Deep History

In September, the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century, publishes a document entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses. In this document is detailed the belief that for America to remain the world's sole superpower into the coming century, it must have control of the oil and natural gas reserves in the Middle East and Central Asia. The authors of the report lament that the American people will never support the imperial conquest of the region "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor".

Massive fraud hands the 2000 election to George Bush. Overall, Al Gore wins the popular vote by half a million. In the deciding state of Florida, over 57,000 people, primarily Democrats, are incorrectly listed as felons and thus barred from voting. Even despite this, independent recounts of the vote show that Gore still wins the Florida election. The Supreme Court, however, stops the official recount and declares Bush the winner.

The USS Cole, a Navy Destroyer, is the target of a suicide bombing.

Binyamin Kahane, son of Meir Kahane and head of the far-right Zionist terrorist group Kahane Chai, is assassinated. Palestinian militant groups including Force 17 and Fatah al-Islam are various blamed for the killing.

The Second Intifada begins after Israeli forces fire on rock-throwing Palestinian protesters during a visit by Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount.

In Kentucky, a coal slurry impoundment owned by Massey Energy ruptures, spilling over 300 million gallons of coal slurry. Hundreds of miles of rivers are contaminated along with the drinking water of 27,000 nearby residents. All aquatic life in nearby Coldwater Fork and Wolf Creek is killed.

The European-American Unity and Rights Organization, a white nationalist organization, is founded.

Demos, a liberal think tank, is created.

Multiple police officers and other witnesses observe a large triangular craft flying low over Illinois for half an hour or more.

On September 11th, four passenger planes are hijacked, allegedly by Al-Qaeda terrorists. Two crash into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, one crashes into the Pentagon, and the fourth crashes in a remote field in Pennsylvania. A mountain of evidence suggests that the official account of these events cannot possibly be true. Some key points of this evidence include: the numerous highly specific warnings given to the U.S. by foreign governments prior to the attack, the numerous internal warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies tracking and monitoring many of the hijackers, and the funding of the hijackers by friendly Saudi and Pakistani sources such as when Pakistani Intelligence Director Mahmood Ahmed orders $100,000 wired to lead hijacker Mohamed Atta shortly before 9/11. On the morning of 9/11, incidentally, Mahmood Ahmed was in Washington, D.C., having breakfast with Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Porter Goss, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and future director of the CIA. Further evidence to consider includes the war games overseen by Dick Cheney on 9/11 which were already simulating plane hijackings and planes being crashed into buildings, and the possible controlled demolition of the twin towers along with WTC 7 on 9/11 as detailed by thousands of professional architects, engineers, physicists, and demolition experts. Taken together, these facts and other evidence strongly suggest that the events of 9/11 were facilitated by a handful of highly placed neoconservatives as a pretext for an invasion of the Middle East/Central Asia and the codification of a domestic police state.

The day before 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld announces that $2.3 Trillion is unaccounted for in the Pentagon's budget from the past several years. When Flight 77 hits the Pentagon the following day, it performs a difficult and inexplicable maneuver. Rather than simply diving down into the roof of the Pentagon from the direction it was approaching (which would have killed Rumsfeld in his office along with numerous other high-ranking Pentagon officials), the plane ends up hitting the opposite side of the building, where the Pentagon's financial records are stored (there are also Pentagon financial records stored off-site in WTC 7).  Both Rumsfeld and the man directly in charge of these financial records, Dov Zakheim, are members of the Project for the New American Century. Perhaps coincidentally, from 1987-2001, Zakheim was CEO of SPC International, a subsidiary of System Planning Corporation. SPC makes, among other products, a system for remotely hijacking planes that are in flight.

