From the moment the new superbills surfaced in 1989, it was clear to the secret service... that these were no ordinary forgeries. Under microscopic examination, they showed only infinitesimal differences from legitimate notes. Most significant, the counterfeits had been printed on presses virtually identical to
I have received a pile of requests for citations Here are segments of a few. As I typed them all by hand, errors are likely to be mine. My comments follow the articles, so you can stop reading just before them :) ###The San Francisco Examiner March 7, 1995 - Tuesday Global Counterfeiting traced to Tehran [...] For the past five years, so called superbills, crisp $100 Federal Reserve Notes, so perfectly forged that they might be fresh off U.S. government printing presses, have been flooding banks and money markets around the world. The total amount currently in circulation is believe to be $10 Billion or more. Currency officials alarmed. Alarmed Treasury and Federal Reserve Board officials fear the increasing number of such superbills has shaken international confidence in America's currency. [...] those used at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Secret service investigators concentrated on those nations that had acquired the same kind of intagilo presses. Only two companies sold them on the international market. One was a U.S. company, none of whose overseas customers was considered suspect. The second was a Swiss company, De La Rue Giori. Evidence pointed to Iran By the end of 1991, investigators had eliminated all but one of Giori's clients: the Islamic Republic of Iran. [...] Intelligence agencies uncovered evidence that Iran was not only mass-producing the notes, but had built a world-wide distribution network. Key transshipment points had been established in Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, and North Korea. Ronald de Valderano of Britain's Research Foundation for the Study of Terrorism says practically every Iranian-backed terrorist cell in the world is at least partially supported by the forgeries. The notes most often are used to buy arms or pay operating expenses or are sold on the currency black markets for legal cash. Indeed, when FBI agents searched the residence of suspects arrested for the bombing of New York's World Trade center, they found $20,000 of the forgeries. [...] Critics have for years urged that U.S. currency be better protected against such onslaughts. Last July, the treasury finally announced that changed were planned for U.S. currency, including covert security features. [...] ###The Independent June 19, 1995 - Monday 'Perfect dollar forgeries flood Middle East; The Israeli and Iranian governments top the list of suspects behind the faultless $100 bills. Robert Fisk The Lebanese know how to spot a fake. Fake weapons, fake perfumes, fake diplomatic consuls, fake money. But the latest US $100 bills are a near perfect forgeries as they have seen, many of them accepted happily by Beirut's notoriously suspicious money changers. [...] The bills, dated 1988 but probably forged in Lebanon in the following two years - the last two years of the civil war - are still arriving at the Allied Business Bank at the rate of one a month, often brought in from Cyprus or other Middle East states by Arab clients unaware that they are forged. [Laws of most middle eastern countries make perfect forgeries a capital crime] "Anyone who makes a 'perfect' dollar bill out here is going to get strung up if he's caught," another bank official said. "So the guys who're going to make a perfect note, without any mistakes, are working for a government who will protect them. So a government must be involved, the intelligence services, ministries, the lot." A senior bank official in Lebanon believed that Iran or Israel might be responsible. "When you're producing this kind of high- tech stuff, it's got to have official backing," he said. "If you're spending this kind of money on a 'perfect' forgery, it's for big business - for political parties, arms purchases, for paying militias." He repeated a rumour believed by several other banking officials in Lebanon - that the "perfect" dollars might be coming off counterfeit presses and dollar plates taken into Afghanistan by the Soviet intelligence service during the Soviet occupation; Afghanistan is now divided among militias respectively funded by Saudi Arabia and Iran. [...] "The security thread is the reason why we are alarmed," the senior Lebanese bank official said of the new forgeries. "It's not easy to get the thread in. You put in the thread when you produce the note - it's not printed on, it's embedded in the paper. And it's a real security thread. "We suspect they're being exported to a variety of places: to the US, to the former Soviet Union...." Other bank officials suspect Iran... and suggest that Tehran has used fake currency bills to fund the Hizbollah, Hamas and other armed groups which are opposed to Israeli occupation. ###The Washington Post May 05, 1995 - Friday, Final edition Bogus Bills?; Rumors Persist That Iran Is Counterfeiting U.S. Currency to Sabotage the Economy. Thomas. W. Lippman [...] The allegation that Iran is waging economic warfare against the United States by printing and distributing millions of dollars in phony U.S. currency has been circulating on Capitol Hill at least since 1992, when it was made by a House Republican Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. It might even be true or partly true, according to some sources. There is a problem with counterfeit greenbacks around the world, these sources said. It's just not clear that Iran is responsible for it. The question arose again Tuesday when the irrepressible Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) asked Assistant Secretary of State Robert Pelletreau about it in an International Relations Committee hearing on the Clinton administration's economic boycott of Iran. Rohrabacher, who spend much of the recent congressional recess traveling in Asia, said he heard about the phony money