Chavez: U.S. May Have Caused My Cancer

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is hinting that the U.S. may be behind a “very strange” bout of cancer affecting several leaders aligned with him in South America, reports Bloomberg.

Chavez, speaking a day after Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, said the Central Intelligence Agency was behind chemical experiments in Guatemala in the 1940s and that it’s possible that in years to come a plot will be uncovered that shows the U.S. spread cancer as a political weapon against its critics.

“It’s very difficult to explain, even with the law of probabilities, what has been happening to some of us in Latin America,” Chavez said in a nationally televised speech to the military. “Would it be so strange that they’ve invented technology to spread cancer and we won’t know about it for 50 years?”

Chavez, who was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer in June and had a baseball-sized tumor removed in Cuba, has called for a regional summit of leaders who have battled cancer including Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva and Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to EPJ readers. This is what I wrote in August:

Chavez has recently been undergoing treatment for what many suspect is cancer. Talk in certain parts of D.C. is that the CIA has slowly exposed him to very toxic, cancer causing materials.

I doubled-down on this theory in October, when I wrote:

Connecting the Dots: Gaddafi is Dead, Obama Sends Troops to Central Africa

The United States government is playing a major global power game...This is in addition to everything else that is going on in the Middle East. And my very strong suspicions about the cancer that Hugo Chavez is suffering with. A huge global chess game is being played. PCR [Paul Craig Robert]'s closing question is most apt:

Will the US collapse in economic chaos before it rules the world?

If I am looking at what is going on on the global map and I am Vladimir Putin, I'm worried, real worried.

(Thanks2Nick&AndreGrillon)

Was Geithner in Europe to Advance a Decades Long Secret Plan of the US?

As part of the eurozone financial rescue effort, Treasury Secretary Geithner traveled to Europe four times in recent months. In fact, this week, just before the EU announced a tighter "fiscal union," Geithner was in Europe visiting government officials from  France, Italy Spain and Germany, to consult on the plan.

The result was the announcement of an agreement for a more unified financial eurozone. All European Union members, except for Great Britain. signed on to the plan, that clearly was heavily influenced by the United States efforts. Indeed, in addition to Geithner, the American and former State Department official, Robert Zoellick, the current president of the World Bank, told the WSJ CEO Council that he had been to Europe twice in recent weeks.

Given these developments, it may be instructive to review a September 2000 report by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard about then declassified documents that point to plotting by the U.S. as early as the fifties and sixties  to create a more unified Europe. Pritchard wrote in 2000:

DECLASSIFIED American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement.

The documents confirm suspicions voiced at the time that America was working aggressively behind the scenes to push Britain into a European state. One memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a campaign to promote a fully fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA.

The documents were found by Joshua Paul, a researcher at Georgetown University in Washington. They include files released by the US National Archives. Washington's main tool for shaping the European agenda was the American Committee for a United Europe, created in 1948. The chairman was Donovan, ostensibly a private lawyer by then.

The vice-chairman was Allen Dulles, the CIA director in the Fifties. The board included Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA's first director, and a roster of ex-OSS figures and officials who moved in and out of the CIA. The documents show that ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organisation in the post-war years. In 1958, for example, it provided 53.5 per cent of the movement's funds.

The European Youth Campaign, an arm of the European Movement, was wholly funded and controlled by Washington. The Belgian director, Baron Boel, received monthly payments into a special account. When the head of the European Movement, Polish-born Joseph Retinger, bridled at this degree of American control and tried to raise money in Europe, he was quickly reprimanded. 

The leaders of the European Movement - Retinger, the visionary Robert Schuman and the former Belgian prime minister Paul-Henri Spaak - were all treated as hired hands by their American sponsors. The US role was handled as a covert operation. ACUE's funding came from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as well as business groups with close ties to the US government. 