Cheney, his staff, and other top officials begin taking Cipro, an antibiotic used to prevent or treat anthrax infection. One week later, letters containing anthrax spores are mailed to several news media offices and two Democratic U.S. Senators, killing five people and infecting 17 others. The two senators targeted, Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, had opposed the PATRIOT Act but now declare their support for it. The Bush administration and media are quick to blame both Al-Qaeda and Iraq. When it is revealed that the anthrax was a weaponized strain originating from the biowarfare center at Fort Detrick, the FBI has the samples there destroyed, hindering subsequent investigations. A bio-weapons expert named Steven Hatfill is targeted by the FBI as a person of interest, and his name is leaked to the press resulting in widespread harassment. Hatfill is eventually exonerated and another employee at Fort Detrick named Bruce Ivins is put under investigation. Ivins dies of an apparent suicide and the FBI closes the case despite having no direct evidence that Ivins was actually behind the crime. Further investigation shows that the strain of anthrax which Ivins had access to for his work is not the same strain which was used in the attacks.

Despite being monitored by British intelligence, Richard Reid is allowed aboard American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami with explosives packed into his shoes. He attempts to set off his bomb but is thwarted by other passengers. Reid had been recruited into Al-Qaeda at a London mosque run by an informer to British authorities.

President Bush demands that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden and expel al-Qaeda. The Taliban requests that bin Laden leave the country, but decline to extradite him without evidence of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks. The FBI admits that they have no hard evidence of his involvement but the U.S. invades Afghanistan anyways. Nearly all Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces escape, sometimes in massive convoys and airlifts which the U.S. is inexplicably unable to stop. Bin Laden himself is cornered at Tora Bora by elite Delta Force troops who are told to not to advance, and Bin Laden also escapes. As the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance comes to power in Afghanistan, the country's heroin production soars to a new record highs, and the sexual trafficking of children becomes prevalent, sometimes aided by military contractors such as Dyncorp. Some 15,000 allied troops are killed and tens of thousands are wounded. Estimates of opposition and civilians deaths vary widely from tens to hundreds of thousands.

President Bush expands Plan Colombia with the Andean Conterdrug Initiative, eventually allocating about $1.3 billion to send hundreds of additional military advisors and mercenaries to Colombia and other South American countries.

Paramilitary forces in Alto Noya, Colombia use chainsaws and machetes to kill between 40 and 130 civilians suspected of sympathizing with leftist guerrillas. Thousands are forced to flee. The nearby Colombian military declines to intervene.

Congress passes the USA PATRIOT Act despite most of them not having actually read it. Most of the law was drafted years prior to 9/11, and it drastically infringes on Americans civil liberties by claiming governmental authority to largely ignore the 4th amendment.

As part of the President's Surveillance Program, the NSA begins Operation Stellar Wind and the Terrorist Surveillance Program, data mining the communications of American citizens, including e-mail communications, phone conversations, financial transactions, and Internet activity.

Enron Corporation files for bankruptcy following a massive corruption scandal. Many of the Security and Exchange Commission's investigative files on Enron were destroyed in the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11.

The film Black Hawk Down is released with Pentagon support.

Senator Paul Wellstone, a leading progressive politician, dies in a plane crash over Minnesota. His death comes less than two weeks before an extremely close election crucial to determining which party will control the Senate. Some sources indicate that FBI agents sent to investigate the crash site actually left their offices before there was any indication of problems with the flight.

Reporter Daniel Pearl is investigating ties between the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's primary intelligence organization) and radical groups when he is kidnapped and shortly thereafter murdered. Kalid Sheikh Mohammed, Saif al-Adel, and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh have been implicated in these events. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh is believed to have worked for ISI at one point.

For three weeks in October, the D.C. area is terrorized by a sniper who kills ten people and critically wounds three others. Eventually the local police chief appears on the news and announces that he has been told that the sniper needs to hear a cryptic message: "We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose". The police chief urges the media to repeat this exact message frequently. Four hours later the sniper, John Allen Muhammad, and his young accomplice, Lee Malvo, are found sleeping in their car at a rest stop and arrested. Lee Malvo will claim that he was sexually abused and brainwashed into participating in the sniper plot, but this claim is dismissed. Malvo is given life in prison while John Allen Muhammad will be executed in 2009.

Military and business leaders fail in an attempted coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Chavez asserts that the U.S. supported the coup, and Rear Admiral Carlos Molina, a central leader of the coup, will later assert that "We felt we were acting with US support... we agree that we can’t permit a communist government here. The US has not let us down yet."

