The Secret War on the Dollar (Oliver North)

WASHINGTON -- On Wednesday night, President Bush addressed the nation in an effort to persuade Congress to pass a bill to reduce the risk to major financial institutions and to safeguard American families and businesses. On Thursday, he met with Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama and other congressional leaders to build a consensus plan for bailing out our financial system. The potentates on the Potomac now are pondering the price tag for saving Wall Street. Unfortunately, corrupt officials in other nations' capitals are also hard at work -- undermining what's left of the U.S. dollar by printing and distributing their own versions of American currency.

Counterfeiting another nation's legal tender is not only a crime but also an act of aggression. During World War II, Adolf Hitler produced British bank notes to destabilize the U.K. Mao Zedong used phony money to undermine Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government through inflation. The Soviets created passable replicas of African and European monetary instruments to damage local economies. But no one ever has engaged in the kind of economic warfare against the United States as effectively or on such a scale as is being waged now by the regimes in Pyongyang, North Korea, and Tehran, Iran.

For more than five years, remarkably accurate duplicates of U.S. $100 bills have been circulating overseas. Called "supernotes" by our Treasury Department, Secret Service and FBI, they are printed on cotton-fiber paper with intaglio printing presses, the same type used by the U.S. Bureau of Printing and Engraving. The source of these nearly flawless notes is hardly a secret.

On Jan. 26, 2006, in a White House news conference, President Bush asserted, "We are aggressively saying to the North Koreans don't counterfeit our money." A Congressional Research Service report two months later concluded, "At least $45 million in such supernotes of North Korean origin have been detected in circulation, and estimates are that the country earns from $15 to $25 million per year from counterfeiting." Later that year, Hezbollah -- a wholly owned subsidiary of the repressive regime in Tehran -- began flooding Lebanon with supernotes. Thanks to Iran and North Korea, there may be billions in "phony Franklins" floating around the world. The bills also have turned up here at home.

Just how some of them arrived on our shores was revealed a few days ago, when former undercover FBI agent Bob Hamer took the witness stand in the Las Vegas courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge James Mahan. While the so-called mainstream media were preoccupied with presidential politics, the Wall Street meltdown and the O.J. Simpson trial up the street from Mahan's court, Hamer -- using audio and video recordings -- revealed how two Chinese nationals and others plotted to smuggle anti-aircraft missiles, narcotics and counterfeit supernotes into the United States. On the tapes, the Chinese conspirators describe how the false bills are manufactured in North Korea and distributed through the Russian Embassy in Beijing to Chinese organized crime figures. One of them boasts of his ties to North Korea.

During the course of a three-year undercover operation code-named Operation Smoking Dragon, Hamer purchased $2 million worth of supernotes. The sting also netted 36 indictments and shut down a scheme to deliver 200 Chinese-manufactured QW-2 anti-aircraft missiles, capable of bringing down commercial airliners. It was, to put it mildly, a stunning success -- and completely ignored by those who purport to deliver the "news."

Full disclosure here: Bob Hamer is a friend -- not a word I use loosely. He is also a former U.S. Marine and a living legend within the FBI. During the time he was risking his life to stop the "importers" of counterfeit currency and of surface-to-air missiles, he also was posing as a pedophile, targeting the North American Man/Boy Love Association, an underground network of men seeking to justify their sexual attraction to young boys. His book, "The Last Undercover: The True Story of an FBI Agent's Dangerous Dance With Evil," was released the week before he took the stand in the Las Vegas counterfeiting trial. In the work, he chronicles his three-year infiltration of NAMBLA and details a dozen other remarkable undercover assignments.

His book is a riveting account of his years spent undercover for the FBI and of the kind of risks that are necessary in a world where criminals and our adversaries will go to any lengths to destroy us. The operation against those who were helping to undermine our economy was one of many intrigues in which Bob Hamer proved his mettle in an extraordinary career.

Last week, the Chinese conspirator who brought the counterfeit bills into the U.S. was found guilty and now faces up to 25 years in federal prison. The case against O.J. still is pending in a courthouse two blocks away. Congress may yet figure out how to bail out Wall Street without impoverishing the rest of us. Meanwhile, if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shows up in your restaurant for dinner, don't let him pay in cash.

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1996 : (COUNTERFEITING & TERROR FINANCING : SUPERDOLLAR CASE : SECRET SERVICE PERSUADES GAO TO DELETE PORTIONS OF A REPORT ON COUNTERFEITING WHICH REFERRED TO RUMORS OF A MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRY PRINTING US $100 DOLLAR BILLS TO FINANCE TERRORISM) Large-scale investigations involve international gangs, suspects suited to spy novels and questions of national security. One such case, unsolved since the early 1990s, focuses on what is known as a “superdollar,” a nearly flawless $100 bill that has been seized in the United States, Asia, Europe and the former Soviet Union. The probe is so secret that the Secret Service routinely declines comment. The agency went as far as persuading the federal Government Accounting Office to delete portions of a 1996 report on counterfeiting that mentioned rumors of a Middle East country printing U.S. dollars to finance terrorism.- — “Secret Service tracks mystery of fake fortune,” By Henry Pierson Curtis, Sentinel Staff Writer, Orlando Sentinel, Saturday, March 1, 2003

