Saturday, September 11, 2010

9-11 Questions

Eric Margolis has a great piece out, 9/11 Cover-Up Remains While Questions Mount.

I also have a couple of questions of my own about 9-11 that I'd like to see answered.

In July, 2006, I reported that records relating to options trading on airline stocks were destroyed. My source told me that men visited the president of the CBOE and identified themselves as government agents. They told the president that the CBOE should stop its investigation into who bought the put options that went up dramatically in price as a result of the 9-11 attack. My source tells me records about the trade were destroyed.

More recently, a report has surfaced that the SEC is confirming destruction of records on who bought the put options:

David Callahan - executive editor of SmartCEO - submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the SEC regarding the pre-9/11 put options.


Here's how the SEC replied:

This letter is in response to your request seeking access to and copies of the documentary evidence referred to in footnote 130 of Chapter 5 of the September 11 (9/11) Commission Report...We have been advised that the potentially responsive records have been destroyed.
As I said at the time of this response from the SEC:

If ever a Congressional inquiry was required, this certainly appears to be a case.


The then CBOE chairman and CEO William Brodsky, the then Vice-Chairman Mark Duffy and the then President and COO Edward Joyce need to be hauled before Congress and asked if an investigation of the put option trading was conducted. If not, why not? (It would appear to be fairly standard to conduct such an investigation given the unusual trading volume in the options) And, if an investigation was conducted, where are the results?
I am not holding my breath.

My attempt to get another odd event surrounding 9-11 investigated resulted in a shrug.

The week before 9-11, I happened to be in LA. I was taking a flight up to San Francisco, when I arrived at LAX, the area was filled with police cars. Inside the airport, police were everywhere. At the escalators leading to the gates, an airline employee stood with a police officer at her side and checked everyone's ID. Pre-9-11, this was highly unusual. Given that it occurred the week before 9-11, , it has, ever since the attack, heightened my level of curiosity about all those police and unusual ID checking procedures that day. Were they tipped off and got the date wrong?

I even thought I once had a chance to get this oddity investigated.

Some years ago, at an event in Los Angeles, I ended up sitting at dinner with Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley and his wife.

Never one to let an opportunity pass by, I told my pre-9-11 tale to the DA and his wife.

Cooley's wife reacted the way I was hoping Cooley would. She looked shocked and surprised. I clearly got the impression that she thought it was something that should be looked into. We both looked at Cooley for his reaction. He shrugged and said, "It was probably a training exercise."

Nothing to look at there, I guess. Just keep moving.

2 comments:

  1. There be dragons there. The options, and what became of the records, scream as loudly as the destruction of the ATC tapes, the disappearance of the black boxes, the phony 911 Commission, the serial NIST coverups, and the even phonier wars.

    Classic op. Somebody got a little too greedy, so much so that they decided to cash in on the imminent death of 3,000 people.

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  2. This options episode has bothered me from the beginning. I can't believe more people haven't demanded a real investigation.

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