A covert action organization known as Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) is formed. Among other operations, P2OG is tasked with launching "secret operations aimed at 'stimulating reactions' among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction—that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to 'quick-response' attacks by U.S. forces".

The head of MI6 (British Foreign Intelligence) returns from Washington to meet secretly with senior members of the British government. He notes that the Bush administration is determined to attack Iraq and is cooking the evidence for weapons of mass destruction as justification. The minutes of this meeting will be leaked in 2005 when they will become known as the Downing Street Memo.

A new disease known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) appears in China. It kills 775 people and generates considerable alarm worldwide.

The aptly named film The Sum of All Fears is released with Pentagon support. The plot of the film centers around the danger of weapons of mass destruction falling into the wrong hands just as the Bush administration is ramping up its bogus PR campaign about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Accounting firm Arthur Andersen is convicted of obstruction of justice for its complicity in the Enron scandal. Although the conviction is eventually overturned, the firm's faulty auditing of other companies is brought to light and the firm is crippled.

Telecommunications company WorldCom files for bankruptcy amidst an accounting fraud scandal showing that they had inflated reporting of their total assets by some $11 billion.

An oil tanker sinks off the coast of Spain. 63,000 tonnes of oil are spilled, contaminating over 1,000 kilometers of the coasts of Portugal, Spain, and France.

The NSA begins a series of programs known collectively as RAGTIME to monitor domestic phone calls and e-mails.

The Homeland Security Act is passed, reducing the privacy of U.S. citizens while increasing the secrecy of governmental actions.

The Department of Defense creates TALON, a database tracking U.S. anti-war activists.

DARPA creates the Information Awareness Office (IAO), bringing together several surveillance projects. The projects are defunded the following year amidst public controversy, but are quickly funded again under different names.

Under what are now admitted to be utterly fraudulent pretenses, the U.S. invades Iraq. U.S. forces will be officially withdrawn in 2011, but numerous mercenaries and contractors remain behind, and the U.S. intervenes again starting in 2014. Saddam Hussein is removed from power and executed, and a democratic system is established but chaos and sectarian strife are rampant. Over 25,000 allied troops are killed while some 35,000 enemy combatants are killed. Estimates of civilian casualties vary wildly, from around 100,000 to over a million.

Software company Ptech shuts down following a raid by federal agencies. Ptech had previously been allowed to operate for years despite known ties with terrorist financing while it provided software to numerous federal agencies including the FBI, Secret Service, Pentagon, and FAA. Following the company's closure it reopens under the name GoAgile and continues to carry out sensitive contracts for the government.

Former diplomat Joseph Wilson publishes an op-ed detailing his finding that Iraq had not purchased uranium from Niger and had no active WMD program. State Department official Richard Armitage then leaks to the press that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a covert CIA agent. A criminal investigation into the leak follows, but only Scooty Libby is ever convicted, and his sentence is ultimately commuted by President Bush.

UN weapons inspector David Kelly is found dead two days after appearing before a British parliamentary inquiry into his leaked report on Iraq's lack of WMDs. The death is ruled a suicide, and it is decided that all evidence surrounding the death will be sealed for 70 years.

A series of cyber-attacks against Lockheed Martin, NASA, and other organizations begins. The U.S. government blames the Chinese military, but no definitive proof is found.

A paramilitary group supported by the Colombian and U.S. governments carries out a massacre in the Colombian village of Betoyes. Hundreds flee as several people are killed and four girls are raped. One of them, aged 16, is already pregnant, and her fetus is ripped out and hacked apart with a machete.

The space shuttle Columbia disintegrates upon re-entry, killing the seven astronauts on board.

The Human Genome Project finishes mapping the human genome.

H5N1 "Bird Flu" appears and begins to spread through Asia. A number of outbreaks over the next several years will raise concerns over the possibility of a global pandemic.

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, is formed.

AT&T begins operating Room 641A, a telecommunications interception facility, for the NSA.