The head of the Ford Foundation, ex-OSS officer Paul Hoffman, doubled as head of ACUE in the late Fifties. The State Department also played a role. A memo from the European section, dated June 11, 1965, advises the vice-president of the European Economic Community, Robert Marjolin, to pursue monetary union by stealth. 

It recommends suppressing debate until the point at which "adoption of such proposals would become virtually inescapable".

Huh, the crashing eurozone made the recent crisis virtually an inescapable situation for EZ members to band together, or so many EZ political leaders said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said last week while addressing the German parliament that  tighter regulation of eurozone members was the only way out of what she described as "the most difficult chapter in the history of the euro, if not the most difficult in the history of the European Union".

Also last week, Poland’s Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, said ““We should all be aware what the stake of the game is. Because the game is not only about the well-being of this generation or the next generation, but is goes without saying we’re also fighting for the safety of this and future generations,”

And then there's that Ford Foundation again, where Geithner's father worked, who I have long suspected is/was a high ranking CIA official.

Makes you wonder.

(htRyanUnderwood)

HOT Surveillance Video after DSK Sofitel Hotel Incident Released; Shows Bizarre Security Guard Dance

Hotel CCTV images of former IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the New York chambermaid who accused him of attempted rape were broadcast by French news channel BFMTV on Thursday,reports NyPo.

DSK is shown calmly leaving the Sofitel hotel May 14. Nafissatou Diallo is filmed speaking to hotel security staff, who are in turn seen performing a bizarre celebratory dance.

The video shows Strauss-Kahn exits the elevator, pays his bill at the front desk and then climbs into a taxi outside in a sequence lasting a matter of minutes. He does not appear to be hurrying or in a distressed state.

The recording cuts to show Diallo at first sitting alone and quietly in a corridor opposite a security office. She then appears to play out the scene alleged to have taken place in room 2806 earlier for other members of staff.

The clip then cuts to the two security personnel alone in a side room appearing to be celebrating with some sort of victory dance, which lasted 13 seconds. It is not clear why, but reports of the episode last month in the New York Review of Books suggested it added weight to the theory that Strauss-Kahn was set up by his political enemies.

ATF used "Fast and Furious" to Make the Case for New Gun Regulations

Score one for the conspiracy theorists. They suspected the ATF had nefarious reasons for launching Operation Fast and furious.

Now, documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives discussed using their covert operation to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

More from CBS:

In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the "big fish." But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called "gunwalking," and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

ATF officials didn't intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called "Demand Letter 3". That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or "long guns." Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.

On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:

"Bill - can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks."

(htMikeLavazza)

The Bizarre Connection Between the Son of an Original Gold Coin Dealer and the Ground Zero Mosque

Nicholas Deak was a  New York based foreign exchange/gold coin dealer. He was one of the original gold coin dealers. I used to buy gold coins from his firm at his office near Wall Street. He had branches around the globe.

In 1985, he was murdered by what authorities called "a crazed homeless" woman. She supposedly stayed outside his office for days screaming Deak owed her money. In those days, I passed by Deak's office on lower Broadway everyday, sometimes two or three times a day. I never saw such a woman.

I was always suspicious of this "lone nut" murder and wondered what actually went down.

Many years later, another international global money changer/banker, Edmund Safra was killed by a lone nut. Both Safra and Deak also had money laundering rumors spread about them (Some of Deak's global offices were even raided and it severly damaged his business).

Safra was furious about the rumors about him and he had the money to find out who was behind them. Safra's detectives were able to prove American Express was behind the rumors. American Express has always had close relations with the government. Henry Kissinger was on the Board of Directors at the time of the Safra rumors. Safra forced American Express to take out a full page ad in The Wall Street Journal admitting they were behind the untrue rumors. He also forced them to make a million dollar-size donation to a charity he designated.

