[Peace-discuss] More on Bush, 9/11, and War Profiteering

[ndahlhei at uiuc.edu]

Independent journalist and financial expert Catherine Austin 
Fitts discusses Bush, 9/11, and massive war profiteering.  
Trying to say at least some high-ranking people in the 
government were completely in the dark about 9/11 is like 
trying to say that the sky is purple.  Too much money, too 
much government power consolidation and war-mongering, too 
much profit by corrupt corporate execs who benefit from the 
spoils of capitalism's greed and violence. . .

Catherine Austin Fitts is the President of Solari, Inc, an 
investment advisor (in formation) created to invest in 
equity managed by a Solari, a community investment databank 
and investment advisor, and to promote Solari Circles and 
Solari Investor Clubs, community clubs focused on local 
investment. Ms. Fitts is a former Assistant Secretary of 
Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner in the first Bush 
Administration, a former managing director and member of the 
board of Dillon, Read & Co, Inc. and President of The 
Hamilton Securities Group, Inc. 


"Cui Bono?"
by Catherine Austin Fitts
Scoop Media
Friday, Jun 4, 2004



"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary 
for one people to dissolve the political bands which have 
connected them with another, and to assume among the powers 
of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the 
Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent 
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should 
declare the causes which impel them to the separation. -- 
The Declaration of Independence

UnAnswered Question #1: Cui Bono? 

A spirited and global citizens' media was birthed by our 
hunger to learn the truth that lay inside the graves of 
those who gave their lives on 9/11. This citizens' media 
brought forward the questions that people throughout the 
world raised and wanted answered. These are the UnAnswered 
Questions of 9/11. These UnAnswered Questions are powerful. 
The persistence of the citizens' media in raising them and 
demanding answers has illuminated the failure of those 
responsible to explain what happened or why. 

These UnAnswered Questions have been supplied to the 
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United 
States -- by the families of those who died that day, by 
9/11 CitizensWatch and many others. To date, the Commission 
has declined to seriously investigate or address them. Those 
who have attended Commission hearings anticipate a report 
that justifies more 9/11 and war profiteering – more 
otherwise unjustified public budgets and private profits for 
large banks, defense contractors and other large 
corporations. 

My vote for the most important UnAnswered Question of 9/11 
is “Cui Bono?,” or “Who Benefits?” It's where any serious 
criminal investigation would begin. That said, why has the 
Commission made no attempt to look at who benefited from the 
crimes of 9/11? To understand why, let's step back and look 
at the issues related to holding government to basic 
standards of transparency and accountability -- and let's do 
it in a simple and basic way. 

Standards of Transparency and Accountability 

If you bought a car and it did not work, what would you do? 
Let's say the car dealer told you that to get the car to 
work, you would have to pay him more money? Would you pay 
him more money to fix a car that had not worked in the first 
place? And after you paid to have it fixed, what if it still 
did not work? Would you pay an increased amount to get it to 
work then? Of course not. 

As a result of 9/11, what did we do? We rewarded failure. 
Military, intelligence and enforcement appropriations and 
contracts increased dramatically along with tax benefits, 
regulatory relief and financing benefits for insiders. The 
stocks of the defense contractors we pay to run our air and 
satellite defense and for military, intelligence and 
enforcement accounting and information systems and 
operations skyrocketed. Why? Why are government officials, 
contractors and depositories who fail to deliver value 
different from a car dealer? Indeed, on fundamental issues 
of transparency and accountability, there is no difference. 

The proper response to 9/11 is significant firings, serious 
investigations, a reinvention of federal budgets and credit 
to lawful performance standards and a return of stolen 
monies. 

The Top 20 Areas of 9/11 Profiteering 

In a recent article on 9/11 Profiteering, I listed 20 areas 
of unacceptable, if not criminal, profiteering. Such 
profiteering is a breach of fiduciary obligations by 
government officials with the help of the Congress, media, 
judiciary and the private members of the military-banking 
cartels that control the US governmental apparatus: 

1. Over $3.3 trillion missing and unaccounted for from the 
US Treasury and no efforts by the US Treasury to find the 
money or get it back. 

2. Failure by the US Department of Justice to enforce 
securities and money laundering laws regarding the pump and 
dump of the US stock market and no effort to find money 
fraudulently laundered and to get it back. 

