was classified. As part of the operation, Israelis posed as art students. Under the guise of selling art, they targeted government officials at their offices or homes, including members of the military, the DEA, the FBI, and other law enforcement and intelligence personnel. One group of the Israeli “art students” lived at 4220 Sheridan St. in Hollywood, Florida, just down the street from the 3389 address where Mohammed Atta and three of the other 9/11 hijackers lived.”
Odigo Text messages:
“The Israeli paper Haaretz reported that workers at Odigo, which had offices near the World Trade Center, had received warnings on the morning of September 11 of an impending attack. The Washington Post confirmed that two employees of Odigo had “received text messages warning of an attack on the World Trade Center two hours before terrorists crashed planes into the New York landmarks.””
Suspicious money transfer:
“There have also been several other incidents possibly related to the apparent insider trading before 9/11. In one case, a German firm, Convar, was hired to attempt to retrieve data from the hard drives of computers destroyed as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center. In doing so, it was discovered that there had been transactions of unusually large sums of money through some systems in the WTC, leading to the suspicion that someone with insider knowledge had illegally transferred as much as $100 million through the system as the attacks unfolded.”
Pakistani ISI connection:
“The compelling evidence of insider foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks has been largely dismissed. This is perhaps most evident by the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission report itself, which also stated that there was no evidence of any involvement by any foreign government or government official and that the question of who financed the attacks is “of little practical significance”, despite reports that Mahmud Ahmed, the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency, or ISI, had been responsible for authorizing the transfer of $100,000 to hijacker Mohammed Atta. This information was received by the Commission.”
Strange bedfellows:
“Bob Graham, who co-chaired the 9/11 Joint Inquiry with Porter Goss, has also said there is evidence of the involvement of a foreign government. The 9/11 Commission made no attempt to explain or reconcile the disparity between its conclusions and those of Graham or the reports of the ISI chief’s involvement. In another strange twist, Graham and Goss were having breakfast in Washington with General Ahmed on the morning of September 11 as the planes struck the towers. Ahmed was in Washington visiting his counterpart at the CIA, George Tenet, as well as a number of other high-level officials. Both Graham and Goss had also travelled to Pakistan where they met with the ISI chief just a couple weeks before Ahmed’s reciprocal visit. Goss was later appointed Director of Central Intelligence.”