Most of the world was making multi-colored slick watermarked money long before us.

GAO – Counterfeit U.S. Currency Abroad: Observations on Counterfeiting and U.S. Deterrence Efforts — While looking for a decent $20 bill that I could photoshop into the 20 Peso bill (below) I ran into talk about the “superbill.” The Superbill is a fantastic quality counterfeit bill made overseas. The government hates talking about it because there are indications that it is made in the Middle East. Iraq? Saudi Arabia? Syria? Iran? By now someone knows. This money may be part of the reason for an attack on Iraq or perhaps why we now focus on Iran. The problem is nobody tells the public what is really going on. The above link and the quote below is from a GAO report.

U.S. law enforcement officials say that counterfeiters range from office workers to organized crime and terrorist groups and that the equipment used for counterfeiting U.S. currency includes both simple photocopiers and sophisticated offset presses. Moreover, counterfeit currency varies significantly in quality. Of increasing concern is a very high-quality family of counterfeits commonly known as the “Superdollar.” According to reports by the House Republican Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the Superdollar is printed in the Middle East on “high-tech state-owned presses with paper only acquired by governments.” However, the Secret Service says that the task force has provided little evidence to support its allegations.

and this you should know….

Of the $380 billion of U.S. currency in circulation, the Federal Reserve estimates that over 60 percent may be held outside the United States. The widespread use of U.S. currency abroad, together with the outdated security features of the currency, makes it a vulnerable target for international counterfeiting. Excluding two changes introduced in 1990,3 the overt security features of the currency have not substantially changed since 1929. This situation has resulted in the U.S. dollar’s becoming increasingly vulnerable to counterfeiting.

related links:

NOVA Transcript that discusses Superbill

STACY KEACH: The Secret Service has confiscated nearly $10 million of the notes circulating in the Middle East, but the source of the Superbill remains elusive. Without definitive proof, the Secret Service will neither confirm nor refute the allegations of state support.

RICHARD ROHDE: There is a number of high-quality counterfeits that circulate around the world. There are high-quality notes that do come out of the Middle East. There are high-quality notes that come out of Colombia, South America. Also out of Canada. I have no knowledge of any state sponsorship of any of these particular operations.

STACY KEACH: Tales of the Supernote and other counterfeiting threats led members of Congress to call for a currency redesign. Treasury decided to act, but the reasons are debatable.

ROBERT LEUVER: I think Treasury, in coming out with this redesign of currency, is responding to a significant threat, and whether that threat originates in the Middle East or the Far East, I can’t say for certain. But the money that they’re spending upon the change has to be in proportion to the risk involved.

TOM FERGUSON: The new currency is a response to growing technology. It is not a response to a specific crisis. There is no crisis. The American currency system is extremely sound. There is very, very little counterfeiting actually in circulation. This is to get ahead of the curve and to stay ahead of the curve.

Anyone who has travelled in the Middle East knows that they can afford and will spend money for the best technologies and make gorgeous and secure banknotes. I’ve always wondered what they did with the millions and millions of US currency that was found early on during the invasion of Iraq. And why did they have it in the first place?

Weird stories on this black-ops British website supposedly in the know. Great fun for the paranoid nutballs. I always assume there is some truth here and there in these sorts of rants. Deciding what the truths are is the challenge. You need a map.

One operation in which Tatum has knowledge, regards the so called “Superbills,” or “Supernotes” sting. Years earlier, in the late sixties or early seventies, the CIA had secretly provided to the Shah of Iran a perfect set of printing plates that could reproduce US$100 bills without blemish. Also provided was an intaglio printing press. This special printing press ensures that the etched plate meets paper with tremendous force, creating the distinctive embossed feel of a genuine banknote. In addition, the Shah was also given the ink and banknote quality paper enabling him to produce perfect counterfeit US Dollar banknotes. The Shah later fled Iran and left the plates and press behind in his confusion. The whole caboodle sat in the mint at Tehran, according to some experts.[viii]