3. Arbitrage in the Federal Credit System designed to 
generate profits for the benefit of private financial 
interests in combination with relaxed monetary policies. 

4. Global deployment of US military and policing. 

5. Military presence and/or occupation in Iraq and 
Afghanistan and other Eurasian oil and gas interests. 

6. Special legislation favoring the insurance industry. 

7. Special legislation favoring the airline and other 
industries. 

8. Significant increases in military, intelligence and 
enforcement powers and appropriations. 

9. Special legislation favoring commodities and financial 
markets. 

10. Fundraising for trusts and endowments purporting to help 
9/11 victims. 

11. Privatization and taxpayer funded redevelopment and 
financing of the WTC and New York real estate. 

12. Significant increases in airport and building security 
contracts to private companies, much of it government 
funded. 

13. Suppression of the media-sponsored Florida ballot 
recount and institution of “black box” voting machines – 
voting systems that do not have a verifiable paper trail. 

14. Adoption of the US Patriot Act to, among other things, 
consolidate the banking and money laundering market share. 

15. Cutbacks in retirement benefits and raiding/bankruptcy 
of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, Social Security 
and the Federal retirement systems. 

16. Emergence of corporate media as primarily propaganda. 

17. Explosion in expenditures for invisible weaponry – 
including HAARP, ocean, space and satellite weaponry with no 
citizenry understanding of the potentially frightening 
impact on human and other planetary quality of life and 
survival. 

18. Significant opportunities for large law firms resulting 
from the continuing centralization of the economy through 
the US governmental apparatus. 

19. Failure by the US Department of Justice to successful 
prosecute those responsible for Enron or to identify missing 
money and get it back. 

20. Promotions for numerous military and government 
officials who had failed to protect the national security 
during the events of 9/11. 

Look at the sources of income and financing of those who 
served in the Clinton Administration or the first Bush 
Administration, including Iran-Contra, or who serve in the 
second Bush Administration. Look at the campaign funding 
sources of those who sit in Congress. Look at the board 
memberships and other sources of compensation and investment 
profits of those who serve on the National Commission. Look 
at the rising power of the companies who make money from war 
as opposed to companies that make money from healthy and 
happy citizens. 

Ultimately you must conclude that for those who profit from 
the centralization of economic and political power, 9/11 was 
great for business. Indeed from their point of view, 9/11 
can be said to be a significant national security success. 
9/11 profitering generated what is easily estimated as 
thehighest return on investment to campaign donors in the 
history of Presidential politics. The Bush war chest for 
2004 speaks for itself. The piracy of 9/11 has more than 
replaced the loss of Enron, the largest donor for the 2000 
campaign. 

Getting off the Financial Titanic and on to Solari Arks 

Chris Sanders, a money manager in London and founder of 
Sanders Research Associates, is a member of the financial 
leadership who has spoken out with integrity and courage 
against US Treasury black budget accounting and manipulation 
of the gold and financial markets. In a recent report on the 
global economy, “ The Ghost of Adam Smith,” Sanders had this 
to say about the economics of 9/11: 

The truth of the matter is that 'globalization' has brought 
us to a point where almost any event could initiate a 
cascade of consequences beyond the control of even the 
legendary Greenspan and the Exchange Stabilization Fund. 
9/11 may well have been that event. Economically, it wrecked 
the attempts that were underway at the time to investigate 
and control the rampant fraud and abuse that had resulted in 
the collapse of the government’s accounting and financial 
control systems and it has resulted in a runaway spending 
spree and balance of payments catastrophe. Politically, it 
wrecked any serious attempt to negotiate a viable compromise 
in the Middle East. Militarily it has exposed grave weakness 
at the heart of the American war machine. Morally, its 
consequences have revealed the absence of any ethical 
foundation to the so-called New World Order and the absence 
of a framework of law to order it. About the only thing that 
doesn’t seem widely exposed is exactly who was responsible 
for 911 itself. But the answer to that question is hiding in 
plain sight. When a few more people see it, we expect the 
cascade to begin in earnest. Revolutions have started from 
much less." 

While the time has indeed come for the revolution that 
Sanders, Thomas Jefferson and the signers of our Declaration 
of Independence called for, it will not be a revolution in 
the military or physical sense. It will be a revolution of 
the kind that John Adams described when he said, 'The 
Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.” 

