More on (the CIA's?) counterfeit "Supernotes"

Posted by Joshua Holland at 9:02 AM on January 16, 2007.

Following up on an earlier post, this week the Frankfurter Allgemeine ran a second story (German link) suggesting that the CIA, rather than America's "enemies," may be printing the almost impossible-to-detect forged $50- and $100-dollar bills known as "supernotes," perhaps in order to finance certain operations without Congressional oversight.

[Translated by: Watching America, with a hat-tip to commenter lessbread]

For nearly 20 years and in great quantities, counterfeit 100-Dollar-Notes of impeccable quality have been in circulation. […]

The Americans believe they know the perpetrators: the communist dictatorship of North Korea, archenemy of the United States. But … doubts emerged [among experts] about this accusation. Worse still: A rumor emerged that the Americans themselves could be behind the forgeries.

DIPLOMATS WITH WADS OF CASH IN THEIR LUGGAGE

Since the first counterfeit 100-Dollar-Federal-Reserve-Note was discovered at a bank in Manila, Philippines in 1989, there has been great excitement about the issue. Even experts on currency printing have been unable, using visual inspection and touch-testing - the most important tests of authenticity for average citizens - to differentiate the counterfeit 100-Dollar-Notes from the genuine ones…

At that time (1989), several countries were suspected, including the Iranian Mullahs, Syria, Lebanon's Hezbullah, and also the former East Germany. Washington doesn't like to be reminded of this, because today it is convinced that it must be North Korea.

Possible evidence of this is that North Korean diplomats and businessmen with diplomatic passports have been intercepted over the years with huge bundles of Supernotes in their luggage. In addition, North Korean defectors have spoken of a state-directed counterfeit money operation. But the reliability of these statements is open to question.

The White House charges Kim Jong-il's regime with printing fake 'Supernotes' to fund its nuclear programs. But as bad the regime is, experts say it is incapable of printing such high-quality fakes.[…]

I'll condense the next few paragraphs. Washington allegedly has "indisputable evidence" of North Korean involvement, but has "refused to disclose it for security reasons."

There are lots of expensive, tightly-controlled, high-tech and generally hard-to-get-one's-hands-on things that are required to print these "supernotes," and the anonymous experts consulted by the reporters believe it unlikely that they might have fallen into the grasp of a poor, messed up country like North Korea -- a country isolated from much of the world.

Lastly, a "Forensic analysis by a criminal laboratory shows that the security inks used for the Supernotes are identical to those used in genuine notes."

Washington's thesis of a "Pyongyang Connection" and "economic warfare against America" are not widely believed. Strangely, although the counterfeiters have mastered the technology of the infrared sensitive security inks used on the new Supernotes, the notes are produced in such way that automated currency test systems recognize them immediately as forgeries. In America, the Supernotes have little chance of going undetected. […]

America's accusations against North Korea are … on very shaky ground. And now the pendulum swings back: A rumor has circulated for years among representatives of the security printing industry and counterfeiting investigators that it is the American CIA that prints the Supernotes at a secret printing facility. It is in this facility, thought to be in a city north of Washington D.C., where the printing presses needed to produce the Supernotes is said to be located.

The CIA could use the Supernotes to fund covert operations in international crisis zones, and such funds would not be subject to any control by the American Congress.

That last graph is why this story is particularly noteworthy. After the shockwaves from the Church Committee had faded, and especially since 9/11, there's been an enormous and rapid expansion of U.S. intelligence capacity -- laudable, when it's been expanded responsibly, frightening when it hasn't -- and there are no doubt any number of new "black" and semi-black programs (some of which we've learned about in dribs and drabs over the past few years). These must be costing a fortune; think about just the expense of housing, interrogating and processing information from the hundreds of prisoners believed to be held in secret detention centers (just a fraction of the estimated 14,000 prisoners being held around the world in the War on Terra). Think about the costs of running a secret airline to shuttle those captives back and forth to countries that aren't squeamish about torturing them?

It must be steep. And there must be all sorts of programs like it that the administration and its spooks want to keep from the public. Now, the U.S. intelligence budget is classified, but not at a high level, and hundreds of academics, members of Congress, think-tankers, etc. see it. So how do you finance those things off budget? Well, there's certainly a precedent -- more than one -- for using illegal means to do so.

PS: A few commenters chided me for repeating what they called an "internet rumor" when I touched on this story last week. While thse story quotes un-named sources, the Frankfurter Allgemeine is roughly equivalent to the Wall Street Journal -- highly respected and center-right. But more to the point, this is being reported and read in Europe and not covered here -- that in itself makes it worthy of our readers' attention. Speaking generally, those kinds of stories are important to share, which is why I read and link to so much foreign press coverage.

Tagged as: cia, north korea, forgery, supernotes

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.