If you overlay the businesses and deaths of Deak and Safra, they fit identically. A top Citi bank executive who knew Safra told me that there was no way Safra died the way news stories explained the case. If anything smells like some kind of CIA-type hit jobs, these murders sure do. Did Deak and Safra with their super wealth think they could operate on their own without dealing with their CIA handlers and wander too far off the CIA reservation? Global foreign exchange branches would most assuredly provide great cover for CIA-type operatives--so would American Express global branches.

Moving to current day, none other than Deak's son turns up as the principal funder behind Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is behind the Ground Zero Mosque.

If anyone sounds like a CIA operative, Deak the son sure does. According to the New York Observer:

In addition to serving on the group's board of advisors since its founding in 2004 by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Deak was its principal funder, donating $98,000 to the nonprofit between 2006 and 2008. This figure appears to represent organization's total operating budget—though, oddly, the group reported receipts of just a third of that total during the same time period.

Deak describes himself as a "Practicing Muslim with background in Christianity and Judaism, [with] in-depth personal and business experiences in the Middle East, living and working six months per year in Egypt." Born into a Christian home, Deak became an Orthodox Jew and married a Jewish woman before converting to Islam when he married his current wife, Moshira Soliman, with whom he now lives in Rye.

Leslie Deak's resume also notes his role as "business consultant" for Patriot Defense Group, LLC, a private defense contractor with offices in Winter Park, Florida, and in Tucson. The only names listed on the firm's website are those of its three "strategic advisers." These include retired four-star General Bryan "Doug" Brown, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command until 2007, where he headed "all special operations forces, both active duty and reserve, leading the Global War On Terrorism," and James Pavitt, former deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he "managed the CIA's globally deployed personnel and nearly half of its multi-billion dollar budget" and "served as head of America's Clandestine Service, the CIA's operational response to the attacks of September 11, 2001."

Besides Pavitt, Brown and a third advisor, banker Alexander Cappello, the Patriot Defense Group is so secretive it doesn't even name its management team, instead describing its anonymous CEO as a former Special Forces and State Department veteran, the group's managing director as a former CIA officer experienced in counter-terrorism in hostile environments and the group's corporate intelligence head as a "23-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service who worked on the personal security details of former Presidents Bush and Clinton."...

Interestingly, during the same three-year period during which the Deak Family Foundation was financing the Cordoba Initiative, Deak also donated a total of $101,247 to something called the National Defense University Foundation. The National Defense University is a network of war and strategy colleges and research centers (including the National War College) funded by the Pentagon, designed to train specialists in military strategy. The organization recently announced a November 5 dinner gala in honor of Defense Secretary and former CIA chief Robert Gates. Sponsors include Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and...the Patriot Defense Group.

Just to add a little more twist to this bizarre story. The firm, Goldline International, which is a major sponsor of the curious Glenn Beck, traces its roots back to the original gold coin firm started by Nicholas Deak.

I'm not sure exactly how all these pieces should be put together, or if they should be put together at all. But one way you can put the pieces together is that Leslie Deak is a CIA operative and that the Ground Zero Mosque is a CIA operation to incite anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States. It's either that or an awful lot of odd coincidences.

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.

Conspiracy Theory Alert: Goldman Sachs Settles

Goldman Sachs has settled with the SEC all outstanding fraud charges for a puny (in Goldman's world) $500 million, the SEC has just announced. For conspiracy theorists, there is a lot to look at here.

Many believe that the original charges in April were politically motivated to help push the financial "reform" package through Congress. You see Wall Street is so baaad that the "reform" package is a must. The charges themselves appeared to be bogus. In April, I wrote:

Major players in the world of finance, and I am talking about the top players, tell me that they are yet to find any top level lawyer who thinks there is any merit to SEC's case. They are quite simply amazed that the SEC brought this case.

Things got so suspicious that the head of the SEC head to come out and deny any political motives. CBS reported back then:

The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday there was no connection between the timing of the agency's fraud charges against Goldman Sachs and efforts in the Senate to speed passage of sweeping legislation overhauling financial regulation.


SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro was speaking to a Senate panel weighing the agency's budget request. Some Republicans have accused the SEC of timing the April 16 announcement of civil fraud charges against Goldman to bolster prospects for the legislation, now at a critical stage in the Senate.

That's the background, now lets look at what has occurred in the last 48 hours.

As I reported this morning, Warren Buffett met with the President yesterday. In part, this is what I wrote:

The last time Buffett was in heavy contact with the executive branch was when he was in heated phone conversations with former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. After those conversations, Buffett bought a multi-billion dollar position in Goldman Sachs. When it them became clear that Goldman was going to be treated different than Bear Stearns and Lehmann Brothers, and that the government was going to support the firm, the stock soared, making more billions for Buffett.


Expect happy talk from Buffett, after this meeting with the President.

Reportedly, the meeting was at Buffett's request. Not a good sign. Buffett is a taker. It is not clear what Buffett took from the meeting. But Buffett sure likes the Mr. Rogers happy talk cover. Word out of the meeting is that Buffett came in with a frayed tie, so the President gave him one of his. If that's all Buffett got out of the meeting, I'll eat my shoes.

My shoes shall remain comfortably on my feet. 

Buffett, the largest shareholder in Goldman Sachs, meets with the President, the next day Goldman settles for chump change. Nuff said.

BUT, not before the financial "reform" bill passes. Within hours of its passing, the SEC called a press conference to announce its settlement with Goldman.

So in order to believe this was NOT a conspiracy. You will have to believe in the following coincidences:

1. That the initial charges against Goldman came at the same time as the financial reform bill started to heat up in Congress was just coincidence.

2. That the SEC charges appeared hurriedly put together and didn't seem to appear particularly strong to top legal experts was all just coincidence and not a political rush job.

3. That the meeting just yesterday between Warren Buffett, Goldman Sachs largest shareholder, and the President was just coincidence.

4. That the  SEC dropped the charges only after the financial regulation "reform" bill passed was just coincidence.

Yes, if you believe the all the above was just coincidence, call me. I have a great fog making machine in San Francisco that I would like to sell you.

P.S. The indication of what a bunch of evil bastards this entire crew is, is that they are going to let  (former?)Goldman trader, Fabrice "Fabulous Fab" Tourre, continue as the fall guy in this spectacle. He continues to face SEC charges. Goldman on Fabrice:

Goldman will cooperate in the proceeding against Fabrice Tourre, the employee who was also named in the S.E.C.’s lawsuit

Advanced Conspiracy Theory: Where Are the War Protesters?

Every once and awhile, you will see a post at a blog lamenting that there aren't any war protesters around the way there were during the Vietnam War.

Part of the reason is because  of the current all volunteer army in the U.S. Youth who don't want to go to war don't have to. It removes one of the big incentives to protest. You would need some serious rabble rousers to get the youth motivated. You know, like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Hey, what ever happen to those two?

Uh, they both died early deaths under unusual circumstances.

Hoffman died at 52 from, ahem, a drug overdose. It was ruled a suicide. Some friends of Hoffman questioned the finding.

Rubin died at the age of 56 after being, ahem, accidentally hit by a car while crossing Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles.

Just saying.

Advanced Conspiracy Theory: The Making of Obama with a Little Help from the CIA

Writes Steve Sailer:

My favorite conspiracy theory for the last few months has been that the young Barack Obama benefited from some CIA favors along the way, perhaps in transferring to Columbia U. or in his getting his copyeditor job at Business International, a firm with, apparently, ties to both CIA and SDS. Here's a website called Cannonfire that pulls together, in a disorganized fashion, various bits of evidence. There's nothing conclusive, but the young Obama probably had many more indirect links with CIA before the age of 25 than you did

Remember, I have written before about the Obama's mother, Geithner's father (who my guess is CIA) connection.
 