from many people. "Have you received and credible reports that the Iranians are counterfeiting American money" he asked. Pelletreau, a normally unflappable career diplomat, looked uncomfortable. "I know there is an intense investigation and campaign underway, led by the U.S. Secret Service to uncover all the sources of counterfeiting of American money abroad," he said. "I just am personally not in a position to give you the exact details of what we believe Iranian involvement is in that." "There are many leaders throughout the world... who believe that the American currency is being undermined by an intentional act of economic warfare on the part of the Iranian government... by counterfeiting billions of dollars' worth of U.S. currency," Rohrabacher said. "Am I getting you right that basically you're not denying that this is going on?" "I am not denying it," Pelletreau said. The 1992 GOP report said the fake currency is being printed in the Iranian mint in Tehran, "using equipment and know-how purchased from the U.S. during the reign of the Shah," which ended in 1979.... A Wall Street Journal report at the time said that the phony bills-- whoever was making them-- were so good they could fool sophisticated currency- handling equipment at the Federal Reserve. ###Counterfeiting and Money Laundering Deterrence act of 1995 Patrick Leahy I rise today to introduce the Counterfeiting and Money laundering Deterrence Act of 1995. [...] A number of analysts believe the threat to the U.S. currency is urgent. News reports say that intelligence experts in the U.S. and Israel are aware of a highly skilled group of counterfeiter operating out of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. The counterfeiters, controlled by Syria and Iran, have turned out as much as $1 billion of the extremely high-quality reproductions of the U.S. $100 bill. [...] First, the bills requires all existing $100 denomination U.S. currency to be exchanged within a 6-month period. This would make drug traffickers who hoard vast amounts of hard currency hard- pressed to convert their existing cash into the new money. If they cannot exchange their funds in the specified time frame, their funds are worthless under the bill. [...] Second, the bill established two new versions of the $100 bill: one for use at home and one for use abroad. The only business that relies on exporting large amounts of hard currency is drug trafficking. This provision would make money smuggled out of the United States worthless, turning the tables on drug traffickers who covertly move money from the streets of this country to foreign bankers who launder it without reporting illicit transaction to the Treasury. A U.S. citizen traveling abroad who wished to bring $100 currency with him would hardly be inconvenienced by this measure: a quick stop at a U.S. bank to convert their greenbacks into differently- colored foreign-use bills would be all that is necessary-- just like purchasing travelers, checks. The only ones who would be inconvienced would be drug traffickers who would hate to exchange their greenbacks for foreign use currency at a U.S. bank because of currency transaction reporting requirements. [...] ### END ARTICLES The presence of counterfeit bills, the legislation to defeat them, and the general sentiment of government in the matter is disturbing for a few reasons. 1. Focus on Surveillance The legislation adopted to defeat counterfeiting is linked with the four horsemen quite closely. The solution, instead of making the bills difficult to forge like they should have been in the first place (U.S. bills are currently the easiest to forge of western nations- and counterfeit bills are long lived as currency changes are unheard of in the U.S.) is to create a regime where an additional tier of reporting is required. It seems the first answer to every "problem" (read: every element which might allow citizen autonomy) now is to link it to money laundering and terrorism and drop a blanket solution over it which without fail includes highlevel reporting or tracking elements. (Anyone seen this before with the... oh, I dunno, strong encryption issue?) 2. The demonization of cash. I have written here before on the increasing difficulty with which one uses cash without suspicion in the United States. It has come to the point where money, in any amount, won't buy you everything anymore. Many products and services are available ONLY by credit or credit card- and by extension, available only to traceable transactions. Is it any wonder Americans have one of the lowest ratios of income to debt in the world today? "They" would have you believe that cash is nothing but a tool for the four horsemen. I am most disturbed in this context by the way the act is financed- i.e. by the extinguished obligations from unexchanged currency. Does this measure sound ominous to anyone but me? 3. The corruption of e-cash to further the above. If the government is disturbed by the laundering of money enough to actually print, or even propose printing, two kinds of currency, how will they respond to untraceable, unaccountable and infinitely liquid e-cash? I think the answer is in past behavior: e-cash will be linked to the four horsemen and subjected to rigorous reporting requirements- systems which are true e-cash will be banned. At the same time the widespread presence and use of e-cash will be used to question anyone who uses physical currency. The death of cash continues as it were. Why would anyone carry bills anymore when a plastic smartcard (or your highschool ring) is so much more convenient? You must have something to hide. No, good citizen units will WANT to use "e- cash" because they are honest, and know the government means them no harm and is here to protect them from the four horsemen. The cash is dead, long live the king. 00B9289C28DC0E55 nemo repente fuit turpissimus - potestas scientiae in usu est E16D5378B81E1C96 quaere verum ad infinitum, loquitur sub rosa - wichtig! *New Key Information* - Finger for key revocation and latest key update.