The Domestic Security Enhancement Act is drafted by the Justice Department. Although it is never introduced in whole in Congress, many of its provisions are inserted into subsequent seemingly-innocuous bills such as Senate Spending bills. The provisions include allowing local police to spy on domestic groups, allowing the FBI to conduct searches and surveillance without a court order, creating a DNA database of suspected terrorists, the ability to arrest suspected terrorists in secret, criminalizing the use of encryption, expanding the list of crimes eligible for the death penalty, the ability to revoke citizenship from anyone suspected of belonging to or supporting a terrorist group, and more.

Tyson Foods is fined $7.5 million for dumping untreated waste water from a poultry plant in Missouri. They will be fined an additional $7.4 million the following year for another environmental crime.

James Giffen is indicted for a $78 million bribe to Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev to help ExxonMobil win a 25 percent share of the Tengiz oilfield, third largest oilfield in the world. It is the largest criminal case ever handled under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The Tasman Spirit oil tanker runs aground in Pakistan, spilling 28,000 - 30,000 tonnes of oil.

Investigative journalist Gary Webb is found dead with two gunshot wounds to the head. The death is ruled a suicide. Webb had reported extensively on the CIA's involvement with the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980's as part of an effort to fund the Contras.

The Iraqi Wolf Brigade counter-terrorism unit is formed with the aid of James Steele, a U.S. Special Forces veteran who had previously helped to train Salvadorean death squads. The Wolf Brigade soon gains a reputation for mass killings and the use of torture.

Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, dies, possibly of polonium poisoning.

Train bombs in Madrid, Spain kill 191 people and wound around 2,000 others. Al-Qaeda and the Basque-separatist group ETA are variously blamed for the attacks. Six men are eventually prosecuted, but hard evidence of who masterminded the attacks never surfaces.

In response to widespread claims of fraud in the Ukrainian presidential election, massive protests break out across the nation in what becomes known as the Orange Revolution. Protesters are successful in forcing a new election which reverses the previous results.

The Third Committee on the Present Danger convenes to plan a PR strategy for the War on Terror.

The Streit Council, a globalist think tank, is formed.

The free open-source operating system Ubuntu is released.

The Spirit and Opportunity rovers land on Mars.

The Department of Homeland Security begins a massive data mining program known as ADVISE.

Data analysis company Palantir is founded by Peter Thiel and others with funding from the CIA.

Riggs Bank is fined $25 million for laundering money for terrorists. The president's uncle, Jonathan Bush [322], was for many years an executive in the company.

De Beers is fined $10 million for fixing the price of diamonds.

A U.S. warplane accidentally strafes an intermediate school in New Jersey.

New Orleans and the surrounding area are hit by the massive Hurricane Katrina. Over 1,800 people are killed and more than $100 billion of property damage occurs. The inept response of both local and national government agencies is widely criticized. At one point, local police force residents to surrender all firearms despite there being no legal mandate to do so, and despite the fact that violence and looting were widespread.

The NSA begins a data-collection program called Turbulence.

On July 7th, four bombs explode in London- three on the Underground and one on a bus. 56 people are killed and more than 700 are injured. Islamic terrorists using backpack bombs are blamed, but there are a number of incongruities in the official story. Photos and eyewitness accounts reveal that the explosions on the trains came from beneath the floors, rather than from inside the trains. IDs for some of the alleged terrorists were recovered multiple times, in multiple locations. Terrorism response drills were also being run that morning, using a scenario where bombs would go off in precisely the same tube stations as were actually attacked.

Lebanese Prim Minister Rafic Hariri is assassinated. Syria, Hezbollah, and Israel have variously been implicated.

U.S. marines massacre 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. The marines face trial, but most charges against them are dropped and none of them are sent to prison.

Financial Services company Refco collapses amidst revelations that it hid $430 million in bad debt. The following year it will also be revealed that the company held $525 million in fake bonds in offshore accounts.

Bayou Hedge Fund Group founder Samuel Israel III and CFO Daniel Marino plead guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges for defrauding investors.

Chevron, BP, and ExxonMobil are sued for their part in the Greenpoint oil spill, which leaked 17 to 30 million gallons of petroleum products into the soil over the course of several decades.