Sailer continues:

The key thing to recognize is that the President's parents were exactly the type of non-Communist leftists whom CIA constantly cultivated. Barack Obama Sr.was a protege of the dynamic Tom Mboya, who was America's man in Kenya in the three way power struggle with Britain's man Jomo Kenyatta and Russia's man, Oginga Odinga. Mboya was publicly on the payroll of the AFL-CIO's anti-Communist outreach program and may have been on the CIA's payroll as well, according to David Horowitz's Ramparts magazine. Obama Sr. got to Hawaii on the American-funded Tom Mboya Airlift that brought young Kenyan elites to America for college. He later got his master's degree at Harvard, which was probably second only to Yale as a CIA recruiting ground during the New Frontier. Although Obama Sr. criticized Mboya's non-radical and non-racist economics in his first published paper, he later worked for Mboya, as well as for an American oil company. Indeed, if Obama Sr.'s claims were true, he may have been the last man to speak to Mboya alive, and saw him gunned down in 1969 by a Kikuyu hitman likely affiliated with Kenyatta's cronies.

Obama Sr. claimed to have been the only witness to have been able to identify the triggerman and that the Kikuyus tried to kill him for it. (Obama Jr. left all this out of Dreams from My Father, whether because the story was dangerous for his surviving Kenyan relatives 25 years later, because he didn't believe it, or because it violated his No Interesting Anecdotes policy in writing his book is unknown.)...

[Obama's mother] worked for the Ford Foundation in Asia, which had a long history of ties with the CIA. My theory is that at some point, the President's father and/or mother got in touch with old CIA contacts and asked them for help with their Hawaiian slacker son's advancement, such as getting him into the International Relations program at Columbia or getting him a decent-paying job at Business International. Obama would have been exactly the kind of second generation, suave, charismatic globalized individual with lots of foreign friends (including sons of Pakistan's political elite -- and this was in the early 1980s when Pakistan was the frontline in CIA's struggle against the Soviets in Afghanistan) whom CIA guys would have wanted to do favors for in return for favors down the road.

Sailer's complete article is here.

htJohnCarney

A Note on the JFK Assassination

Lew Rockwell this morning links to news that a new film on the JFK assassination is out. Produced by John Barbour, the film, The Garrison Tapes, apparently suggests that the CIA was a key player in the assassination.

I note that in the review of the film, Michael Webster points out that:

During the Barbour's interview he said that the head of the CIA Dulles and his second in command were fired by President Kennedy , as an interesting note the 2nd in command's brother was at the time of the President killing the Mayor of Dallas and had at the last moment changed the route of the Kennedy motorcade to pass by the Dallas book depositary.

This is where I may have a bit of information to add. Not only was the motorcade route changed but, and I am not sure how public this may already be, Texas Rangers were called off from patrolling the parade route.

A long time client of mine, a banker, actually started off his career as a Texas Ranger. He was only a Ranger for about a year, but he told me that it was the year Kennedy was assassinated. He reported for duty in downtown Dallas to patrol part of the parade route on the morning of the assassination, but he and his Ranger colleagues were told that everything was under control and they wouldn't be needed.

The Obama's Mother and Geithner's Father Connection

I have mentioned the connection, between Barack Obama's mother and Treasury Secretary Geithner's father, before.

I have a bit more information on this curiosity, and given the pressure Geithner is currently under, it's time to update the file.

Geithner's father, Peter Geithner, was head of the Ford Foundation's Asia grant making for a period in the early 1980s, including micro finance grants. He traveled and lived throughout Asia--which to me smells like a perfect CIA cover.

Obama's mother Ann Dunham-Soetoro developed the micro-finance program in Indonesia. The latest, according to Ian Wilhelm of the The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Ford Foundation says, "they met at least once in Jakarta."

At this point, this is nothing but a curiosity. But some curiosity.