Global citizens will use our prayers, our meditations and 
our transactions – our “votesin the marketplace”-- to 
withdraw our support from the members of the leadership who 
centralize financial and political power by dictating the 
policies that banks, media and multinational corporations 
use to manipulate governmental and central banking apparatus 
outside the rule of law. 

Reread the passage from the Declaration of Independence 
quoted at the top of this commentary and change the 
word “Political” to “Economic and Financial.” Private global 
interests have used the US governmental apparatus response 
to 9/11 to declare economic war and physical war on US and 
global citizens alike. Want to stop an army? Shut off its 
gas. This army's gas is fraudulent financing through the US 
Treasury and the federal budget, contracts and credit. It is 
time for citizens' media to turn the transparency lights on 
around the centralization of the financial system and the 
money. It is time for citizens to withdraw their money from 
those who would use it in criminal ways and shift it to 
those who would rebuild and restore according to traditional 
principles of stewardship. 

If you look back in history you will see many successful 
examples when the power of our prayers and meditations 
aligned with the power of our pocketbook to transform 
events. Revisit the story of the Boston Tea Party or 
Gandhi's salt march to the sea. Study the international 
economic and investment boycott of South Africa that helped 
to end apartheid and release Nelson Mandela from prison and 
return him to leadership. As citizens' media has proved 
since 9/11, the seeds of a new citizen covenant are being 
birthed amidst the accelerating failure of sovereign 
governments and central banks to respect and affirm the old 
covenants. All that is needed is for this movement to 
transform the political landscape is for us to integrate our 
growing spiritual and intellectual force with the untapped 
power of our consumer financial muscle. 

Do you have a Citibank account? How about a JP Morgan Chase 
credit card? Who do you think were the banks that moved the 
$3.3 trillion “missing” from the US Treasury? Who escaped 
serious accountability on pump and dump stock market fraud 
and gold market manipulation? Do you subscribe to the New 
York Times or the Wall Street Journal? Who do you think are 
the media organizations that have failed to ask or try to 
answer the UnAnswered Questions of 9-11? Why are 
you “voting” for these companies with your money and your 
attention? Why are you sending them the signal that despite 
their abrogation of their obligations to you and your 
family, you will continue to support them with your hard 
earned resources? If some of your neighbors are earning 2% 
on their bank certificates of deposits, while other 
neighbors are paying 18% or more to the IRS or multinational 
financial companies, why do we not realize that this is both 
a political and profit making opportunity to cut out a 
parasitic financial middleman? 

For many years, I have prototyped a way to transform our 
financial system. It is a model based on transparency, sound 
currency and equity to replace obfuscation, fiat currency 
and the debt model that is destroying us. It's called Solari 
and you can learn all about it at my website at 
www.solari.com. I developed the Solari model in the hopes 
that the day would come when a small but critical gathering 
of global citizens would understand the power of what would 
happen if even 1% of 1% of the global citizenry shifted our 
market votes and attention away from the large banks, 
corporations and media. In such a highly leveraged financial 
system, very small shifts of consumers and market share can 
bring about dramatic and politically powerful change. This 
is especially true when the shift in transactions spread 
virally by word of mouth in self organizing ways outside the 
control of centralized authorities. There is safety in 
numbers. Best of all, the power of the Solari model is not 
just that we can withdraw our resources from the financial 
titanic and those who engage in criminal activites– we can 
make money building arks and so can those who shift their 
investments from the financial titanic to invest with us. 

An Invitation to Transformation 

To Chairman Kean, Vice Chairman Hamilton and the members and 
staff of the Commission, I say that it is never too late for 
creativity. It is never too late to find a new way. Time is 
of the essence and the time is now. A shift using the Solari 
model can generate the powerful capital gains that members 
of the Commission appreciate are essential to building the 
working domestic and global political coalitions and 
investment networks which can successfully address the 
challenges before us. I pose the question, “How can we who 
intuitively understand the truths of 9-11 help you to 
profitably invent a broad based political coalition for 
transparency, accountability, justice and a positive 
spiritual and economic outcome?” Indeed, there is a way. 

If we choose to profitably transform our financial system to 
sound currency and equity and our culture to one of 
collaboration and peace– as is more than possible -- and 
then some day years from now ask the question, “Cui Bono?” --
-”Who benefited from the hard lessons that we learned from 
the truths of 9-11?”-- my prayer is that the answer will 
be “We all did.” 

May it be so.