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JANUARY 25, 2003 : (”IRAQI DINARS TO DOLLARS” COUNTERFEITING CASE : SECRET SERVICE FOLLOWS COUNTERFEITING RING’S COURIER TO MIAMI FROM BOGOTA, COLUMBIA; COURIER GIVES MONEY TO OSCAR BELTRAN, WHO IS PROMPTLY ARRESTED; HE AGREES TO PASS THE FAKE BILLS TO HIS CONTACT IN ORLANDO) The printing plant in Colombia was discovered as the result of a tip to the U.S. Customs Service that about $1 million was about to be smuggled into Florida.The tip was passed to the Secret Service office in Bogota, from which Agent Rafael Barros followed the ring’s courier on a Jan. 25 flight to Miami.
“This was on the fly, and decisions were being made quickly between offices, and for federal agencies that’s somewhat unique,” Billings said.
In South Florida, Secret Service agents arrested Oscar Beltran, a Miami resident, after the courier gave him the money. Beltran agreed to deliver the bills as planned to a Colombian living in Orlando, according to records..— “Secret Service tracks mystery of fake fortune,” By Henry Pierson Curtis, Sentinel Staff Writer, Orlando Sentinel, Saturday, March 1, 2003

FEBRUARY 11, 2003 : (COLUMBIA : “IRAQI DINARS TO DOLLARS” COUNTERFEITING CASE : RAID NETS RINGLEADER WHO SAYS HE PAID LEFTIST TERRORIST GROUP FARC TO PROTECT THE PRINTING PRESSES) Unlike the superdollar case [an a yet unsolved case from the early 1990s], agents know where the Orlando bills were printed. On Feb. 11, Colombian police raided the printing plant on a farm near Cali.
The $20 million worth of counterfeit bills was the largest seizure in the country’s history, according to the Secret Service. Colombia is the world’s largest producer of counterfeit U.S. currency, followed by Bulgaria.
The ringleader, Hector Tabarez, told Colombian police that he had regularly paid the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Latin America’s oldest revolutionary group known by its Spanish acronym as FARC, to protect the printing presses, agents said.
The use of Iraqi bank notes didn’t make sense to investigators.
“It seems like an odd place to get their paper when they’ve got Venezuela right across the border,” said Agent Kevin Billings, one of the Orlando supervisors. Counterfeiters typically use an inexpensive currency and bleach off the old ink before printing the fakes.
Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar, is the usual choice of Colombian counterfeiters. It’s almost as inexpensive as the Iraqi note — worth less than a penny each — and is printed on paper from the same company in Massachusetts that supplies the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Billings said.
Currency-grade paper is essential to pass the touch test. Agents say cheap paper makes counterfeit bills feel slick while real ones are rough and durable.— “Secret Service tracks mystery of fake fortune,” By Henry Pierson Curtis, Sentinel Staff Writer, Orlando Sentinel, Saturday, March 1, 2003

MARCH 1, 2003 : (”IRAQI DINARS TO DOLLARS” COUNTERFEITING CASE : ROUGHLY $20 MILLION FAKE BILLS HAVE BEEN SEIZED IN COLUMBIA SINCE JAN 26, 2003; COULD IT BE STATE SPONSORED?) Since that night [Jan 26, 2003], nearly $20 million of the same counterfeit bills have been seized in Colombia. And the U.S. Secret Service and other intelligence agencies are questioning why a counterfeiting ring protected by Marxist guerrillas had access to bank notes from Iraq. “It’s very important to the Secret Service to see what we can find out,” Agent Gerald A. Cavis, head of the Secret Service in Orlando, said Friday of the Iraq connection. “We’ll look at it in particular with other intelligence agencies to see if it is state-sponsored.”
The possible link between Iraq and counterfeit U.S. currency has prompted the Secret Service to send similar bills to Washington for inspection. Agents say they don’t know where the investigation will lead.”We don’t find that a significant amount of counterfeit currency is related to terrorism, but it has an increased significance to us since 9-11,” Cavis said.
Counterfeit currency has been a persistent problem in Orlando since Central Florida became an international destination in the 1970s. Most local cases involve $5,000 to $10,000 passed at area tourist attractions and stores along International Drive and U.S. Highway 192, according to federal court records. Counterfeiters sell bills for as little as 20 cents on the dollar to people who pass them at banks and stores. The profit comes from pocketing the change. Nationally, counterfeiting cost banks, businesses and residents $43 million in 2002. By law, anyone duped with a counterfeit bill bears the loss. — “Secret Service tracks mystery of fake fortune,” By Henry Pierson Curtis, Sentinel Staff Writer, Orlando Sentinel, Saturday, March 1, 2003

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