The Mysterious American Express Wants $3.5 Billion in Tax Payer Money

American Express is seeking roughly $3.5 billion in taxpayer-funded capital from the federal government, according to people familiar with the situation, WSJ is reporting.

You know, American Express. It is that great American company that sullied the name of banker and American Express competitor, Edmund J. Safra, by leaking false stories that he was laundering drug money, involved in organized crime and involved in Iran-contra.

There was one hitch to Amex's name smearing operation, Safra had the money to hire detectives and prove the allegations were false and discover that Amex was behind the rumors. He forced Amex to put a full page ad in WSJ apologizing for sullying his name. NYT picks up the story here:

The American Express Company said yesterday that people acting on its behalf had conducted a campaign of disinformation that led to defamatory news articles involving Edmund J. Safra, a former company executive who founded a competing bank. The articles linked Mr. Safra and banks he controls to drug trafficking, organized crime and the Iran-contra affair.

American Express said that it would pay $1 million each to four charities named by Mr. Safra as an apology. Mr. Safra, who left his position as chairman and chief executive of the American Express International Banking Corporation in October 1984, controls Safra Republic Holdings S.A. and the Republic New York Corporation, the parent company to Republic National Bank of New York...

The campaign was the subject of letters exchanged between James D. Robinson 3d, the chairman of American Express, and Mr. Safra on Monday that the companies made public yesterday.

In his letter, Mr. Robinson wrote that people acting on behalf of American Express ''began an unauthorized and shameful effort to use the media to malign you and Republic National Bank of New York.'' Mr. Robinson added that he considered the reports ''untrue and defamatory.''

People familiar with the situation said that the false reports had been provided over three years...

Safra was later killed by a "lone nut", sort of like the way another American Express competitor, Nicholas Deak, was killed. Here's NYT on the Deak story:

The woman charged with murdering the head of the Deak-Perera foreign-exchange company and a receptionist in Manhattan was released from a mental hospital last August in Washington State, law-enforcement officials said yesterday.

Of course, before the loan nut killed him there were the obligatory money laundering charges. NYT again:

An article on Tuesday about the slaying of Nicholas L. Deak, the founder of Deak & Company, the foreign-exchange concern, discussed allegations made in October 1984 by a Federal commission on organized crime that the company had been used to launder drug money.

The article failed to include a response from the Deak family. The family has denied the commission's allegations that it was involved in illegal activity. The family has also said it was not aware that the company had been used by others in illegal activities.

You overlay the details on what happened to these two competitors of American Express and things look mighty suspicious. I have always thought there was probably a CIA link. My guess is that the CIA probably uses Amex as a front for operations overseas, and both Safra and Deak somehow got in the way.

This brings me to this personal story. My friends know my opinion on the Safra/Deak link. One night I am out with them and we run into a high level international Citibank employee. One of my friends urges me to tell him my theory, so I do. I finish my story and am ready for the Citi banker to start shooting it down. Instead, he glances into the distance and says, "Sometimes I think Citibank is part of the CIA".

He went on, "There is no way Safra was killed the way it says is happen. The super-rich, especially international super-rich are very cognizant of their own safety. He simply wouldn't have allowed himself to be alone with that man. Something else had to have happened."

Options Investigation and 9-11

The Wall Street Journal recently placed a story on its front page that details an investigation by WSJ that showed many companies granted their executives stock options following the 9-11 related drops in their stocks. So what? Where is it written you can not buy stock or set options when your stock is down? If executives believe in their companies, one would hope they do exactly this.

But while WSJ seems to have no problem going after corporate America for doing something that is clearly legal, the WSJ continues to be silent on the real 9-11 options scandal. We continue to hear from sources inside the CBOE that there was a cover-up as to who bought put options on airline stocks just before 9-11. It remains a state secret as to who exactly profited from 9-11 through the purchase of those put options.

Our sources tell us that the CBOE was told to stop the investigation into who bought the put the options. "Documents were destroyed," a friend at the CBOE tells us.