According to Tatum, a deal was arranged in the early mid-eighties between VP George Bush, Panama’s Manuel Noriega and the Iranian leadership. A sum of US$8 billion deposited in the Banco Nacional de Panama on behalf of Colombian Cocaine king, Pablo Escobar was “lent” to George Bush. Of this, US$4 billion was shipped by plane to Iran where it was exchanged at a ratio of one good bill for two counterfeit bills. On the return trip, the aircraft, an 707 cargo container carried two shrink-wrapped pallets containing US$4 billion each

Here’s an odd post claiming the bills come from West Africa, which would explain why they have not been eradicated: http://kevincameron.tripod.com/2003/071903.html (cut and paste in seperate window as Tripod sites are disabling the “return” arrow on some browsers for some reason)

Meanwhile this fellow sees the bill matter-of-factly coming from Lebanon. You start to get different leads when you change the investigation word from Superbill to Supernote.

This new note owes its existence largely to a near perfect counterfeit dubbed the “Supernote” that came out of the Middle East, specifically the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.

It gets more dodgy when we read this assertion that North Korea is the supplier of the “Superdollar.” This would explain our sudden interest there too.

Now, according to Panorama , US intelligence had discovered in the late Eighties that North Korea had acquired the Intaglio, a highly sophisticated printing press similar to that used by the US Treasury and their printing and engraving offices. In 1989, a counterfeit $100 note of such quality that it became known as a ‘superdollar’ was spotted in the Philippines and forwarded to the US secret service.

Subsequently, similar notes turned up again and again in the diplomatic bags of North Korean officials (along with businessmen, the only people allowed to travel). Balbwa Hwang, an Asian policy analyst, said on Panorama that, “North Korea has a state-sponsored programme in which it is counterfeiting US dollars, and they do so with a dual purpose: the first is obviously the profits that the regime can earn immediately; but they also have a longer-term strategy of attempting to destabilise the US economy.”

A North Korean defector confirmed to Panorama that he had spent his working life counterfeiting: “We bought the best equipment and the best ink, but we also had the very best people.”

Can it get weirder? Yes, this website asserts that the bills cam from Ireland and were going to be funneled through China in some clandestine manner. That “accidental” bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was a warning not to do it.

A summary of the report was distributed to the highest-ranking ­officials in the Clinton-Gore administration in early June 1997. Among the items it contained were details of North Korea’s first launch of a new antiship cruise missile, Russia’s launch of a new generation spy satellite, and a warning from a Mexican drug lord about an upcoming raid by Mexican troops on a farm suspected of housing drug production equipment.

But it was the following passage that caught the eye of senior intelligence officials:

Suspected Supernote Distributor Meets with Chinese to _Discuss Undis­closed Business Deal (TSC OC)

(TSC OC) Sean Garland, Managing Director of GKG Comms Inter­national Ltd., in Dublin, met recently with Cao Xiaobing, Bureau Director-General within the Central Committee, to discuss unidentified business opportunities according to late May 1997 information. (COMMENT: Garland is suspected of being involved with counterfeiting U.S. currency, specifically, the Supernote, a high quality counterfeit $100 bill.) (W9B2, 3/00/18224-97, ILC)

Aside from his business interests, Garland was secretary general of the Workers’ Party in Ireland. A telling document obtained from Soviet archives revealed that Garland wrote to the secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on September 15, 1986. In the “dear comrade” letter, Garland stated that the Workers’ Party of Ireland had developed a five-year program and asked Moscow to provide one million pounds to help. The cash would be “of benefit to the world struggle for Peace, Freedom and Socialism.” The document was posted on the Internet by Vladimir Bukovsky, the well-known Russian dissident who spent years in the Gulag Archipelago.

The meeting between Cao and Garland in 1997 showed how China had become the ideological leader of what was left of the world communist movement. U.S. intelligence officials saw Communist China clandestinely supporting international communists, including those involved in international criminal activities-even those suspected of developing counterfeit $100 bills.

The one interesting thread in all this is that anyone who seems to be messing with the stability of the US greenback seems to suffer from the attempt. If this what all this military action is really all about then you gain a whole new perspective. Of course keeping the public in the dark isn’t helping anything is it?