The National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank, is formed.

The military-science fiction film Stealth is released with Pentagon support.

Following a confession by Louis Lamonica, pastor of the Hosanna Church in Louisiana, police discover systematic child molestation, animal sacrifice, and devil worship at the church.

Saddam Hussein is executed in Iraq.

Five U.S. soldiers gang-rape and kill a 14-year-old Iraqi girl then murder her family.

North Korea successfully tests a nuclear weapon using technology provided in 2000 by a company which Donald Rumsfeld served on the board of.

The Gaza-Israel conflict begins. It will continue on for several years, resulting in the death of around 100 Israelis and over 5,000 Palestinians.

Julian Assange and Sunshine Press launch Wikileaks, and organization dedicated to sharing information leaked by government, military, and corporate whistleblowers.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation reveals that 264 Department of Defense employees, many with top secret clearance, have been purchasing child pornography. The Pentagon declines to examine the overwhelming majority of these incidents.

Lawrence Franklin passes classified U.S. government documents to Israel through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya is murdered. Politkovskaya had been critical of Vladamir Putin and the Second Chechen War and had also speculated that the 1999 Russian apartment bombings were a false flag carried out by Russian Intelligence. Five men are eventually arrested for her murder, but none will say who ordered them to carry out the act.

Former KGB and FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko is murdered by polonium poisoning. Like journalist Anna Politkovskaya, he had also suggested that the 1999 Russian apartment bombings were a false flag operation.

Several employees at the Chicago O'Hare airport witness a saucer-shaped UFO hovering over one of the boarding gates. After a few minutes, the craft is seen making a rapid vertical ascent, punching a hole in the cloud layer above. The FAA states the the event was caused by a weather phenomenon and declines to investigate further.

The National Security Network, a liberal foreign policy think tank, is formed.

The film United 93, dramatizing some of the events of 9/11, is released.

Hutaree, an apocalyptic right-wing Christian militia group, is formed.

Opus Dei banker Gianmario Roveraro is beaten to death in Italy.

A ruptured BP oil pipeline spills around a quarter million gallons of oil in Alaska.

The U.S. enters the Great Recession amidst the bursting of a housing-market bubble, a subprime mortgage crisis, and rampant fraud and corruption amongst financial institutions and insurance companies.

Nestle is fined $9 million for a price-fixing scheme. Over the next several years, even more serious crimes will come to light including contamination of products with melamine and E. coli, animal abuse, and the use of child slave labor.

The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act is introduced. The author of the bill identifies groups which question the official story of 9/11 as being potential sources of terrorism. The bill passes the house but is voted down in the Senate.

TALON, a DoD program monitoring anti-war activists, is shut down over concerns that it is blatantly illegal. It is immediately picked up, however, by the FBI and renamed Guardian.

President Bush issues Executive Directive 51, allowing the executive branch to seize control of more or less all infrastructure during a declared national emergency.

The NSA begins PRISM, a clandestine mass electronic surveillance data mining program, in conjunction with Britain's GCHQ.

Israel begins a land, air, and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The film Transformers is released. This film and subsequent films in the series paint the U.S. military in a glowing light and receive considerable support from the Pentagon.

The Center for a New American Security, a think tank focused on terrorism, is formed.

The Foundation for Excellence in Education, a right-wing think tank chaired by Jeb Bush, is founded.

The Institute for the Study of War, a pro-war think tank, is formed.

Programmer Virgil Griffith releases a free program called WikiScanner. The program shows that Wikipedia is being heavily edited by government agencies including the CIA, and major corporations including news agencies.

     QUESTION: Then why does deephistory.us use Wikipedia as a source for the majority of its entries?

     ANSWER: Because Wikipedia articles represent the minimum that these organizations have been forced to admit to, which is often shocking enough to the average American. Other sources are occasionally used when Wikipedia articles have been too heavily censored.

Israel carries out Operation Orchard, bombing an alleged nuclear reactor in Syria.

Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto is assassinated shortly before a general election in which she was a leading candidate. Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Pakistani President Musharraf, and the ISI have been variously implicated.

Oakland, California journalist Chauncey Bailey is assassinated by an employee of Your Black Muslim Bakery, which Bailey was investigating in connection with a number of crimes.

The Department of Justice announces that it has arrested ten people conspiring to arm a coup attempt against the Communist government of Laos. The BATF states that they believe state senator Gary George to be involved in the plot. The investigation and prosecution are poorly executed, however, and eventually charges are dropped against everyone involved.

Scientists in Chile discover Gliese 581 c, the first potentially habitable exoplanet.

Following years of crime, corruption, and malfeasance, investment bank Lehman Brothers collapses. It is the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, and it drastically worsens the existing recession.

Following years of crime, corruption, and malfeasance, savings bank Washington Mutual collapses. It had been the largest savings and loan association in the U.S.

Following years of crime, corruption, and malfeasance, insurance and financial services corporation AIG is bankrupted but ultimately saved by a taxpayer-funded bailout from the federal government.

Following years of crime, corruption, and malfeasance, investment bank Bear Stearns collapses but is bailed out by the federal government with taxpayer money and bought by JP Morgan Chase.

Following years of crime, corruption, and malfeasance, mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac nearly collapse but are taken over by the federal government.

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act is passed, creating the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Up to $700 billion of taxpayer money is authorized for the purchase of distressed assets, especially mortgage-backed securities, and supply cash directly to banks.

A dike at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee ruptures and over a billion gallons of coal ash slurry spill into the surrounding area, destroying a number of houses and dealing massive environmental damage in the process.

Tyson Foods is found to be lying about its use of antibiotics in chicken products.

CVS pays a $38.5 million settlement for deceptive business practices.

Dozens of people in Stephenville and Dublin, Texas, witness several massive UFOs flying over. Military jets are seen in the area shortly afterwards. Local radar confirms the presence of both the unknown craft and the military jets.

In violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, U.S. Marines are deployed to conduct a sobriety/driver's license checkpoint in San Bernadino County of California.

Acting on a child-abuse tip, police with SWAT teams raid the Yearning for Zion Ranch, a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints community in Texas. While the tip turns out to have been a hoax, and none of the children under the age of five appear to have been abused, a number of girls in their teens have been impregnated. Church leaders and several other men are eventually charged with sex crimes. Many members of the community eventually return, promising to end underage marriages.

The Large Hadron Collider is completed. It is one of the most complex engineering feats in human history.

Arkansas state senator Bill Gwatney is murdered inside the Democratic Party Headquarters by Timothy Johnson. Johnson is killed by police in an ensuing chase. His motives remain unclear.

Israel invades Gaza following a handful of rocket attacks. The conflict results in the deaths of some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis (4 of which were from friendly fire). Over 4,000 homes in Gaza are destroyed along with critical infrastructure, leading to a humanitarian crisis.

A new virus popularly known as swine flu appears leading to a global pandemic which kills upwards of 18,000 people.

NASA launches the Kepler space observatory to search for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

Following years of mismanagement, notably the decision to focus on producing huge fuel-inefficient vehicles, both General Motors and Chrysler go bankrupt. The federal government bails them out with taxpayer money.

GE is fined $50 million for accounting fraud.

A military coup removes Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power.

Guinea-Bissau President João Bernardo Vieira is assassinated by local army forces.

George Tiller is assassinated by anti-abortion terrorist Scott Roeder.

Cyber-attacks target several American corporations. The U.S. government blames China while the Chinese government states that the attacks were part of an internal conspiracy by the U.S. government.

Italian authorities confiscate $134.5 billion in bearer bonds from two men traveling to Switzerland. The men are released, but their identities are never revealed. Some of the bearer bonds were in $500 million and $1 billion denominations, although the U.S. Treasury department claims that bearer bonds have never been issued in amounts greater than $10,000. This explanation has been challenger, however, as forging bonds which don't actually exist would seem to serve no purpose since anyone with the cash to actually purchase such a bond would have the wherewithal to confirm their validity.